so for arguments sake, let's say we somehow have discovered a way to reset someone's age, back to childhood and maybe even play with gender a little.
Now, let's say that someone has personally and deeply harmed you, use your imagination. I'm not sure what each individual would constitute a great injury but let's say it's something deeply personal and wounding.
Would you be satisfied with this person's life being started over and them being re-raised as a child? So they don't make the same mistakes or decisions in the future? Or would you want more punishment added?
I ask this for something i've been working on, and i want to sort of test the waters and get some thoughts from the public.
EDIT: Surprising, most people seem to want more punishment, some even want death sentences and the like. I'm rather surprised by the responses tbh.
Comments
nope it isn't enough
since just restarting life wouldn't be enough to change everything and avoid mistakes.
you would need to have changes made in what happens in order to change their mindset enough to have them not make the same choices.
Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.
Punishment?
I'd say let them stay old while I start again as a young girl.
Melanie
well, nobody is saying that
well, nobody is saying that YOU can't de-age. I imagine that'd be an option for anyone who wishes it.
Starting over
I would love a do over. I understand how ripping someone from their life and destroying their personality would be a punishment but really death of personality is pretty much capitol punishment. If you didn't destroy their personality though you are just giving them a gift. Restored youth, a chance to hone their criminal skill and try again this time without being caught.
do-over
then what would be your suggestion?
hmmm, as a punishment, i dont think its good
You are basically given someone a second chance at life, where the people they hurt dont? Not sure how that is a "punishment", i guess if someone didnt like puberty, etc. unless you are talking sex reversal and leaving their gender the same (or the opposite, change gender but leave original sex) so that they see what its like, and how it is to be treated as they treated OTHERS? then i could see it a punishment
Teresa L.
So someone who was mean or
So someone who was mean or cruel should be treated mean and cruel as a child?
Redoing life over.
It depends. Events from the past as with being influenced by those around us at an early age, set on us at an early age. How you want to have that person raised can affect the persons mind. Are they retaining their old personality? or as one writer did leave it but new events overrode them as they grew up again. Memories not fully accessible. Being treated in a different manner than before, and so forth. These all play a factor and its up to you.
A child tormented at an early age an now given love may not harbor the same feelings, whereas a teen will still harbor those feelings unless they make the conscious decision on fighting it.
Unsatisfying
Is DNA affected by the regression? Giving an offender a second chance at contributing to the gene pool seems evolutionarily unfair, even if their minds are wiped. Regardless, regression feels very unsatisfying as a punishment. I would rather see their aging accelerated.
so you would rather see them
so you would rather see them suffer capitol punishment then?
Killing criminals
If it was something grievous, like the murder of a family member, then yes.
and if it wasn't?
and if it wasn't?
Lesser crimes
I think do-overs (plus sterilization if they've already reproduced) could be worthwhile for those people for whom crime is a lifestyle - thieves, pimps, pushers, muggers, rapists, etc, and could be offered to the downtrodden as well. But no do-over if their victim doesn't have the same option.
For a once-off deep personal offense, regression doesn't seem a suitable punishment. I would prefer more conventional means.
Lesser crime
Take a look at "The Execution of Sam Horiwitz"...
I have to look at it two ways
I have to look at it two ways: you are either a victim of circumstances and become a terrible person, or you are a terrible person. If you can remove the elements that make the person terrible this person can become a decent person and live a productive life. If this person is just a scumbag then no removal of outside elements can change the person.
I'd say that probably 80% of what we are is nurture. You see a lot of this in the foster system, kids becoming criminals because they are treated as such and have to survive so they act that way to survive among their peers. Same goes with gangsters and other groups. Remove the person from the situation and over time most people will change for the better. But there are still that small number that won't change at all no matter what you do.
That said, sometimes the punishment can be a blessing and restarting life with a blank slate from an earlier age provided it wasn't down with malice rather it was done with the best interests of the person should be enough to change a person.It'll make for a good story and if done right you might even be able to have a few twists in it in case there is some malice done in there...
I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime
Hmmmm
If 80% of what we are is nurture, it would seem that those who incorrectly nurtured should be the ones who are punished.
You can write whatever you like, but it has been my experience that people come with personalities. My four children certainly did. They are now 25 to 42. Those basic personalities that they demonstrated in their cribs are very much intact.
Of course, we believed in a home life of love. We made NO attempt to push them hard in any direction. We supported their desires. No formal religion.
Good luck on your project.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
I am pulling the figures out
I am pulling the figures out of thin air, I have seen just about every kind of household from latchkey, to helicopter mom, to overbearing mom, to same sex couples, to single parent "do whatever you want", to single parent overbearing, to typical nuclear families and as the kids grow up the differences were staggering.Those with stable homes and parents who were concerned about them but not to the point over being involved in every single thing did great. Those whose parents ignored them, were too busy for them, or made them do everything that the parent wanted them to do, or simply guided their life the way their parent wanted them to go did poorly.
