Links - 11th July 2022 (2 [including 'Toxic' Parents)

Meme - "The metric system is the ultimate measuring system for midwits. is the great achievement of post-Enlightenment thought, tuming measurement into an objective, abstract universal, as opposed to what it always was for thousands of years, a system of comparison between objects that exists in reality. Traditional forms of measurement attune your mind to how everything is connected, but the metric system predisposes you to believe in false, universal totalitarian ideologies with no bearing on reality. The metric system, much like Enlightenment ideals of equality, liberalism, scientific objectivity and rights, is something that only exists cerebral realm of the abstract"
American copes on using an inferior measuring system are hilarious

Wholesome memes of traditional morality II: Trad dames, and too long names - Posts | Facebook
Comments on the above: ""a system of comparison between objects that exist in reality" Yea it'll be great if that really were the case. When I was a kid, I tried following a recipe that used cups as a unit of measurement. I just grabbed a literal cup and it turned out to be a disaster. What's the point of using objects as a basis of comparison when the objects in real life don't even correspond to the unit?"
"I am a woodworker and I own a construction business. As much as it pains me to admit it, the metric system is superior in every way. But I feel like a commie for admitting it."
""Traditional forms of measurement atune your mind." Same dude, I always burn sage when my check engine light comes on, to atune my engine and get rid of evil spirits bringing mechanical problems."
"Also the original gram was based off of the mass of one cubic centimeter of water at four degrees Celsius. This borechan post is wrong from the absolute outset, and almost no one here is smart enough to check. Just believed it because you wanted it to be true."
"Imperial system = British system. Fight me 😉"
"Yes, let's measure this length in feet, now are we using Robin Hood's, or little John's?"
"The best way to measure is to hobble a horse so you can convert his steps into varas."
"Seems like post-colonial theory but ok."
"Ah the metric system, the only thing s33pos fear more than the jungles of Vietnam"
"So you cannot count to 10, gotcha."
"I feel sorry for people who use Metric. Like, they'll never know what it's like to be in the 'cool kids club' of Liberia, Burma, and the Disunited Balkan States Of America."
"If you can’t visualize what 9/64ths of an inch looks like... I’m straight up not going to talk to you. #imperialstandards #antimetric"

Traditionalist Western Art - Posts | Facebook
More cope.
Comment: "You can't tell the difference on a gram scale how much something weighs, but in ounces and pounds, easily." (too bad a scale can distinguish 1g and 2g easily but 0.035 and 0.07 ounces will both round to 0 ounces)

Will British people ever think in metric? - "In May 2011, a survey by supermarket chain Asda suggested 70% of customers found metric labelling confusing and wanted products labelled in imperial instead. In response, the company reverted to selling strawberries by the pound for the first time in over a decade.  According to social historian Joe Moran, author of Queuing For Beginners, the notion that imperial measures embody tradition and reassurance accounts for much of their appeal to the British.  "It may also have something to do with the poetic, concrete names used in the old imperial system, particularly for coins - tanner, half a crown, guinea, etc, that just seem more familiar, friendly and native than metrics."  Nonetheless, the legal requirement to display measurements for most products in both systems means many Britons have become adept at making the mental switch from ounces to grams and back again.  Nowhere is this duality more apparent than in relation to alcohol. Imperial measurements for spirits were phased out in 1988. Yet it remains illegal to sell beer and cider in any other units than pints. It is a discrepancy that is reportedly mirrored in the illegal drugs market, with cannabis typically sold in ounces while cocaine is packaged in grams. However, support for traditional measurements has gone beyond shoppers merely expressing a consumer preference.  In 2001, grocer Steve Thoburn became a cause celebre - if French terms are not inappropriate in this context - after being convicted for using scales showing only imperial weights... Despite its popular identification with European bureaucracy, British attempts to scrap imperial measurements stretch back long before the UK came under the jurisdiction of Brussels.  In 1863 the House of Commons voted to mandate the metric system throughout the Empire, and in 1897 a parliamentary select committee recommended compulsory metrication within two years. In 1965 the Confederation of British Industry threw its weight behind the cause and the government set up the UK metrication board in 1969, four years before the UK joined the European Common Market... The UK may have the failure of Napoleon's armies to cross the channel to thank or blame for the resistance of imperial. But it is not the only country to fail to enthusiastically embrace metrication.  Japan's traditional shakkanho system was supposed to have been replaced by metric in 1924, but remained popular. It was forbidden in 1966 but is still used in agriculture.  And of course the US continues to weigh and measure in customary units, a system derived from imperial. According to Moran, the similarities between the two codes has served to reinforce UK Atlanticism.  "Our residual attachment to imperial weights and measures is really to do with a resilient fact about our geo-political position: we are an island with one eye on America and an ambivalent attitude to the continent""

