Abuse

To Conflate or not to Equate

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

 

          In debate, and especially in internet debate due to the open, egalitarian nature of the web, conflation is a regular problem, and a constant issue, where even the ubiquitous strawman argument has to take second place in the hierarchy of fallacies. But of course, the assumption that two things are the same when they’re not is only one mistake. There is also the error of assuming things are different when they’re not; there is the inability to tell when two things are really the same.

          Of course, for anyone who’s seen my blogs, you know I’m a one-song jukebox.

          You know what I’m going for here: people need to conflate punishment with abuse a whole lot more; this is a case of extreme over-differentiation.

          We differentiate these two things only by our intentions and our wishes. If we hit a kid with only the intention of hurting it, that is abuse; if we hit a kid to teach it something, to increase his skills and knowledge and thus improve its life forever afterwards, that is not. This formula works for all acts that can fall on either side of this difference, punishment or abuse: blows, confinement, isolation, confiscation, loss of privileges.  If we wish it to have positive effects, it’s punishment; if we only wish for negative effects, it’s abuse.

          Is this how other things work?

  1. If we only hope to destroy the environment, that’s environmental terrorism, but if we wish for positive effects from our factories, then it’s industry, economic growth? Does our wish for positive things in industry mean we are not polluting?
  2. If we only wish to wipe out fish stocks, that is, let’s say, specicide, but if we are hoping to feed the world’s people with the fish, then that is food production? Does our wish for feeding the world mean we are not wiping out our ocean life?
  3. If we only wish to vilify and make war on other cultures and faiths, that is xenophobia, warmongering and intolerance, but if we wish to preserve and promote our own culture and/or faith, that is conservatism, tradition and loyalty, a social form of self-love? Does declaring our faith and our way of life to be correct and proper mean we are not asserting the other side of the coin, that other faiths and cultures must be wrong?
  4. If I only wish to pay no taxes at all, that is tax evasion and selfishness, but if I want keep as much of my salary as I have a legal right to and use every possible deduction available, that is simply providing for my family, being a responsible provider. Avoiding the political discussion, avoiding issues of government waste and corruption, would the government not be in a better position to do its work with more revenue, if I missed a few deductions? Does my healthy self concern and family concern not have its downside in the bottom line for a government that is operating on a deficit?

          I think I’ve made the point by now, and it’s a simple one really – everything has a measurable downside, life is a trade-off in many ways. But working backwards through my list, it still needs to be laid out as clearly as possible, some things need some conflation, some “differentiation” is false and needs to go away.

 – less taxation IS government deficit;

 – preservation of culture IS xenophobia;

 – resource extraction IS depletion of the environment;

 – industry IS destruction of the environment; and

 – punishment IS abuse

          Our wishes do not change these facts, intentions do not somehow invalidate the effects of our actions. Causality, cause-and-effect, happens in the real world and our wishes do not change that fact.

          The science is in regarding the effects of abuse and corporal punishment, and the effects are the same; they include practically all of the problems people suffer generally, they are simply shown to be more common and more severe in people who have been documented as having suffered abuse or corporal punishment.

          The emotional, psychological and cognitive effects of abuse and corporal punishment have their roots in the emotional, psychological and cognitive functions of punishment, in the betrayal of trust and love and in the convoluted “logic” of punishing (such as hitting a child to teach it not to hit, or hurting a child’s feelings in an effort to teach the child not to hurt another’s). These effects cannot be wished away.

          Reporting of these effects can be suppressed, children can learn that they mustn’t point these effects out to their caregivers, but the effects themselves remain.

          Conflate this things, abuse and punishment, please. Wishes do not make for a real differentiation.

It All Starts when We Punish our Kids, #3

Jeff/neighsayer2 Comments

It all starts when we punish our kids.

What “all starts?” Well . . .

  1. Misogyny.

First of all, violence breeds violence and the received violence in childhood punishments is the main root of violence generally (see part #2).

