@rootsworks I think it's more complicated than that. I think that we're far too quick these days to want to label "people who do bad things" as "bad people" because it greatly simplifies the ethical calculus needed to navigate increasingly complicated webs of privilege and oppression. Bad people have no path to redemption and can be written off. People who do bad things require reintegration and deserve a chance at transformative justice, which is difficult and painful.
@rootsworks To be sure, not all people who do bad things deserve infinite tolerance; people must be free to set boundaries or we will be lost. On the flip side, if we all set boundaries that reject the possibility of growth and self-improvement, we disincentivise people from learning from their mistakes. Radical praxis demands extending the possibility of reform to anyone, even if we ourselves refuse to bear witness to it for fear of being harmed.
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@orrery @rootsworks This may be a dumb question on my part, but what strategies exist to deradicalize people enough to be interested in reform instead of just the optics of reform?
I guess I feel much of what is causing people to disengage is the presumption that change is painful enough to not be worth the effort, and that it should be given infinite skepticism. Which seems to be part of why cynicism is in vogue lately.
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@Goldkin @rootsworks The only strategies I've ever seen be long-term successful is complete disengagement with clear indicators of what will be taken as a sign of progress towards reconciliation. Jewish teshuvah looks like a strong model (https://medium.com/@jessica.s.levine/a-rope-repaired-is-stronger-teshuvahs-radical-potential-as-a-community-building-process-1c82c5fcc51a) but I have limited personal exposure with this in practice. It also looks like it requires that disengagement itself be unwanted by the one needing correction; if not, there's no incentive to reform.
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@Goldkin @rootsworks In short, people first and foremost have to want to atone for their misdeeds, and sometimes that takes real world consequences like loss of status, access, or freedom. This was the original point of the Haviland's Separate System (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_system), designed to inspire people to reflect on their behavior and offer them skills to reintegrate when they'd come to understand what they did wrong.
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@Goldkin @rootsworks As for the reformers, wanting actual reform instead of the optics of reform, I think, requires a sense of safety and community integrity. It requires people actually feel like their needs matter to the system from which they're demanding improvement. Lacking that, the only real alternative I see is secession. If the system doesn't care about your needs, demanding that it do so anyway seems like an exercise in futility.
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@orrery @rootsworks Thank you. I don’t have much else to add, but these references seem like good starting points that I’m going to follow up on.
I guess I’m asking because I think there’s going to be a strong push to deradicalize after what I’ve seen described as the current uncanny valley of interpersonal communication (https://mobile.twitter.com/AstroKatie/status/984606232408461313), and researching that now may be helpful.
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@Goldkin @rootsworks It's also worth noting that the separate system, for all its focus on penance -- which is why we call jails "penitentiaries," or spaces for penitents -- it still emphasizes solitary isolation, which has been shown to do a lot of harm on its own.
I think a successful system would involve keeping people who misbehave _in_ society, but somehow "separate" from those they hurt. How you accomplish that without active policing is beyond me.