Meme - "Rest of the world: uses metric system
Meanwhile in the US: *1 standard banana*"
The superior, intuitive Imperial system strikes again

Meme - "The metric system is pushed by liberal redditors who want to live in a pod and eat bugs. American measurements are based upon real life; how long is your foot? its a foot 30 KB JPG long. you can walk, putting one foot right in front of one another to roughly calculate distances. The mile is a measurement derived from the average length of one thousand paces, standardized upon the length of ancient roman emperor Marcus Agrippa's own foot. While using the imperial system is to embrace nature and reality, The metric system is a soulless, corporate system that views the world in a similar way to a robot; When a user of the imperial system sees a object that is tall, they can compare its height to other objects that are approximately three feet tall. When a metric soijack sees something that is 3 ft tall, they do not compare it to the things around them, but instead to an arbitrary distance standardized by some Mark Zuckerburg type ruler. Finally, the metric system is inherently globalist, as its users seek to spread it throughout every location on the globe instead of allowing cultures to make up there own system based upon their unique needs. And that is why I say CM stands for "Communist Measurements"."

Grave of Florence Irene Ford – Natchez, Mississippi - "When Florence Irene Ford died at the age of 10, her mother made a strange request: she asked that her daughter’s coffin be fitted with a small window, with stairs leading down to the casket.  During her short life, Florence, born September 3, 1861, was terrified of storms. As soon as one rolled in, she’d run to her mother, Ellen, who would patiently comfort her until the storm passed...   Natchez City Cemetery sits on the banks of the Mississippi River, its white tombstones neatly arranged on the green grass of Adams County. It’s a quiet spot, and home to a handful of notable tombs. There’s the tomb of Rufus E. Case, a large three-tiered structure that contains both Case and his favorite rocking chair. And the Turning Angel, a monument that watches over five graves and appears to turn to look at people as they walk towards it"

Teacher Wears Bodysuit To Give Science Lesson For Third Graders - "An elementary school teacher in Spain took a note from the sports world and left it all on the field. Verónica Duque’s field has been a classroom for the past 15 years, and when lessons of anatomy appeared on the syllabus she decided to get creative by wearing a skintight bodysuit for her third grade students...       “I was surfing the internet when an ad of an AliExpress swimsuit popped up,” she said. “Knowing how hard it is for kids this young to visualize the disposition of internal organs, I thought it was worth it giving it a try.”"
Of course they tried to bring in race when it's totally irrelevant and claim because a black teacher wearing revealing clothing (which definitely does not show internal organs) is criticised, it shows racist double standards

Supreme Court Gives A Pass To An Officer Who Sold Police Data - "Albo, claiming that he wanted to make sure that a woman he met at a local strip club was not an undercover officer, asked Van Buren to search the state law enforcement computer database for a license plate he said belonged to her. In return, Albo promised to pay Van Buren $5,000.  Van Buren did as asked, obtaining the information from his police car computer — information that had been planted there by the FBI. He was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.  Van Buren appealed to the Supreme Court contending that the clause in the CFAA that makes it a crime to "exceed authorized access" to law enforcement computer data does not apply to those who are authorized to have access but misuse that access, like him... Writing for the majority, Barrett said the government's interpretation of the statute would "attach criminal penalties to a breathtaking amount of commonplace computer activity." She asserted it would allow the government to prosecute someone for embellishing an online dating profile, or using a pseudonym on Facebook; it would, she maintained, allow prosecution even of someone who sends a personal email or reads the news using her work computer... Thomas had a different set of "real-world" examples. A valet who obtains a car from a restaurant patron is, to use the term in the statute, "entitled" to access the car in order to park it, but not to take a joyride. And an employee who is entitled to pull a fire alarm in the event of a fire is not entitled to pull the alarm to delay a meeting for which he is unprepared."