I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime
I guess it depends on what they did and why
If it was something done out of hate, then they were turned into what they hate and have to grow up that way...
If it was homophobic, then they should be made to be gay when they start over.
If they are transphobic then they should start out as the wrong gender
If they are prejudiced, then they should start over as what they hate
If they were rich, then they should be poor
Raises An Interesting Moral Question
However society decides to punish wrongdoing, one thing never changes: the demand that the perpetrator of a crime takes responsibility for his or her actions. The deed may eventually be forgiven, but the guilt cannot be erased.
Does the punishment suggested here meet this criterion? How would someone whose life is in disarray because of debt, addiction or a terminal illness view the idea of a convicted criminal being given the chance of a completely fresh start? Would they not be incentivised to commit a similar offence?
I don't mean to dissuade you from publishing this story. On the contrary, I think it has immense potential.
Overall question
If this were to truly be done how would society judge those convicted and sentenced? Would they become those who are now forced to be condemned by wearing a scarlet letter? Would they be given new identities and hidden from society? Would their genders, features be changed as they were regressed? And what of their mental capacities?
If this was punishment for punishments sake than ethical questions must be in place else those that are doing the punishment are nothing but monsters themselves even if they don't think so.
Prudence Walker...
...used a variation of this in a novel on Sapphire's site (which seems to be down at the moment); since it's a spoiler I'll white out the title {Highlight to read} Polly Merman, or something like that; a pun on polymer and man.
It's been a long time since I read it, but IIRC the villain -- now a three-year old girl -- was remorseful and looked forward to a second chance. (And since she was now the adopted daughter of the hero and heroine, the saw about keeping one's enemies close certainly applied.) She had full memory of her past after the change, but I'm not sure whether she would be keeping it.
As for your basic question, I'd say certainly that (further?) punishment would be cruel and unnecessary if memory death had accompanied the change and the person no longer knew who they had been or what they'd done to deserve it.
If the person being changed did know and one could reliably determine the degree of remorse for their action, I think that would be the deciding factor as to whether the change would be sufficient. And of course there's the question, if they've changed into a different person, as to what happens to them now, assuming they're reduced below legal age. Institutionalizing them is probably a significant punishment in and of itself; so is leaving them on the street to fend for themselves. (In the latter category, the SRU Wizard once turned the story's adult villain into a teenaged prostitute with a heroin addiction.)
The scenario I keep thinking about is one where a teen boy cyberbullies the protagonist's daughter into suicide. Given the opportunity, would it be positive or negative to turn the boy into a preteen girl and then adopt her as a sort of replacement? I don't think that would work out well -- maybe, as in the Walker story, age two or three would work out better. In either case, if as punishment they try to make their new daughter's life miserable, I think it'll come back to haunt them eventually.
(I recall an old story where a couple takes a slacker-type boy, about 17 or 18, off the street -- one that no one will miss -- and in the guise of educating and rehabilitating him, attempts to use brainwashing and surgery to turn him into their late daughter. Since the slacker is the more sympathetic character, it may come as no surprise that the plot doesn't quite work. Can't recall the title or author -- I think it was on Sapphire's or StorySite, maybe even Nifty -- not here. There's no age change there, but it's what I thought of while writing the paragraph above.)
Eric
Punishment is a bad idea
I don't like the idea of punishment in the first place. Paying evil back with evil simply doubles the amount of evil in the world.
I raised two children from birth, and I ended up basically never punishing them because I never saw a situation where punishment would improve the situation. I found "patience, persistence, and pick-your-battles" worked far, far better. Oddly, their mother frequently did punish them, yet my kids listen to me when I tell them to do something, while she's always complaining they don't listen to her.
We see this with the so-called "justice" system in the USA: we know that the best way to reduce the amount of crime would be to improve the conditions of the poorest people, yet our "solution" is to do what we can to make things even worse for the poor and then lock them up in degrading and violent circumstances for large chunks of their life. We know that there are a lot of people out there who need mental health care, but instead, we kick them around until we can arrest them and put them in prison for long stretches.
Actually, I can think of several people who have done me a lot of harm, harm that I'm still struggling to recover from 50 years later. Yet I don't want them punished. I'm thinking of my parents. In my view, simply having to be the kind of people they are (well, were -- they're dead now) is a worse punishment than I would ever wish on them. My father spent his life being married to someone who pretended to love, and my mother spent her time running away from any real emotional connection. Empty lives, and they knew no better. If I could restart their lives, I would put my father in a family that would know to get professional help for his Asperger Syndrome, and I would put my mother in a family that would know how to love her so she would in turn learn how to love. As for the brother who beat me up and terrorized me throughout my childhood (and who I seriously considered killing), I only feel pity for him. I think I have more empathy for what he went through (ASD, plus my mother's rejection of him from early childhood on) than he does himself.
