When the Punishment Does Not Fit the Crime

By Seth Stancroff 

Do many capitalist societies today impose relatively harsher punishments for crimes committed by individuals of low socioeconomic status? If so, how does this fact affect popular theories of just punishment?

It would seem that many of these theories (such as retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation) must fail when applied to these societies. That this really is the case can be illustrated with a simple example:

Two individuals commit the exact same crime in the same American city: they both crash into parked cars while driving under the influence of alcohol. Both of these crimes result in the exact same amount of damage, the levels of intoxication are the same between the two offenders, and this is the first offense committed by either person. 

However, one of these individuals is a high-powered businessman and the other is a middle-aged, relatively poor single woman with no living relatives and two young children. Both individuals are arrested and brought to the police station where they are put in jail with bail set at $5,000. The man immediately bails himself out and hires a team of experienced defense attorneys. 

The single mother, on the other hand, is too poor to post bail herself and knows no one who could help her. Because she is forced to sit in jail for the weeks preceding her trial, she loses both of her jobs which had been the only sources of income for her family. When the trials roll around, the man’s attorneys convince the judge and jury that he should not be held responsible for his action, and he is given only a fine. However, the publicly-appointed defense attorney for the woman, perhaps too over-worked to have been able to consider her case carefully, fails to offer any convincing defense on her behalf. She is sentenced to three years in prison.

I think it should be clear that in this case, the theory of retribution fails to offer a legitimate justification of punishment. Because the offenders in the story are given extremely different punishments for the same crime, at least one (or both) has been given a punishment that, morally speaking, breaks from the jus talionis, or “eye for an eye” principle and thus does not serve any kind of true retribution. In this case it is likely that both punishments would be considered morally inappropriate. One on hand, the woman in the example is punished before she is even found guilty of a crime by being forced to stay in jail as a result of her inability to post bail. On the other, the wealthy man is given a more lenient punishment only because of the resources to which he has access.

How about deterrence? Jeremy Bentham asserts that “General prevention ought to be the chief end of punishment, as it is its real justification.” Turning back to the example offered above, it becomes clear how Bentham’s deterrence model fails to justify punishments in capitalist societies in which punishments are functions of economic class. The man’s punishment in the hypothetical case would challenge Bentham’s idea that punishments should prevent future crimes from being committed because it would surely allow other wealthy people in the society to think that as long as they can hire expensive attorneys, they will be able to behave recklessly without much consequence. On the whole, a deterrence theory of punishment would not be able to explain how, for wealthier people who get relatively lenient punishment, those punishments have any deterring effects.

Finally, the rehabilitation theory maintains that punishment should include measures aimed at reforming offenders. That is, in giving punishments, societies should keep in mind the ways in which the punishments will allow offenders to change themselves or be changed so they can peacefully re-enter society. Plato conceives of punishment in such a way; he imagines that to suffer punishment is to suffer some good, and evading punishment is often a worse path to go down. Interestingly, it seems that when punishment practices are functions of class, wealthier people who can pay their way out of punishments are actually deprived of opportunities to reform. The man in the above example surely should have had a chance to think about the harms he caused through his crime, and would, for rehabilitation theorists, have been made better off had he had such opportunities.

All this paints a rather dismal picture of punishment and the attempts to morally justify it in the real world. But what would happen if certain measures were put in place in these capitalist societies that guarantee a fair system of punishment? For example, what if cash bail were determined in a manner proportional to the offender’s income (or simply abolished)? What if every defendant were required to use state-appointed attorneys, and what if implicit biases against poorer people were accounted for? It seems that if all these kinds of issues could truly be taken care of (and whether this is even possible is certainly up for debate), punishment would perhaps not exist as a function of economic class.

However, even if all this came to pass, it still would not mean that society’s response to crime would escape the influence of socioeconomic status. That is, even if the processes surrounding punishment were made completely just and equal, the social and economic inequalities that can lead individuals to commit crimes would still exist. This fact alone would still lead to sections of the population committing certain kinds of crimes in greater proportions than others, and being punished for it. For this reason, it seems that before punishment can truly become morally justifiable in capitalist societies, the social circumstances that lead individuals into confrontations with those institutions as well as the institutions surrounding punishment also have to be made just.

