Posts by Neil Morrison
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With the elderly, if they are capable of reason then this is not justifiable. If they are not capable of reason due to senility then smacking is of no use and so is not justifiable. But most instances of this turn out to be straight forward bullying, ie they are angry and do not like the elderly person, which is of course not allowed with children or anyone else.
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Peter, it's a full general anaesthetic and muscle relaxant.
I take issue with "teach someone" because that's not necessarily the case. I think parents often resort to smacking when the child has repeatedly done something they know damn well they shouldn't - they have already been told and learnt that some action is wrong. The goal is a change in behaviour. At times that will entail learning something.
With the mental health situation, the techniques for physical restraint include, and indeed rely on to a large extent, the ability to induce brief amounts of controllable pain. Mainly through what are called wrist locks. The situations where this is used is where there is grave and immediate threat of harm either to the ill person or to others. It's a very last resort.
Where I think the comparison is interesting and possibly enlightening is in the respective roles and states of mind of those involved. With the two situations, those who cause the pain have a duty of care. In both cases it is used with people who have a diminished understanding of the consequences of their actions, have limited insight and are not responsive to other means of persuasion including verbal. And the goal is not to break anyone's will or to assert power etc but to briefly take control over a persons behaviour when they have shown that they themselves are not acting in their own interest.
I'm not arguing that this necessarily supports any particular position; I'm just throwing iin the comparison for discussion.
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Peter, I'm not sure where you get he expression "teach someone", mostly the debate is about changing children's behaviour which does often mean teaching but your phrasing is a bit value laden.
In mental health there is provision for the infliction of pain with lots and lots of provisos. It's used in situations where there is grave risk of harm and the person is unresponsive to other forms of persuasion - a very last resort. So there is a least one other situation I know of where our society condones the (minimal) use of pain for the benefit of the person on the receiving end.
This is not exactly the same situation as smacking but it has similarities and similar justifications.
And sonic is right, ECT is given under an anesthetic.
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Should read "It isn't actually logical to say..."
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...though I guess simply the idea behind it would be to suggest to someone who was unsure about smacking but DEFINITELY not in favour of an electrical prod, to question why exactly that was the case.
And their answer could just as well be they are not the same so there is no issue. It isn't actually not logical to say that because prodding and smacking share some characteristics that they are similar enough to act as an argument against smacking. Time out and threatening pets share some characteristics but that's not necessarily a great logical argument against time out.
It occurred to me that it might be worth comparing smacking to other instances where it is legal and morally acceptable in our society to inflict a limited degree of pain and/or to intervene in a physical manner. I know of one situation where it is and that's in the restraint of people suffering mental illness.
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My comment was partly more about the general nature of comparisons. I think it's reasonable for people to say that prodding is sufficiently different from smacking for the comparison to fail as an argument.
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Regarding the prod/smack comparison here's another -
As a form of non-physical, to the child that is, coercion a parent says to their child "if you do that again I'll kill your cat" (or what ever the beloved pet is and with no real intention of carrying this out). It's a form of psychological stress much like time out. But I think most people would say that the comparison, as an argument against time out, is not reasonable. And for the same reason others are quite entitled to say the prod/smack comparison is unreasonable.
It's a basic problem with argument by analogy.
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<quote>...we are all somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of systematically causing pain to a child in order to teach them whatever lesson the adult feels is important.<quote>
The alternatives to smacking invlove pyschological pain - is, or should that, necessarily be any less anathema? 10 days solitary coninement would be inhumane psychological "pain". But 30 minutes "time out" is reasonable psycholgical "stress". One would not make time out illegal just because some parents might lock the door and throw away the key.
I get the feeling that there's this view that smacking is part of a spectrum of obvious violence that is clearly damaging in the extreme but that the non-physical forms of coercion are free of any such conotations.
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Russell, I'm glad that we are all now clear that this bill is about making smacking illegal. So why the charade? Isn't your argument a slippery-slope argument - allowing dope use inevitably leads to P-induced murders?
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If the bill is not intended to make light smacking an offence then Bradford's trenchant opposition to Borrows' amendment makes no sense. Bradford's continual deliberate confounding of light smacking with assault makes it very clear what her intent is.
Personally, I agree with not allowing smacking but it's been going on for a long time, most consequences have been minimal and there is a reasonable agrument that in some instances it may be the only option.
Bradford and others have endeavored to portray their opponents as authoritarian child beating monsters which is very counter productive. Borrows’ amendment is good halfway position; it is progress and in 10 years maybe a complete ban would be based more on consensus.
Society changes, we are moving away from corporal punishment, but it's not a bad option to make that change gradual.