Second, male violence upon women has a terrible secondary effect on the world, and that is modeling gender violence for any children who have to live with it and see it. Anyone who sympathizes with the feminist movement must admit that if this modeling matters, then the modeling of adult violence on children must also matter (perhaps this also fits better in part #2).

Third, another aspect of misogyny we must admit is that it is transmitted by everyone in society; that is to say, it is a disease that affects us all, and one that we all transmit, despite that only half of us suffer directly with the symptoms. Much of all our early education, much of misogyny included, is very likely given to us by our mothers, our primary caregivers.

Much less a part of the usual conversations on the topic of violence, it may be that more of childhood punishing is performed by the primary caregiver, and in much of the world, throughout much of history and still true today here in North America, the primary caregivers are women. Is it too much of a stretch to consider that much of misogynistic violence may be the expression of infantile and childhood rage against the gender who punished us?

Here’s the rest of the series:

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/08/25/it-all-starts-when-we-punish-our-kids-4/

 

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/07/19/it-all-starts-when-we-punish-our-kids-2/

 

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/07/19/it-all-starts-when-we-punish-our-kids-1/

It All Starts when We Punish our Kids, #2

Jeff/neighsayer1 Comment

It all starts when we punish our kids.

What “all starts?” Well . . .

  1. Violence.

This hasn’t changed, despite what we like to think: punishment is violence. All punishment is ultimately physical. Even if in a particular instance a child can be punished without force, if a child is convinced to “take his medicine” in the form of a “timeout” or a grounding, or the loss of a privilege, this punishment is still backed up and made possible only by force and/or violence; the child has learned from past experience that he must accept his non-corporal punishment or see things escalate. Most likely, the child has learned this very young indeed, as a baby and/or toddler, when he is pre-verbal and there really are no non-corporal options.

 

Every instance of punishing models the use of negative stimulus as a way for the parents to get what they want – the very definition of violence and coercion. Plus, actions really do speak louder than words, and so this is what is modelled, despite how often the intended lesson is to discourage that very thing, violence. “Bullying” is the unauthorised version of this very behaviour: making someone’s life worse because they do something you don’t like. Nearly all forms of violence follow this model and the differences are mostly only in the degree of the violence. The difference between “discipline” and abuse is often only a matter of the degree: the principle is the same. Most folks don’t think you shouldn’t hurt a child. Mostly we only think we shouldn’t hurt a child “too much.”

Here’s the rest of the series:

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/08/25/it-all-starts-when-we-punish-our-kids-4/

 

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/07/20/it-all-starts-when-we-punish-our-kids-3/

 

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/07/19/it-all-starts-when-we-punish-our-kids-1/

It All Starts when We Punish our Kids, #1

Jeff/neighsayer8 Comments

It all starts when we punish our kids.

What “all starts?” Well . . .

1. Religion.

Our children, human children are born helpless, can’t even lift their heads, can’t so much as roll over, so our babies’ first experience of us is of all-powerful, all-providing beings. If we add punishing to that, the child’s experience is of an all-powerful, all-providing being that is also vengeful and punitive, one that must have things all their own way.

Sound familiar? After some months and years of this world, the only world the child has ever known, if we introduce the Judeo Christian (and Islamic) God, then this will fit the child’s worldview. That God will make sense to a child who lives in that world –

– So in this sense, punishment lays the groundwork for religion. This is why the religious, and the fundamentalist religious are so tightly bound to their belief: they have always known the basic narrative of the Punishing God to be true.

Here’s the rest of the series:

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/08/25/it-all-starts-when-we-punish-our-kids-4/

 

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/07/20/it-all-starts-when-we-punish-our-kids-3/

 

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/07/19/it-all-starts-when-we-punish-our-kids-2/

Irony: when a Deterrent Becomes a Punishment

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

What a different world we would have if deterrents, one of the central tenets of punishment, actually worked like it was supposed to. But let’s face facts: they don’t, at least not often enough, not often enough that the damages of the punishments promised as deterrents aren’t hurting us all.