When the Punishment Does Not Fit the Crime

by Anonymous

Do many capitalist societies today impose relatively harsher punishments for crimes committed by individuals of low socioeconomic status? If so, how does this fact affect popular theories of just punishment?

It would seem that many of these theories (such as retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation) must fail when applied to these societies. That this really is the case can be illustrated with a simple example:

Two individuals commit the exact same crime in the same American city: they both crash into parked cars while driving under the influence of alcohol. Both of these crimes result in the exact same amount of damage, the levels of intoxication are the same between the two offenders, and this is the first offense committed by either person. 

However, one of these individuals is a high-powered businessman and the other is a middle-aged, relatively poor single woman with no living relatives and two young children. Both individuals are arrested and brought to the police station where they are put in jail with bail set at $5,000. The man immediately bails himself out and hires a team of experienced defense attorneys. 

The single mother, on the other hand, is too poor to post bail herself and knows no one who could help her. Because she is forced to sit in jail for the weeks preceding her trial, she loses both of her jobs which had been the only sources of income for her family. When the trials roll around, the man’s attorneys convince the judge and jury that he should not be held responsible for his action, and he is given only a fine. However, the publicly-appointed defense attorney for the woman, perhaps too over-worked to have been able to consider her case carefully, fails to offer any convincing defense on her behalf. She is sentenced to three years in prison.

I think it should be clear that in this case, the theory of retribution fails to offer a legitimate justification of punishment. Because the offenders in the story are given extremely different punishments for the same crime, at least one (or both) has been given a punishment that, morally speaking, breaks from the jus talionis, or “eye for an eye” principle and thus does not serve any kind of true retribution. In this case it is likely that both punishments would be considered morally inappropriate. One on hand, the woman in the example is punished before she is even found guilty of a crime by being forced to stay in jail as a result of her inability to post bail. On the other, the wealthy man is given a more lenient punishment only because of the resources to which he has access.

How about deterrence? Jeremy Bentham asserts that “General prevention ought to be the chief end of punishment, as it is its real justification.” Turning back to the example offered above, it becomes clear how Bentham’s deterrence model fails to justify punishments in capitalist societies in which punishments are functions of economic class. The man’s punishment in the hypothetical case would challenge Bentham’s idea that punishments should prevent future crimes from being committed because it would surely allow other wealthy people in the society to think that as long as they can hire expensive attorneys, they will be able to behave recklessly without much consequence. On the whole, a deterrence theory of punishment would not be able to explain how, for wealthier people who get relatively lenient punishment, those punishments have any deterring effects.

Finally, the rehabilitation theory maintains that punishment should include measures aimed at reforming offenders. That is, in giving punishments, societies should keep in mind the ways in which the punishments will allow offenders to change themselves or be changed so they can peacefully re-enter society. Plato conceives of punishment in such a way; he imagines that to suffer punishment is to suffer some good, and evading punishment is often a worse path to go down. Interestingly, it seems that when punishment practices are functions of class, wealthier people who can pay their way out of punishments are actually deprived of opportunities to reform. The man in the above example surely should have had a chance to think about the harms he caused through his crime, and would, for rehabilitation theorists, have been made better off had he had such opportunities.

All this paints a rather dismal picture of punishment and the attempts to morally justify it in the real world. But what would happen if certain measures were put in place in these capitalist societies that guarantee a fair system of punishment? For example, what if cash bail were determined in a manner proportional to the offender’s income (or simply abolished)? What if every defendant were required to use state-appointed attorneys, and what if implicit biases against poorer people were accounted for? It seems that if all these kinds of issues could truly be taken care of (and whether this is even possible is certainly up for debate), punishment would perhaps not exist as a function of economic class.

