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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34531 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 2023

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Here's something annoying I found on liberal part of reddit (doesn't matter where, and I don't want to accidentally create drama by linking to it):

What’s really sad and frustrating is how the education system has completely distorted the actual concept of restorative justice. In criminal justice, restorative justice is intended to allow the victim or family of the victims to have a say in how the convicted criminal should be sentenced, while focusing on rehabilitation and a compromise between the two parties. Regardless, the offenders are still held accountable for their actions, but they’re given the opportunity to repair the relationship between themselves and their community - it’s not a free pass to do whatever you want and face no consequences.

Here's the part I found annoying. People have basically never been more atomized in the entire human history and the above text is unironically talking about repairing relationship between a criminal and some made up community. Back when communities were actually tightly knit, criminals were hanged.

I don't even care about restorative justice all that much. I can even see myself supporting it in certain situations. For example, If I happen to be a criminal.

What I absolutely find grating is that this person takes the existence of community for granted when it's for most people no more real than bigfoot. At least conservatives recognize this lack as a problem (tho they don't have any real solutions ) while liberals kinda always assume that communities exist when they mostly don't. They don't even realize that they are talking about phantasm.

It gets even more annoying when they talk about e.g. fandoms as "communities." Are people you met on comic book convention going to build you a house? Help you find a wife? Are they going to watch over your children?

Could we have tightly knit communities without brutal punishments? Should we? I have no idea. But any analysis has to start from the fact that we mostly don't have communities right now.

My read of the quoted comment is different than yours.

To your point that 'community' is overused to the point of meaninglessness in liberal circles, well, I think that's what's actually going on here. My perspective is that the quoted comment isn't really arguing for any criminal justice reform because it will help mend communities in any real way. They're just pro-criminal justice reform community effects notwithstanding, with a focus on rehabilitation and reconciliation between the criminal and victim (which are goals one could have for criminal justice reform without caring about 'mending the community') and then at the very end of their comment, they merely happen to name-drop 'community' because, as you said, its become such a meaningless term in liberal discourse that they use it almost without intentional meaning.

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