Corporal punishment

Corporal punishment can be abused, but surely so can anything else.

It must be, and it can be, administered as an act of love, from within a clear moral framework..

It is not appropriate for everybody.

Points in its favour:

*It is undeniably unpleasant. It confirms the reality that misbehaviour is not a joke.

*It does not demand a sophisticated rationality for this message to be made real.

*But once it is over, it is over. We can remember as a fact that we were in physical pain, but the memory does not revive the actual experience of pain.

*It is emotionally neutral if it is administered in an emotionally neutral way.

*If it is administered soon after the transgression, and is clearly linked to it, it can have the effect of permanently reducing the attraction of the particular behaviour in the mind of the transgressor.

By contrast:

*Explaining what was done wrong works only if the person was well-intentioned but had misunderstood the nature of their action, and is able to follow a reasoned argument.

The sad fact is that some people know full well that they have done wrong. Explanations and nothing else merely confirm in their minds that the Explainer has not grasped this fact, and therefore is inferior to the perpetrator. It will certainly not induce the perpetrator to change their ways.

*Many, prevented from using physical means, resort to shouting or other means of attempting to inflict emotional pain. This, in complete contrast to a physical sanction, can remain in the mind and be re-lived again and again, sometimes for a whole lifetime