However, even if all this came to pass, it still would not mean that society’s response to crime would escape the influence of socioeconomic status. That is, even if the processes surrounding punishment were made completely just and equal, the social and economic inequalities that can lead individuals to commit crimes would still exist. This fact alone would still lead to sections of the population committing certain kinds of crimes in greater proportions than others, and being punished for it. For this reason, it seems that before punishment can truly become morally justifiable in capitalist societies, the social circumstances that lead individuals into confrontations with those institutions as well as the institutions surrounding punishment also have to be made just.

Picture Post #53 The Courage to Stand Alone

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Tessa den Uyl

Florence Airport, January 2020

How we perceive images depends on how much we ‘cut out’ of them, or ‘cut in’ to them. When things get isolated in an image, the reading we attribute to it, changes. Still, we may want to make a distinction between an image that has a so-called ‘life of its own’ and images that purely illustrate. What is the difference?

In these current weeks, in regard to the quarantine of the COVID-19 virus, we can clearly see that the interpretation of images depends on what our mind perpetuates. We read images in regard to a situation and laugh, cry, or skip intrepidly to the next one. They serve as a momentum to a specific state of mind.

The above image of the lonely girl with a suitcase at a big airport might illustrate many situations. If we would write COVID-19 below the photo, we would grasp it. Alike the slogan: stop child-abuse, or ‘we do not leave anyone behind’, serving as a slogan for an air company. The picture of the little girl is therefore adapting to our purposes.

If we see and understand solely what we want to see, do we mostly fail to see, or understand? Maybe, for pictures and videos whose purposes cannot be exchanged, are rare. With a vast cybernetic landscape to attain to, how come the illustrative production is so high, while images that take a life of their own seem to lack?

Then are we ourselves merely illustrative, rather than unique to situations?

Making the Case for Multiculturalism

Posted by Keith Tidman

Multiculturalism and ‘identity politics’ have both overlapping and discrete characteristics. Identity politics, for example, widens out to race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, national origin, language, religion, disability, and so forth. Humanity’s mosaic. It’s where, in a shift toward pluralism, barriers dissolve — where sidelined minority groups become increasingly mainstreamed, self-determination acquires steam, and both individual and group rights equally pertain to the ideal.

This situation is historically marked by differences between those people who, on one hand, emphasise individual rights, goods, intrinsic value, liberties, and well-being, where each person’s independence stands highest and apart from cultural belonging. And, on the other hand, the communitarians, who emphasise a group perspective. Communitarians regard the individual as ‘irreducibly social’, to borrow Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s shorthand.

The group perspective subordinately depends on society. This group perspective needs affirmation, addressing status inequality, with remedies concentrated in political change, redistributive economics, valuing cultural self-worth, and other factors. Communitarians assign primacy to collective rights, socialising goods, intrinsic value, liberties, and well-being. In other words, civic virtue — with individuals freely opting in and opting out of the group. Communitarians and individualists offer opposed views of how our identities are formed. 

But the presumed distinctions between the individual and community may go too far. Rather, reality arguably comprises a coexistent folding together of both liberal individualism and communitarianism in terms of multiculturalism and identity. To this point, people are capable of learning from each other’s ideas, customs, and social behaviour, moving toward an increasingly hybrid, cosmopolitan philosophy based on a new communal lexicon, fostering human advancement.

The English writer (and enthusiastic contributor to Pi’s sister publication, The Philosopher) G. K. Chesterton always emphasised the integrity of this learning process, cautioning:

‘We have never even begun to understand a people until we have found something that we do not understand. So long as we find the character easy to read, we are reading into it our own character’.

Other thinkers point out that cultures have rarely been easily cordoned off or culturally pristine. They contend that groups have always been influenced by others through diverse means, both malign and benign: invasion, colonialism, slavery, commerce, migration, flow of ideas, ideologies, religions, popular culture, and other factors. The cross-pollination has often been reciprocal — affecting the cultural flashpoints, social norms, and future trajectories of both groups.

Globalisation only continues to hasten this process. As the New Zealand philosopher of law Jeremy Waldron puts it, commenting on the phenomenom of cultural overlap:

‘We live in a world formed by technology and trade; by economic, religious, and political imperialism and their offspring; by mass migration and the dispersion of cultural influences’.