 

The amount of punishments we actually have to implement should tell us this. We have all, nearly every last one of us been punished as children, and millions are still being punished as adults, the correctional system is an ever growing industry. Perhaps many crimes are deterred, but enough to say that this is the best possible option for us? Is it working well enough?

 

This is an interesting question, “is it working well enough,” and the answer there would be dependent on some assumptions, the first of which, as always in this topic, must be our stance on Original Sin.

 

On one side of this doctrine, if we believe either the religious version, that Man is born with sin in his heart, or the evolutionist version, that Man is descended from beasts and must be civilized by force, then our view will be that a great deal of crime has been deterred, that left to our own we will be criminals. In this view, if we let up on the stick, crime will increase and civilization will collapse; in this view, without punitive restraint, the beast will rule.

 

On the other side of this doctrine, if we reject the idea that sin and crime are built into humanity and see people as basically good, at least like housecats, that is, good when food is plentiful, then we may look for other causes for crime, then we may need reasons why people commit crimes. No secret for anyone who knows me, or anyone who’s seen other posts of mine: this is the view I begin with. I am looking for reasons, I start with the idea that something, something in this life, in the here and now, is causing crime and violence. There certainly are genetic things, built in things on either side of the moral scale, but saying “the Devil made me do it” is not a reason that we shouldn’t analyze what we are doing in the here and now. To state it a slightly different way, declaring “that’s just the way it is” and refusing to look at our own activity, that is something like socio or psychopathy.

 

I am trying to deal with the deterrent aspect here, but this needs to be said. I’ve said it elsewhere in more detail, and please ask if this isn’t clear; this is an interactive media, after all: punishment damages us. The damages of abuse are clear and well documented, and the damages of corporal punishment are of all the same sort, also well documented; corporal punishment is rapidly moving to the wrong side of the law in much of the world. What isn’t so well documented, what I am trying to show, is one or both of two things, which have the same result.

 

  1. “Corporal” punishment is really the only kind there is. There can be no punishment in the world except that it is made to happen, physically, except that it is backed up with force. We are corporeal beings after all. We don’t generally volunteer for our punishments, they are imposed, against our will and this ultimately must be done by force, even if that means in a particular case it is through the threat and learned experience of force, that is, even if every single punishment doesn’t require physical force, a general program of punishment  does.

 

  1. Much of the damage of abuse, corporal punishment, and this fictional non-corporal punishment isn’t physical. It is emotional, cognitive, psychological, and it stands to reason that it isn’t the physical aspects of abuse and punishment that cause it. The damage a young child suffers when its parent hurts it somehow on purpose and then promises to do it again, this doesn’t require that the hurt be only physical. This is the damage of emotional betrayal (among other things).

 

Damaged people are more subject to all sorts of social problems, crime being one of them, and being a part of many of these damages, addictions, self harm, promiscuity, violence. It seems to me, genetic or not, at least some of this is crime we are causing with our damaging, punishing ways.

 

But back to deterrents:

 

The first thing I would point out regarding deterrents are that their power increases as the certainty of their implementation increases, and of course that equation works also in the inverse. The power of a deterrent is lessened as the perceived chance of actually having to face the penalty grows smaller, meaning, if there’s a perceived chance the misbehaver can avoid the penalty, the deterrent can fail; this is only more true if the chance is real – and of course, many crimes and misbehaviours are not found out. Of course then, in anything but a totalitarian, police state, deterrents can and do fail, and damaging punishments ensue. If deterrents worked well enough, the prisons would not be so full, and we would not all be punished as children.

 

We offer these punishments in our effort to turn our kids and our adolescents away from misbehaviours and turn our adolescents and adults away from crime, and when it works, terrific, it’s all good. But when it doesn’t work, when our kids insist on their misbehaviours, or when our criminals do and we have to implement the punishment – well then we are damaging our kids, and further damaging these adult misbehavers, and we have made the shift from being the solution and trying to prevent crime and bad behaviour to being the problem, and actually causing it.

 

Defined as a joke with the power to make us cry, this is irony, a logical joke, but a sad, sad reality, the deeply ironic fallacy of deterrents.

