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I think this is representative of a general societal movement that holds, basically, that discipline should be done away with and replaced with more nurturing. The stick is just sadistic cruelty, and does much more harm than good, and whatever good it does do can be done all the better with extra carrots.
And I can see where people may be coming from on that, in that the downsides of discipline - the consequences of overdiscipline - are dramatic and immediate. Too much harshness leaves people shattered on the spot. The downsides of nurturing, though - the consequences of overnurturing - are comparatively dull and delayed. Too much nurturing leaves people stunted, but without any single, immediate, dramatic event that can be pointed to to say "see! That shows that they were treated wrongly!"
(I suppose it's an eternal human way to trade obvious, immediate problems for less-immediate ones.)
But it's not just academia: just as it would be inhumane to hold students to academic standards, in light of their Circumstances and Conditions, so too it would be inhumane to, for example, hold petty criminals to legal standards, in light of their Circumstances and Conditions. Instead of punishing anybody to stop their bad behavior, it is better to connect with them, to build relationships and trust, and constructively help them out of whatever pit they were in that made them feel they had to act out.
Which sounds lovely, but it just, well, doesn't work.
(I'm sure it would be pointed out if I don't do so now that the vanguards of civilized behavior who deplore discipline are real quick to grab the stick whenever somebody they don't like does something that really bothers them. That language policing is carried out with enthusiasm by those who detest regular policing. That would seem to point to just a different hierarchy of values, rather than a consistent stance against discipline...)
I like this framing because I think it highlights just how pernicious overnurturing is.
Overdiscipline is easy to spot. We call it abuse. If I steal from the cookie jar and my mother gives me a sharp crack about the ear, that's discipline - perhaps harsh and a bit pre-1972, but still within the acceptable definition of discipline. If, however, she wails on me with a wooden spoon for 10 minutes, that's abuse.
Grown up abuse is often called hazing. If I am at Marine Corps boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina and I screw up my locker inspection, the Senior Drill Instructor may respond by making me do pushups for some amount of time or repetitions. Discipline. If he throws the locker at me, that's hazing (if it seriously injures me, that's actually illegal, but it'll be covered up.)
Abuse or hazing, that it is fairly easy to draw the line makes it easier to manage, imho.
Not so with the over-nurturing. Returning to the cookie jar example, after my mother has caught me red handed, she takes 15 minutes to "gentle parent" me about how stealing is wrong because it makes other people sad and that too many cookies might make my tummy hurt and she knows I just like cookies, which is great, but right now we (why are we using the plural all of a sudden?) just can't have any cookies. Now, I don't even know if I did anything wrong. I don't know if I was just subjected to that ... event ... arbitrarily or in response to something I did directly.
Fast forward the tape and now I'm being arrested because I stole a couple doze iPhones with my friends from the mall. The cop is placing me into the back of his squad car because ... why? I wanted the iPhones so I took them. I'm not thinking about Apple, Inc. or the employees at the store because nobody (like, for instance, my mother) ever told me to do that much less associated direct consequences with the failure to do that. It's as if the entire concept of causality has been so watered down in my brain that I am an observer of my own actions instead of their source.
Sound familiar?
Every police interaction video online where the person who is obviously resisting arrest shouts "I didn't no nothin!" is, perhaps, a person who literally cannot associate their actions through time with a chain of causality. If it weren't so socially destructive, I'd feel bad for them -- like they're forced to watch a movie of their own life that's nothing but jump cuts.
Overdiscipline can lead to a damage deficit that may take years for a person to overcome. Extreme enough and it may never be totally overcome. But there is still the potential to overcome it and people will have the ability to work to do that. With overnurturing, it seems to me, they are utterly robbed of that ability to overcome. It's a complete short-changing of some core developmental pathways that turn children into adolescents into young adults that lack even the vague concept that they have control over their own actions which then influence the outcome of life and circumstance around them. If I drop you into the middle of a Japanese accounting firm and tell you to reconcile the balance sheet of Hashimori Corp in 90 minutes, you're going to laugh, throw up your hands, and just kind of let the world roll over you. You don't even have a sense for where or how to begin because you have zero contextual history or familiarity with this environment.
And that's a non-trivial part of younger millenials, Gen-Z, and whatever laboratory goo babies follow after them.
Is that actually a thing, where 'gentle parenting' results in kids who are stealing iphones or doing more or less organized crime? I genuinely have no idea.
I think robbers know perfectly well what they're doing and are evaluating risk and reward for their crimes, perhaps with skewed analysis of risk but they're still making an assessment. You'd never see them rob some 2 metre tall bodybuilder, even those 'schizophrenics' who push people onto subway lines or whatever, they'll go for someone weaker than themselves. Maybe the payoff for killing is hatred or jealousy rather than pure monetary gain...
I agree that swift discipline is the cure but I think that they all have some ability to judge, even if it's some reptile-brain 'this guy looks alpha better not attack him' level. More specifically I think some middle-class coddled brat is going to be really whiny and irritating when running into some obstacle but won't rob a store because he/she assesses 'I can just get my parents to pay for it'. Whereas the hardened thief calculates more along the line of 'who cares if I go to prison, my mate Bronco is there, I know lots of people who went to prison, and I don't want to look like a pussy and I need this cash fast'.
You'd think this, but then there are endless videos of criminals doing things that just seem completely insane to anyone who has a normally functioning understanding of cause and effect, like reaching for a cop's gun inside of a police precinct. A mere knave wouldn't do that.
This is because a certain category of criminals are simply that slice of humanity that has very low impulse control and is incapable of modeling the consequences of actions, or at least incapable of letting that affect their judgement. Watch enough footage and you'll recognize them.
Lots are just pretending they don't understand because they think that this will let them get away with it, but the small slice of people who genuinely have no impulse control exists and is most of those people who are arrested hundreds of times for the same petty crime.
Career criminals as you mentally model them also exist but they're a different breed.
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Indeed. Except the second you suggest otherwise, they're happy to "give you what you want" by using the stick on you and people like you while continuing to "nurture" people they like.
...much in the same way as, when someone advocates redistribution of wealth, they are met with calls to redistribute their wealth specifically while not redistributing the wealth of their richer, less compassionate neighbours.
I'd say this is legitimate. It's easy to support very harmful actions based on abstract principles when the harmful consequences don't fall on yourself. Sometimes you need to do this anyway (punishing criminals, not allowing underage drinking) but it's often a warning sign that someone is applying principles in a very self-justifying way.
That does not apply to that to which I was referring.
If Alice calls for 'redistribute Bob's wealth; do not redistribute Alice's wealth', your argument might be valid; however, I am referring to when Alice calls for 'redistribute a fraction of both Alice's wealth and Bob's wealth' and Bob counter-proposes 'redistribute Alice's wealth; do not redistribute Bob's wealth'.
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They're even against language policing when it polices them: see all of the discussion about "correct" English and how marginalized groups speak correctly in their own dialects (AAVE, for example).
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