How groups reckon with these historical influences, as groups become more pluralistic, deserves attention, so that change can happen more by design than chance.

After all, it’s a high bar to surmount the historic balkanisation of minority cultures and to push back against the negativism of those who trumpet (far too prematurely) multiculturalism’s failure. The political reality is that societies continue to reveal dynamically moving parts. Real-world multiculturalism is, all the time, coalescing into new shapes and continuing to enrich societies.

Multiculturalism in political philosophy involves acknowledging and understanding the fact of diverse cultural moorings in society and the challenges they pose in terms of status, equality, and power — along with remedies. Yet, in this context, the question recurs time and again: has the case really been made for multiculturalism?

The American philosopher John Searle, in the context of education, questions the importance of ‘Western rationalistic tradition’ — where what we know is ‘a mind-independent reality . . . subject to constraints of rationality and logic’. Adding: ‘You do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others’.

Charles Taylor, however, sees multiculturalism differently, as an offshoot of liberal political theory, unhampered by heavily forward-leaning ideology. This aligns with postmodernist thinking, distrusting rationalism as to truth and reality. The merits of scepticism, criticism, subjectivism, contextualism, and relativism are endorsed, along with the distinctiveness of individuals and minority groups within society.

Advocates of multiculturalism warn against attempts to shoehorn minority groups into the prevailing culture, or worse. Where today we see rampant nationalism in many corners of the world — suppressing, tyrannizing, and even attempting to stamp out minority communities — eighty years ago Mahatma Gandhi warned of such attempts:

‘No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive’.

COVID-19: Let It Be

Miguel Opazo, Pest, 2017

Posted by Thomas Scarborough and Martin Cohen

Jeffrey Kluger, the editor at large for TIME magazine, observed last week, ‘There’s nothing quite like the behavior of panicky humans.’  He was writing in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Is the panic -- or should we say, alarm -- justified?

The initial response to the disease, although stumbling and slow in some respects, was by and large the correct one: get a fix on the disease.  What are we dealing with?  What is its character?  The next steps, then, were textbook containment and mitigation.  Since then, of course, the pandemic has developed other dimensions, though not as a direct result of the disease. Rich Lesser, the CEO of a global management consultancy, wrote in Fortune magazine last week, ‘It started as a health crisis, within days became a real economic crisis, and is now on a swift path to becoming a massive fiscal challenge.’

There would seem to be two assumptions in the early -- and continuing -- response to the pandemic: under no circumstances sickness, yet if there is, complete control.  All over the world, we find language which reveals an ‘uncompromising’, ‘relentless’, and ‘aggressive’ approach -- an ideal plan which is not to make any concessions to the disease.  And always, in the statistics, one finds a column marked ‘deaths’, to which all control would seem to defer.  The aim is zero deaths, zero deaths, zero deaths.  In fact the biggest opprobrium for any government in the midst of the pandemic is the death rate.

The COVID-19 pandemic has two important features: the seriousness of the pandemic, and the character of the disease.

About the seriousness of the pandemic, mortality stood last week at about 3% -- if one calculates the ratio of total confirmed cases to deaths.  Yet for a number of reasons, this is quite uncertain.  For example, various academic papers have estimated that more than 80% of cases are undetected.  This reduces 3% to 0.6%.  Some place mortality far lower -- the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine placed it at 0.14% last week.  The World Health Organization calculated that in China, the 'real' mortality rate for ‪COVID-19‬ was 0.7% of reported cases, where only 5% of cases were reported. That's a 0.035% death rate.

While various kinds of ‘experts’, media, and ‘modellers’ have been plugging in figures as high as 10% for ‪Corona virus‬ fatalities, one professor of public health, John Ionnidis of Stanford University, suggests ‘reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%’.  Compare the lower figure.  He explains his reasoning, too, saying that the one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its unfortunate, quarantined passengers.