 

If we believe in deterrents, but see crime remains, or increases, we may think the deterrents need to be stepped up, the penalties intended as deterrents worsened . . . and this probably only increases the damage, and doubles the horrible irony of our public policy. This is what is offered by our Law-and-Order politicians, more damage, more crime. (I’m looking at you, Stephen Harper.) That situation is of course only even more heartbreaking if we do that with our parental discipline, if we increase the stakes.

 

If this is not heartbreaking to us, we can consider that we have been desensitized to it. There is only so much horrible irony a person can take before we just switch off.

 

So, if my side of this argument is true, even partly, then punishment and deterrents, the very processes we hope will lessen crime and misbehaviours, could well be ironically creating the crime we are trying to stop. It’s also true that we have given these ideas a fair try – all of human history – and despite that things don’t change much, and that any lessening of the violence and brutality in this world has been accomplished by a net increase in humanity rather than an increase in penalties and deterrence schemes, we keep trying it. It’s well known that cognitive impairment is one of the many damages incurred by abuse and punishment. Perhaps this explains our inability to see this conundrum: perhaps we are slow learners.

 

 

A Revolution in Nature VS Nurture, Part Two

Jeff/neighsayer3 Comments

Here’s a page with info about the first and most famous of the twin studies:

 http://www.intropsych.com/ch11_personality/bouchards_twin_research.html

 So with this idea, that it takes genetics AND environment to produce an organism, and with the strong results that have been famously reported from the twin studies, I infer that the environments in the disparate homes these twins were adopted out to must be in fact far more similar than they are different from one another. What I am setting this up against is some of the ideas I have encountered during my time blogging and having online discussions about parenting, ideas like:

–         Some people nowadays let their kids do whatever they want

–         People don’t hit their kids anymore

–         The problems with kids nowadays are because they aren’t taught respect

It’s a pretty short list, I guess, but these ideas come in many forms. Of course, anyone who’s seen my stuff before knows where I’m at on this subject – spoiler alert! I don’t think kids should ever be punished, for anything – but the point I’m after here is a little different. The point I’m after is that many “normally” authoritative parents seem to believe that there is some large group of parents out there who aren’t fulfilling their responsibilities to civilize their children, that there is some sizeable group of people who don’t discipline their kids, parents who do not offer some reinforcement intended to teach their kids respect, and right from wrong – and that this idea is for the most part untrue.

It’s not my idea – these parents attribute some power to environmental influences, they assume that the presence or absence of discipline (punishment) to be an important environmental difference, and they intuit that this difference is what makes the difference in the success of their parenting and of their children. But is it true?

I don’t think it is, and this idea of the twin studies showing that environments differ very little, at least in a meaningful way, from household to household would support that conclusion. It would tend to suggest that at least in the adoptive households of these separated twins, either there weren’t these differences of punishing or not, or that the difference is not a meaningful one.

Certainly there is one common thing among the households: they all qualified as suitable for adoption families, either in the eyes of the government, or the private agencies, or both. Do we think they had to show they would provide discipline, or that they wouldn’t? That may be a real question, but it’s unlikely that many, if any of these households would have been the type that wouldn’t, because few households are. OK, that, by itself, is circular reasoning. But there are other reasons why I say that there really is no large group of people (at least in Canada and the States) who don’t use punishment as a way to rear their children.

The article linked below states that something like 80% of families in a study that recorded their family households were recorded using corporal punishment methods – perhaps a surprise for those who haven’t raised kids yet, that so many resort to it – and these were families that knew they were being recorded.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/28/would-you-record-yourself-spanking-your-kids/

 One can only assume that some number of these families had some measure of care to change their ways while the microphones were active, so this study has it that something upwards of 80% of people today are still using corporal punishment. The exact percentage is a matter for speculation – and so to start us off down the path of unfounded speculation, allow me!

First, if you will grant the first part of my premise, which is that many parents seem to think that there must be many families where people are not providing enough discipline, then the next question may be, does something less than 20% of families satisfy their theory? Does that fraction of the population explain “what is wrong with kids nowadays?”

