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AnjaHavedalThirdPaper 10 - 23 Jul 2009 - Main.AnjaHavedal
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What appears below is a complete overhaul of my third paper, elaborating on the one interesting idea in my first draft and getting rid of the rest. As of mid-July, it is still something of a work in progress. | | | So if you want me to pay my tram fare, I would suggest either making it cheaper or threatening me with time behind bars. | |
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< | IN PROGRESS.
Eben's comments on the original draft:
- Yes, all of this said and you haven't made any progress on your well-chosen (if not exactly recondite) topic.
- This is therefore the draft before the draft. You have written around your subject enough to know that you have picked a good subject, because the usual stuff said in the usual way is unsatisfying. You mash up several different points of view (you begin by saying that retribution has been our central theory of criminal punishment, only to say a graf later that it has been incapacitation and general deterrence), you assert that rehabilitation doesn't work, and that deterrence doesn't either (on the basis of a single exceptional anecdote, although much better evidence for your proposition is available), and then skip to the "social roots of crime" analysis that joins the 18th century radical, the 19th century liberal, and the 20th century progressive in a multi-generational parade of "right before their time."
- But none of it is helpful in dealing with Madoff, as you say. So now it becomes necessary to write the draft that one writes after one realizes that all the stuff everybody says all the time doesn't really explain anything. If you seriously set about doing it, and find a way to express your exploration and discoveries in 1,000 words, you will have a memorable and irreversible intellectual experience. Go for it.
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> | --AnjaHavedal, 20 July 2009 | | | Anja, | | | Andrew | |
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> | --AndrewCase, 22 July 2009
Andrew,
Thank you. Admittedly, nuance has never been my forte. And what you're seeing now is still a vast improvement from the black-or-white, all-or-nothing view of the world I espoused until I left Sweden ten years ago. And like Patrick (Cronin, that is), I have always tended to look for theories that explain "everything," even though I know that the world and human behavior are way too complex for that to be a successful intellectual quest. I will revise my essay, again, when I figure this out in my head.
On the tram fare issue: I am talking about the Netherlands here, not NY - the fine when you get caught is 25 euros and they don't even ask for your name. If I paid my fare every day, I would spend 25 euros in less than a week. I would never jump a turnstile or not pay my fare in NY, mostly because I would risk losing my (still conditional) green card and get deported. So, for what it's worth, it appears that the threat of serious consequences works in this particular instance for this particular person.
There is an aspect to moral-law-human behavior equation that I have not included in this essay, but that I have thought a lot about lately: How and why do perceived "moral" boundaries collapse in some settings (Nazi Germany, Pol Pot's Cambodia etc)? This also relates to what Patrick has been writing about mob mentality - what does it take for people to start collectively breaking rules that have long been perceived as legitimate or "moral"? I would not cheat on an exam if I saw three people doing so, but if everybody around me was cheating and getting away with it, so would I. What is the tipping point?
--AnjaHavedal, 23 July 2009
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| META TOPICMOVED | by="AnjaHavedal" date="1242287912" from="Sandbox.AnjaHavedalThirdPaper" to="LawContempSoc.AnjaHavedalThirdPaper" |
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| Revision 10 | r10 - 23 Jul 2009 - 08:02:11 - AnjaHavedal? |
| Revision 9 | r9 - 22 Jul 2009 - 23:22:54 - AndrewCase |
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