‘The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher…’  

Writing for Stat magazine, he adds,

‘Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%.’

If we assume that the ‘case fatality rate’ among individuals infected by the virus is 0.3%, and 1% of the U.S. population gets infected, this would translate to about 10,000 deaths. This sounds a huge number, but is within normal flu toll.

Even the one thing everyone agrees -- that we have to flatten the curve to spread out the load of cases (and avoid overburdening health services) -- Ionnidis casts doubt on.  Spreading the infections out over a longer period of time is better?  Not necessarily.  It ‘may make things worse: Instead of being overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period.’  For Ionnidis, the policy response, not the virus, is the perturbing part, as ‘with lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake.’

The point is that fatalities, although they are tragic and traumatic in every case, are comparatively small, although, the numbers sound alarming given the large population which may be affected.

As for the character of the disease, it has some well-defined features.  It is now certain that it is far more dangerous to those who are more advanced in years, from about age 60, certainly from age 70.  It is far more dangerous for those with pre-morbidities, or compromised health, or concurrent infections, among other things.  This makes the picture far more varied than the simplest scenario of containment and mitigation.  Also, methods of containment and mitigation themselves are very varied, and may be greatly helped with fairly simple -- and far from extreme -- measures.

Given this brief survey, and assuming that it is broadly true -- what would the philosophers have said?

The Delphic maxim proclaimed, ‘Nothing to excess,’ while Aristotelian philosophers emphasised the Golden Mean -- the middle way between extremes of excess and deficiency.  Socrates said, ‘Choose the mean, and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible.’  In short, they sought a general holism.  With this in mind, they might well have cautioned us against a reductionist response to the crisis, and to take all factors into account and to balance them.  Protect the elderly, defend the vulnerable, comfort the distressed, yet for the rest, accept the tragic inevitability of illness and death among us, maintain the life and pulse of society -- and let it go.  Let it be.

A more holistic view suggests, too, that we should think, not only of the present pandemic, but of the past and the future.  As with all pandemics, there is a bigger picture.  Where have we come from, that this has happened to us now?  Where are we going to, as we shape the society of the future?  And what if it had been worse?  Pandemics are always embedded in background conditions.  One needs to consider economic and financial systems, urban planning, health care, lifestyle choices, communications -- in fact, the entire order of the day.

Above all, it is a reductionist response which drives us to the totalising ambition of no illness, and certainly, zero deaths -- and in the midst of this, the suppressed premise of our age: preserve life at all costs.  Less than a hundred years ago, religious congregations all over the world would pray for healing through God’s angel of death, if he should so will.  That prayer has now been expunged.  Death is not a constant companion today, as it sometimes was in the past, but an enemy to be defeated at all costs.  If only one knew what one were hoping to save.  It would seem that not many do -- and that in itself may be a large part of the panic, the alarm.  There has to be a way of living that triumphs over stalking death.

It remains to be seen whether ‘the behaviour of panicky humans’ can be sustained today.   At the moment, we are all locked into a more or less unified response to the pandemic, by the decisions of governments the world over -- and they in turn are judged by their peers.  

POETRY: A Greater Question (concerning the new coronavirus)

Posted by Chengde Chen * and Yingfang Zhang

Part II 

“Genetic engineering technology is designed to enable genes to cross species 
barriers.” – Martin Khor, New diseases as viruses break species barriers… 



The people in the Doomsday horror are speculating:
Is the virus destroying mankind man-made?
If so, by whom?
Some suspect China, while others, America

But a greater question is if science can do it
If it can, won’t the disaster happen sooner or later?
Hiroshima/Nagasaki was a continuation of atomic physics
Chernobyl was what nuclear technology had entailed

When scientists said they didn’t do it this time
It meant they had been able to
So, whether it was man-made this time, or by whom,
Has been a relatively–secondary question!

If it has been possible, then it is inevitable –
A fatal car-crash for the driver is a matter of time
If we still can’t see science is such a car for mankind
What does it matter if it happens this time or the next?

