Punishment and free will

If really believe that we have no, or at least very little, free will - how should we treat other beings?

If someone is screaming to you - would you scream back?

Is it punishment to scream back, or should it be seen as a consequence of the first screamers act.

Our intuition says, scream back or hide away from the screamer.

Our intuition may say, that screamer has a free will and chose to scream at me. I chose to scream back, to show my free will.

But will our response help the first screamer?

Will the thief stop his behavior if he will be set in prison for some years?

Does suffering do you good?


Okey, sometimes society needs to save itself from murderers and terrorists.

But will it maybe be better to use preventive measures, as a basic income for everyone.
Or maybe more of social help for children that are abused in their homes?

Can we make a space for freedom if we meditate and then learn not to follow our impulses and intuitions?

In "Crime and Punishment"  Dostoevsky  lets his antihero, Raskolnikov, in the end be imprisoned for his crime.
And he lets him see a light and maybe a savior in a christian prostitute, Sonja, that is in love with Raskolnikov.

Dostoevsky was himself , imprisoned, in Siberia, for a lot of years.
He said that he after that turned to Christ. He for sure was a better author after that, but probably not a better human being - you can read about that in biographies.

I guess you can say that Dostoevsky was influenced by genes and environment like all of us.
And the imprisonment  changed him in some way.

They say suffering in childhood can make you a better writer or artist. At least you want some revenge. Maybe Hitler is an example of that.

So should it be wrong to imprison a person like Hitler?

In fact he spend some time in prison and wrote "Mein Kampf" there....

Probably it would have been better shoot him in the early days, to save the world from the coming disaster.

So, if we agree that we have very little free will, would that change the way we treat our fellow beings?

Here is R Wright in a conversation with Gregg Caruso on the topic:












 












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