Second, my previously posted theories as to why corporal punishment is still so prevalent, in the shortest form I can manage. A somewhat less abridged form is in this post here:

https://abusewithanexcuse.com/2014/04/16/my-doctrine-abuse-with-an-excuse/

  – nothing else “works.” Many parents want to raise their kids without spankings etc., but few are aware of or willing to change their expectations. We mostly haven’t thought it through, and before we work through it, the spanking has begun. Unfortunately, it appears to “work,” and many parents abandon their non-spanking dream.

 – even the parenting gurus, the sellers of popular books and radio broadcasts do not help these parents. They teach non-violent means but they don’t help parents with their expectations, and the parents are left to their own devices when a child insists on his misbehaviour. They reinforce the idea that everything should go the parents’ way.

So this is my thesis:

Nearly everyone uses punishment – we are all the same, there are no “different environments” among families within our culture. This aspect of the children’s lives are all pretty much the same, and so another explanation must be allowed for what is wrong with the world and “kids nowadays.” The idea that there are many people out there, a meaningful percentage of parents not disciplining their children and “teaching them respect’ and “right from wrong” is a myth, even if it’s an unconscious one. We need to look elsewhere for an explanation of why kids don’t listen to their parents.

A Revolution in Nature VS Nurture, Part One

Jeff/neighsayer5 Comments

It has come to be understood that without some form of Nurture there can be no Nature; that an organism’s genetic coding develops in interaction with the environment, and there is no “normal” or neutral environment. Eliminate the environment and you have eliminated the organism. Of course, all living things have both influences, and they are deeply enmeshed.

With this in mind, I would like to re-visit the seemingly astounding things unearthed in the many twin studies, separated twins, adopted out to different families, and tested later in life for personality traits etc. In short – very short, I admit – these studies famously showed that twins are twins, especially monozygotic twins, even when raised apart in separate families, separate towns, separate states, even sometimes in separate countries, many shared traits to an impressive degree.

(Some, and not a small number of people, have used the apparent triumph of the Nature over Nurture argument that the twin studies seemed to assure to justify some unpopular ideas of social Darwinism and the like. Personally, I too thought the results of these studies appeared to hurt the cause of those people invested in the Nurture side, myself included – although for me it’s a hobby, a train of thought, and not my livelihood. I confess to have been searching for a way out of that disillusionment, mostly from an intuitive thing, a sense that if Nature and our genes rule all, then there seems no point to life, to thought, to the choices we make. Life in that world seems mechanical and rather pointless. But a new – at least to me – insight seems to have the power to save my hurt feelings in the matter. I hope to provide some reason and logic; I hope I am doing more than asking that anyone simply share my feelings about it.)

In terms of evolution, it would be basic to say that over the long term, environment, and living things’ responses to it, have shaped our genetic makeup, and for a few decades now, genetic science is showing that this is also true in the short term, that during the development of a single organism, environment is in interaction with genes, activating and making dormant different genes. In other words, it seems that it takes a creature’s genes and the creature’s environment to produce an adult, developed creature of a particular, identifiable phenotype. I’m sure I’m not saying anything intelligible there, but the point is simply this, that it takes both, genetics and environment to produce a creature that would seem to be within the parameters of what we might require to identify it. Too much genetic variance, it’s a different sort of creature, a different species. That we all know, but considering the interaction of genes and environment, we can also very possibly assert that if the environment were not also similar enough during the creature’s development, a different creature may also emerge, a different phenotype.

Now if that were true – and I have a blogger or two to run this past, people who know better and will no doubt try to correct me in ways I may still not understand – if that were true, then what might that mean about the twin studies?

It might mean that the genes these people share are not the only thing they share. It could very well mean that different families, in different towns, different states, even sometimes in different countries are actually similar enough environments to produce such strikingly similar phenotypes.

It could very well mean that the assumption of those who would interpret the results of the twin studies to support unpopular things like social Darwinism (and worse), the assumption that these separated twins were actually raised in meaningfully different environments – is false.