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* Chengde Chen is the author of the philosophical poems collection: Five Themes of Today, Open Gate Press, London. chengde.chen@hotmail.com

Does Power Corrupt?

Mandell Creighton leading his group, ‘The Quadrilateral’, at Oxford University in 1865. (As seen in Louise Creighton’s book, The Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton.)

Posted by Keith Tidman

In 1887, the English historian, Lord John Dalberg-Acton, penned this cautionary maxim in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton: ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. He concluded his missive by sounding this provocative note: ‘Great men are almost always bad men’. Which might lead one to reflect that indeed human history does seem to have been fuller of Neros and Attilas than Buddhas and Gandhis.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, the correlation between power and corruption was amply pointed out before Lord Acton, as evidenced by this 1770 observation by William Pitt the Elder, a former prime minister of Great Britain, in the House of Lords: ‘Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it’. To which, the eighteenth-century Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke also seemed to agree:

‘The greater the power, the greater the abuse’.

History is of course replete with scoundrels and tyrants, and worse, rulers who have egregiously and enthusiastically abused power — often with malign, even cruel, brutal, and deadly, consequences. Situations where the Orwellian axiom that ‘the object of power is power’ prevails, with bad outcomes for the world. Indulgent perpetrators have ranged from heads of state like pharaohs to emperors, kings and queens, chancellors, prime ministers, presidents, chiefs, and popes. As well as people scattered throughout the rest of society, from corrupt leaders of industry to criminals to everyday citizens.

In some instances, it seems indeed that wielding great power has led susceptible people to change, in the process becoming corrupt or unkind in erstwhile uncharacteristic ways. As to the psychology of that observation, a much-cited Stanford University experiment, conducted in 1971, suggested such an effect, though its findings come with caveats. The two-week experiment was intended to show the psychological effects of prison life on behaviour, using university students as pretend prison guards and prisoners in a mock prison on campus.

However, the quickly mounting, distressing maltreatment of ‘prisoners’ in the experiment by those in the authoritative role of guards — behaviour that included confiscating the prisoners’ clothes and requiring them to sleep on concrete flooring — led to the experiment being canceled after only six days. Was that the prospect of ‘abuse’ of which Burke warned us above? Was it the prospect of the ‘perpetual and restless desire of power after power’ of which the seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes warned us?

In many other cases, it has also been observed that there seem to be predispositions toward corruption and abuse, in which power serves to amplify rather than simply instill. This view seems favoured today. Power (the acquisition of authority) may prompt people to disregard social checks on their natural instincts and shed self-managing inhibitions. Power uncovers the real persona — those whose instinctual character is malignly predisposed.

President Abraham Lincoln seemed to subscribe to this position regarding preexisting behavioural qualities, saying,

‘Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character [true persona], give him power’.

Among people in leadership positions, in any number of social spheres, power can have two edges — good and bad. Decisions, intent, and outcomes matter. So, for example, ‘socialised power’ translates to the beneficial use of power and influence to inspire others toward the articulation and realisation of visions and missions, as well as the accomplishment of tangible goals. The idea being to benefit others: societal, political, corporate, economic, communal, spiritual. All this in a manner that, by definition, presupposes freedom as opposed to coerced implementation.

‘Personalised power’, on the other hand, reflects a focus on meeting one’s own expectations. If personalised power overshadows or excludes common goods, as sometimes seen among autocratic, self-absorbed, and unsympathetic national leaders, the exclusion is concerning as it may injure through bad policy. Yet, notably these two indices of power can be compatible — they aren’t necessarily adversarial, nor does one necessarily force the other to beat a retreat. Jointly, in fact, they’re more likely force-multiplying.

One corollary (a cautionary note, perhaps) has to do with the ‘power paradox’. As a person acquires power through thoughtfulness, respect, and empathetic behaviours, and his or her influence accordingly flourishes, the risk emerges that the person begins to behave less in those constructive ways. Power may paradoxically spark growing self-centeredness, and less self-constraint. It’s potentially seductive; it can border on Machiavellian doctrine as to control over others, whereby decisions and behaviours become decreasingly framed around laudable principles of morality and, instead, take a turn to exertion of coercive power and fear in place of inspiration.