Seth Rogen production gives Metro Vancouver park NSFW makeover - "Fletcher Park in Maple Ridge has got what some may call a NSFW makeover that will be sure to turn some heads, and maybe force some parents to shield the eyes of their children."
On JFC

Japan selling n*gga whiskey from the hood - "Nigga whisky from the hood"
Chenpai on Twitter - "Just found out that it's not called Nigga Whisky From The Hood *Nigga whisky from the barrel*"

Why Parents and Kids Get Estranged - The Atlantic - "Estranged parents often tell me that their adult child is rewriting the history of their childhood, accusing them of things they didn’t do, and/or failing to acknowledge the ways in which the parent demonstrated their love and commitment... “Never before have family relationships been seen as so interwoven with the search for personal growth, the pursuit of happiness, and the need to confront and overcome psychological obstacles,” the historian Stephanie Coontz, the director of education and research for the Council on Contemporary Families, told me... “For most of history, family relationships were based on mutual obligations rather than on mutual understanding. Parents or children might reproach the other for failing to honor/acknowledge their duty, but the idea that a relative could be faulted for failing to honor/acknowledge one’s ‘identity’ would have been incomprehensible.”... While there’s nothing especially modern about family conflict or a desire to feel insulated from it, conceptualizing the estrangement of a family member as an expression of personal growth as it is commonly done today is almost certainly new... Due to the likelihood of divorce, many parents in the past half century have had reason to believe that the relationship with their child might be the one connection they can count on—the one most likely to be there in the future. Yet, in the same way that unrealistically high expectations of fulfillment from marriage sometimes increase the risk of divorce, unrealistically high expectations of families as providers of happiness and meaning might increase the risk of estrangement. Studies on parental estrangement have grown rapidly in the past decade, perhaps reflecting the increasing number of families who are affected. Most estrangements between a parent and an adult child are initiated by the child, according to a 2015 survey of more than 800 people. A survey of mothers from 65 to 75 years old with at least two living adult children found that about 11 percent were estranged from a child and 62 percent reported contact less than once a month with at least one child.  In these and other studies, common reasons given by the estranged adult children were emotional, physical, or sexual abuse in childhood by the parent, “toxic” behaviors such as disrespect or hurtfulness, feeling unsupported, and clashes in values. Parents are more likely to blame the estrangement on their divorce, their child’s spouse, or what they perceive as their child’s “entitlement.”... divorce can create a radical realignment of long-held bonds of loyalty, gratitude, and obligation in a family. It can tempt one parent to poison the child against the other. It can cause children to reexamine their lives prior to divorce and shift their perspective so they now support one parent and oppose the other. It can bring in new people—stepparents or stepsiblings—to compete with the child for emotional or material resources. Divorce—as well as the separation of parents who never married—can alter the gravitational trajectories of a family so that, over time, members spin further and further out of one another’s reach. And when they do, they might not feel compelled to return... if parents are supposed to produce happy adults, then, fairly or not, adult children might hold parents responsible for their unhappiness... From the adult child’s perspective, there might be much to gain from an estrangement: the liberation from those perceived as hurtful or oppressive, the claiming of authority in a relationship, and the sense of control over which people to keep in one’s life"
Of course with the "believe the victim" mantra, we are not allowed to question allegations of "abuse". "Gaslighting" is only bad when pointing out that someone's claims of being abused don't stand up to scrutiny. Gaslighting someone that he is an "abuser" when he didn't do anything wrong is not just fine, but encouraged
Cultural encouragement to cut family members off in the name of personal growth certainly cannot lead to bogus accusations of "abuse" - it is only because the "abused" are brave and stunning enough to recognise their "abuse". It is telling that many people boast about cutting off family members (something that one would imagine would be a sad thing: even if not losing a family member, at least having been abused); this suggests that they are doing so for reasons other than actually having been "abused". Nowadays being a victim grants one cultural cachet, after all
Maybe this is why many liberals are aggressively anti-natalist - they fear that their children will defame them just as they defame their own parents