Here’s Part Two:

A Revolution in Nature VS Nurture, Part Two

Imagine a World Without the Damages of Abuse . . .

Jeff/neighsayerLeave a comment

The damages from abuse are many, but they’re becoming well known. I’ve often listed the categories of them, physical, psychological, emotional and cognitive, but the damages themselves are:

Impaired cognitive development (trouble in school, poorer grades);

Behaviour problems;

All manner of disorders: eating, depression, anxiety, self-harm, addictions;

Physical injuries, sometimes permanent and/or resulting in impaired physical development;

Etc., etc.

 

The thing is, the list of damages that have been so well documented as resulting from what is called corporal punishment – that is the same list. This is why corporal punishment is fast being outlawed all over the world.

 

All punishment is corporal punishment – that’s the big secret. Therefore the list of damages that result from all punishment is the same list.

Much abuse is punishment gone too far, and even those who promote punishment will agree that punishing means the administration of abuse (in the generic sense) for a good reason. Now . . .

Imagine a world without it.

A world without these damages, or with less of this damage? Now that is a world that would be something to see, wouldn’t it? Just ponder:

People with less cognitive impairment, fewer disordered people, less addiction . . . less damage of so many sorts. Healthier people, healthier psyches, who knows? Maybe people would even be smarter.

Just imagine it.

Another Murderous Madman and the Obvious Common Denominator

Jeff/neighsayer9 Comments

A bunch of girls didn’t do what he wanted, so he set out to hurt a bunch of girls and teach them all a lesson. Folks, yes that is misogyny, yes it is gun violence, but mainly

IT IS PUNISHMENT.

The reason all these killers find it reasonable and rational to hurt the people who don’t do what they want, is because EVERYONE finds it reasonable and rational to hurt people when they don’t do what  they want. That’s the concept of punishment. And we all know where he learned it, where they all learn it, where WE all learned it. Right?

Now how is it that what these crazies are trying to do and why is somehow not front and center of the conversation? Why are we talking about sex rather than the roots of violence, why are we talking about who the victims are instead of what these killers are doing and why?

Nature VS Nurture and Twin Studies

Jeff/neighsayer18 Comments

 

First, sorry for the first post, it’s gone. I’ve just learned something about ‘Link’ posts.

 

This isn’t the most comprehensive article about all the separated twin studies that have been done, but it’s new, and typical enough. Here’s an excerpt, a link to the article and the author’s data, then my comments:

 

“To explain this close bond, psychologists frequently look to environmental factors: Identical twins, growing up in lock step, share most of the same experiences (they are often even treated the same by others) and therefore develop their unusually strong connection. But my research on reunited twins challenges this theory. I have found, for example, that reunited identical twins report feeling greater closeness to each other than do reunited fraternal twins. And I have found that a reunited twin generally reports feeling closer to the twin he only recently met than to a genetically unrelated sibling with whom he was raised.

Given that reunited twins were not reared in the same environment, genetic factors are surely relevant to these bonds. But how do shared genes result in an immediate sense of connection?”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/opinion/sunday/the-closest-of-strangers.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

 

Nancy L. Segal, a professor of developmental psychology at California State University, Fullerton, is the author of “Born Together — Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study.”

 

How different are the environments really? Don’t we all raise our kids the same way, with the same methods? And even in the case of these ladies, isn’t American culture and therefore American child-rearing simply a continiuation of the British version? Aren’t the apparent differences from household to household superficial? For this, I offer the relative ubiquity of parenting books and discussions where the basic premises are nearly universal while only the details of how and when parental control is exercised differ.

Which makes me wonder that we are not looking at the correlation of genes in interaction with different environments, but genes in correlation to environments that are actually also very similar. Again, within a given culture, how different are the environments provided for children? This idea would have to extend to the sorts of personality tests that the twins do so similarly at: are the described personality traits and types not also visible only in contrast with a fairly uniform background? If so, the power of our genes, and so of the Nature over Nurture argument, is going to win every time, considering that there really be very little variation in the environment children are raised in anyway.