In a turnabout, this diminution of compassionate behaviours — combined with an increase in impulsivity and self-absorption, increase in ethical shortcuts, and decrease in social intelligence — might steadily lessen the person’s power and influence. It returns to a set point. And unless they’re vigilant, leaders — in politics, business, and other venues — may focus less and less on the shareable common good.

As a matter of disputable attribution, Plato summed up the lessons that have come down through history on the matters discussed here, his purportedly saying in few words but without equivocation:

‘The measure of a man is what he does with power’.

Although he doesn’t seem to have actually ever said this as such, it certainly captures the lesson and message of his famous moral tale, about the magic ring of Gyges that confers the power of invisibility on its owner.

Picture Post #54: Ghost Rainbow

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

26 February 2020. Three Anchor Bay, Cape Town. 33.906° S, 18.398° E.

Some call it a ghost rainbow. It has been described as a hollowed out rainbow, or the rainbow's eerie cousin. Sightings are said to be extremely rare -- and when ghost rainbows do appear, people are astounded. I said to a kayaker staring into the sand, 'See, a ghost rainbow has appeared.' He looked up. 'A ghost rainbow!' he exclaimed, and jumped up to tell a friend. His friend ran into a shed to pull out a large DSLR. This was a magical moment, surprising, striking -- perhaps never seen or imagined before by some of those who saw it.

Such things not only grab our attention. They ignite our reason. We begin to ask Why? How? What? When? But let us pause for a moment -- and turn our gaze inward. Did we ourselves conjure up the rainbow? Did we decide to be attentive to it, or to connect with it, to question or decode? Or did the rainbow lay hold of us? Did it commandeer the mind? In fact, is there ever anything in the world, which impels us, that is not like this rainbow? Whatever it may be, can we ever pretend to any other office than to serve and obey it? 

Poetry: Critique of Genetic Engineering

Posted by Chengde Chen *

“Genetic engineering technology is designed to enable genes to cross species 
barriers.” – Martin Khor, New diseases as viruses break species barriers 


Genetic engineering has a million benefits,

While I have only one reason against it.

But, any number multiplying a zero becomes a zero.

Science is supposed to support human existence;

If genes are written by all historical conditions of nature,

Isn’t quoting them out of context man outlawing himself?
 


The temperature on the Earth’s surface is within ±50ºC

A very small range in the grand thermometer of the universe,

But just the home for us – the creature of 37ºC – to survive.

Believers marvel at God’s arrangement, yet it’s only nature.

All existing species are adapters to this condition;

Those not, either never had a chance, or have been eliminated.

 

Should God, seized by a whim, play at “planet engineering”

Rearranging the order of the solar system, what would happen?

If Earth moved one step inwards to the position of Venus,

The mighty 480ºC would evaporate us into clouds.

If Earth moved one step outwards to the position of Mars,

The minus 140ºC would cast us into super-ice.



Earth is in our genes.

Genes are nature’s vertical memory and horizontal logic.

The process of adapting and eliminating carves all specifications.

The billions of codes are billions of doors and locks without keys,

Shutting out foreign viruses with DNA incompatibility

So we don’t catch cats’ flu, nor do dogs get our hepatitis.
 


Yet, manufactured genes come suddenly

Sharing no responsibility of history but short-circuiting species.

When transgenic pig organs are implanted into humans, 

Pig viruses also leap over millions of years to join us.

To gain medical benefits by dismantling the species barriers, 

It’s self-disarming to the bone or tying oneself up to WMD?
 


The biological world is a self-contained all-dimensional computer;

Messing up one sequence could throw the whole system into chaos,

Which is asking God to restart His creation all over!

So He’d rather we mess about with the planets than modify genes.

“If you must,” He may say, “modify Mine first to have a GM god 

To recreate the world, I’d need enhanced energy and perseverance.” 


