Humane Suffering 😭


1 Part of human agency ― and the human experience ― is the ability to choose to do bad acts and them having to deal with the pain and consequences caused by doing them. Not letting people suffer for their actions implies that they are slaves that can have no input on their environment around them. I disagree with the notion that being evil is more inhuman and discrediting than not being able to be evil. I find people lamenting about how they can not control themselves disgusting and animalistic.

2 There are circumstances where individuals should not be held fully accountable for their actions. Imitational developing children, those that are intoxicated, those under threat of violence, and ones that are otherwise sufficiently ‘physically/mentally incapacitated’ cannot exercise full agency. All sane legal systems understand this (e.g. drug use that intoxicates needs to be banned ― or at least shamed ― and punishments for children should be different). But there was a very strong stigmatization in the past that for those not being able to exercise their will that barred them from being considered fully mature or free. Maybe this stigmatization should be more emphasized again to stop people inappropriately blaming their behavior on their environment or on their internal condition.

3 There exits an external word ― sometimes peers ― that taunts us to engage in bad behavior. There exists in all of us an internal world of impulses, hormones, thoughts, etc. that want to engage in bad behavior. But we have the ability to resist these demons.

Michelangelo painting of The Fall of Man
Michelangelo ― The Fall of Man