Would I approve of violence or of any of the techniques of "punishment"? Only if it they were still doing harm and that were the only practical way to stop them. But if they've stopped, or can be stopped, or can't do it any more? No.
Forgive and Forget
I'm not surprised that so many people favor punishment. It saddens me but it doesn't surprise me. It's hard to forgive and forget.
I explore forgiveness in some of my stories. It's an interesting and important concept.
Punishment bothers me for many reasons. To paraphrase part of one other comment, punishment adds to the unpleasantness in the world.
Some people expect or at least desire punishment to help reform those who are punished. I don't see that happening. It seems like it makes those who are punished even worse, except for imprisonment for life or the death sentence.
There's also the question of how much punishment is enough. Will any punishment of the offender truly make the victim feel better for the rest of the victim's life? Will punishment truly make up for the offending act?
What about responsibility for the offender? In some cases, a young offender's parents are punished for their child's offense. Shouldn't we also punish all those who treated the offender badly and helped shape the offender's bad behavior? Where does responsibility for an offender's act end? Where does the punishment end?
In some cultures, feuds can span generations. Both sides basically continue to punish each other for punishment sake rather than for the original transgression. Where does that end? How can the cycle of violence end unless people learn to forgive and forget?
I can see the attraction of reincarnation. It would be wonderful if we could come back as another person and eventually learn lessons that our previous selves couldn't seem to learn. It makes me wonder what lessons we should be learning. What lessons would a bad person have to learn? How could they ever become a better person? And what about victims? It seems as though victims could stand to learn lessons as well. I like to imagine learning how to forgive and forget, and helping each other become better persons to make the world a better place.
- Terry Volkirch
Some things are too hard to forgive and forget
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unlawfully_killed_tr...
Don't "forgive and forget," but don't return hate for hate
Terry may well have a different perspective, but I wouldn't say "forgive and forget." I see no reason to forget the wrongs done to us and to those we care about. To "forget" is to not learn from history and, what's more it is to dismiss those who suffered those wrongs (and maybe died.) I think we should remember our murdered brothers and sisters, but I want us to remember their lives more than their deaths. Remember who they were and their loves and hopes and dreams. It's always saddened me that the TDoR services I've seen don't tell more about who the people were that we're remembering. (Unfortunately, most of the time, the circumstances of their deaths is all you can find.)
"Forgive"? Forgiveness is something you do for yourself, if you can and if it makes you feel better. If it doesn't, don't worry about it. (I am absolutely opposed to the practice of guilting people into forgiving.)
But would I want punishment (which is to say, revenge)? No. It won't bring any of them back, it will only add more violence to their legacy. What I want is for the transphobes to stop hating and acting out their hatred of people like us. As long as the haters keep hating, what good is punishment? And if by some miracle they stop, then that stopping will be a better memorial to those we've lost than a thousand jailings or executions. (Cf. Leelah Alcorn's last words.)
Forgiving and Forgetting
I've heard it sad that forgiving heals the wound, forgetting heals the scar.
On the other hand, I've also heard it said that if we forget the past, we are doomed to repeat it.
I've also heard, "History repeats itself. First as tragedy, second as farce." So where does the ten-thousandth time fit in? Family feuds, tribal feuds, ethnic feuds. We are in serious trouble if people can really be motivated to revenge for something that occurred 300 years earlier.
In any case, it's really hard to forget something you would like to forget. And trying to forget it is guaranteed to fail.
-- Daphne Xu
Forgive but don't forget...
Forgive and forget... many people think it's biblical... it's not. The bible only tells us to forgive and never mentions forget.
As for punishment, if it is not done close to the time of the event, will only aggravate the issue that caused the bad deed. Any punishment must also be appropriate. The difficulty is deciding what's appropriate.
Instead of resetting the protagonists age for some sort of redo, reset the victim with the foreknowledge of what's to come to see if it can be avoided or altered. The victim should also become glib enough and determined enough to take measures to handle/alieve whatever personal issues exist (such as gender). Having the victim regress & change gender will fundamentally change the victim which is often not wise. Giving the victim the tools to effect changes is the answer.
Boys will be girls... if they're lucky!
Jennifer Sue
Nature v Nurture
A rhetorical question: If we are the result of the combination of nature and nurture, what changes would be made to this dynamic in order to avoid history repeating itself?