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* Chengde Chen is the author of the philosophical poems collection: Five Themes of Today, Open Gate Press, London. chengde.chen@hotmail.com

The Quiet Revolution That is Replacing Traditional Financing Models?

'The Moneylender and His Wife' by Quentin Metsys, 1514.

Posted by Emile Wolfaardt

Around the circumference of the globe and across the stage of history, the engines of almost all labor and commerce enterprises turn with one common goal in mind – to be financially profitable. This is true individually and collectively. We go to work each day with the goal of making money – of acquiring some sort of currency that we can use to exchange for goods or services. We earn ‘purchasing power’ – or units that we can exchange for something we want or need.

While most of us use some sort of currency, these units of purchasing power have not always been in the forms of coins and bills. Shells, stones, metals, and other animate and inanimate objects have been used in our history. And for the most part – the value is assigned as opposed to being intrinsic. Paper money is said to have assigned value and precious metal and gems intrinsic value. Yet, if sand was scarcer than diamonds, and was necessary – it would have an even greater value than diamonds - so perhaps all value is assigned.

But some people today claim that there is a revolution taking place in the financial world. Up to now – currency and purchasing power has been controlled by governments and financial institutions. Currency is determined to be ‘legal tender’ but it belongs to the government. In most countries, it is illegal to damage currency - it is considered damage to government property. The government and the financial institutions charge you to use the money. You pay when you deposit it, when you withdraw it, when you borrow it and when you are given it. Some banks will waive some of these fees under certain conditions and the government will waive taxes or reduce them in certain circumstances. In this model, Providers have custody of the wealth and grant access to the owners. This is called Banking. 

But a new form of financing has emerged that is not controlled by the government or the financial institutions. Rather, it is peer to peer financing – and it is structured around blockchain, and the currency is called crypto currency. Bitcoin is the largest of these and it constitutes about 80% of the market. In Blockchain, Owners have custody of the wealth and grant access to Providers. Its supporters say that instead of being controlled centrally by some body, it is ‘decentralised’ and controlled by the millions of people who own it.

Bitcoin was founded in in 2009.

The first few years of cryptocurrencies were hectic, and the investment opportunities were more like gambling. Lots of people made millions of dollars, but many more lost their money. As more and more people became interested in a blockchain financing model, the governments and financial institutions started to rail against it. Financial institutions like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanly, the IMF, Barclays Bank etc. all condemned them. 

Nonetheless, in 2019, it was institutional money and the Whales of Wall Street that were the biggest investors in Crypto Currency. Apparently, the FBI is the second largest holder of Bitcoin in the world (although their holdings do not come from investments). Currently, the big institutions are spending millions of dollars on crypto investments, and many countries are embracing it – some as a replacement currency to their own. Many mainline vendors like Apple, Google, etc. now accept Bitcoin as legitimate payment. And yet governments are recognising they do not have the ability to control it. Mike Crapo, United States Senate Chairman of the Banking Committee:

'If the United States were to decide ... we don’t want cryptocurrency to happen in the United States ... we couldn’t succeed in doing that because this is a global innovation.'

Not everyone is an enthusiast for the new money. Writing at Forbes.com, Saeed Elnaj says:

“Bitcoin’s promise was to bypass the centralized economic system and enable peer-to-peer exchange of value using the digital currency. But with the fluctuating price of Bitcoin, it is very hard to buy a cup of coffee or an album online. It is also impractical given the delay required to complete time-sensitive transactions. In fact, since Bitcoin’s astronomical rise in December 2017, the number of Bitcoin transactions has dramatically plunged.”

 And he suggests that rather the primary attraction of the currency is irrational.

“It seems that Bitcoin will likely cease to have meaningful value, defeating the whole point and philosophy imagined by Satoshi Nakamoto, the alleged inventor of Bitcoin. Its current value appears to be purely psychological, and the hype seems to be driven by irrational exuberance, greed and speculation.”

Money has gone through several revolutions, among them barter, precious metals, paper money, banking, money wires, credit cards ... and now, cryptocurrencies. Will this be a true revolution? Or a false dawn? Time will tell.