There seems to be such a powerful drive in humans to punish each other. Why is this? It happens when people view those who fall outside their religion or culture, it happens on these boards so often for errors in reasoning, in families, when driving, and in countless other contexts. Sometimes it is a reprimand meant to improve the behavior of another person, but more often it seems to be done gratuitously, almost for personal pleasure, or a way to achieve social dominance. What are the reasons people punish each other? Is the goal often the betterment of the other person, or is it a way to advertise their worthlessness? Or do people engage in it to advertise their 'superiority'? or are they afraid of punishment themselves so they punish others first? I realize all these motivations are present in various contexts, but what is your take on this overwhelmingly present drive in humans?
Punishment and search for scapegoat stem from the same root. In many contexts, I'd argue they are immanent within one entity.
Again, this goes back to our need for self-affirmation. When that proliferates, we will have a larger need for self-affirmation, we not only will wish to regard ourselves as admirable, but we also will need for others to regard us as that. So this is where we get narcissistic. The pinnacle of this would be self-worship, and we clearly see that fiends like Hitler and Mussolini were afflicted by this. (I am bringing them up as representative of the human element on its worst, and I am arguing that all of this stems from our need for self-affirmation which later on leads to punishing others/scapegoating).
Hence.. the need to punish others stems from this one root: to give self-affirmation... to feel good about yourself not because you've grown... but because someone has been taken below your level...
From a more practical standpoint... we could say that...punishment is frequently conducted to instantiate order.....
Tyrants tend to believe that maintaining power is the most important thing and that they can do this by constructing a political hierarchy where their authority is impossible to challenge. Hence, if they have abandoned ideals like 'justice' in favor of preservation of their power.. it occurs to them that they can do whatever they need to in order to stay in power (Machivalli covered this well)...Hence.. while believing that maintaining the system that they've constructed is what they need to do in order to keep their power and that all things are permissible to the end of maintaining the system.. They punish others because they believe that punishing people is an effective way to get them to do what you expect of them. Maverick quite correctly noted that this is not the most ethical or efficient way of doing things...yet again.... in the scenario that I've envisioned... we've tossed the ethical out the window since we are sociopahts... and in that case this would be efficient because your authority is absolute and the wronged will not be able to revolt against you successfully...
So... this on a larger scale.. exemplifies the utility of punishment..
On a smaller scale... SJ(and sensors in general.. as they are more likely to do this than Intuitors and I will soon explain why) parents engage in it because they tend to equate moral goodness which good deeds. When they notice that a child does more good when he is punished, they tend to think that they can make him good by punishing him.
So on the most profound level-the need to give punishment stems from our need to give affirmation to the self.
On a more practical level-punishment is conducted with a purpose to maintain order...or impose qualities of character... as we know that many parents are under the delusion that they can make their children good by punishing them and our legal system seems to believe that the character of culprits could be enhanced by castigating them... Not exactly the case... the purpose of incarceration should not be to change people... the purpose of it should be no other but to discourage them from doing harm so the community could not be harmed in the same fashion by the same individual again...
So in the end, I am not saying that punishment has no utility at all, but we just have to be clear about the reasons why we administer it. Law-breakers are to be punished in order to make sure that they no longer have the opportunity to inflict harm on society (they should only be punished if we believe that if they were given the opportunity to harm the society, they would), but we should never act like we are trying to help them grow in character.
Punishment is a necessary evil, and again, I'd like to stress the word necessary in this scenario, as we should rely on it as little as possible. There usually is a myriad of other methods that we could rectify the situation with.