Family estrangement: Why adults are cutting off their parents - "more than one in four Americans reported being estranged from another relative. Similar research for British estrangement charity Stand Alone suggests the phenomenon affects one in five families in the UK, while academic researchers and therapists in Australia and Canada also say they’re witnessing a “silent epidemic” of family break-ups.   On social media, there’s been a boom in online support groups for adult children who’ve chosen to be estranged, including one Scott is involved in, which has thousands of members. “Our numbers in the group have been rising steadily,” he says. “I think it’s becoming more and more common.”... value-based disagreements were mentioned by more than one in three mothers of estranged children. Pillemer’s recent research has also highlighted value differences as a “major factor” in estrangements, with conflicts resulting from “issues such as same sex-preference, religious differences or adopting alternative lifestyles”.   Both experts believe at least part of the context for this is increased political and cultural polarisation in recent years. In the US, an Ipsos poll reported a rise in family rifts after the 2016 election, while research by academics at Stanford University in 2012 suggested a larger proportion of parents could be unhappy if their children married someone who supported a rival political party, which was far less true a decade earlier. A recent UK study found that one in 10 people had fallen out with a relative over Brexit. “These studies highlight the way that identity has become a far greater determinant of whom we choose to keep close or to let go,” says Coleman. Scott says he’s never discussed his voting preferences with his parents. But his decision to cut them off was partly influenced by his and his wife’s heightened awareness of social issues, including the Black Lives Matter movement and MeToo. He says other adult children in his online support group have fallen out due to value-based disagreements connected to the pandemic, from older parents refusing to get vaccinated to rows over conspiracy theories about the source of the virus...   “While there’s nothing especially modern about family conflict or a desire to feel insulated from it, conceptualising the estrangement of a family member as an expression of personal growth, as it is commonly done today, is almost certainly new,” says Coleman. “Deciding which people to keep in or out of one’s life has become an important strategy.”...   She agrees with Coleman it’s “becoming more socially acceptable” to cut ties with family members. “Mental health is more talked about now so it’s easier to say, ‘These people are bad for my mental health’. I think, as well, people are getting more confident at drawing their own boundaries and saying ‘no’ to people.”... Choosing not to stay in touch with parents can have a knock-on effect on future family bonds and traditions, too. “For me, the biggest regret is my kids growing up without grandparents”...   With political divisions centre-stage in many nations, as well as increasing individualism in cultures around the world, many experts believe the parent-child ‘break-up’ trend will stick around.  “My prediction is that it's either going to get worse or stay the same,” says Coleman. “Family relationships are going to be based much more on pursuing happiness and personal growth, and less on emphasising duty, obligation or responsibility.”  Pillemer argues that we shouldn’t rule out attempting to bridge rifts, however, particularly those stemming from opposing politics or values (as opposed to abusive or damaging behaviours).   “If the prior relationship was relatively close (or at least not conflictual), I think there is evidence that many family members can restore the relationship. It does involve, however, agreeing on a ‘demilitarised zone’ in which politics cannot be discussed”"
Apparently there is an epidemic of family "abuse". Of course, one cutting off other people in one's family must be the other people's fault, definitely cannot be due to narcissism on one's part, and the fetishisation of "mental health" cannot be responsible for people cutting off others they disagree with (or, indeed, a sign of their own intolerance).
Imagine cutting off your parents because they don't want to get a vaccination. So much for "my body, my choice". Since we know that the left is less tolerant of disagreement it's safe to say the majority of the blame falls on the children
Bearing in mind the popular poem by Larkin, all parents are "abusive" towards their children. No wonder so many young people nowadays proclaim to not want children, since there is no way to not be "abusive". What a curious aspect of modern Western identity

What Parents’ Other-Oriented Perfectionism Does to Kids - The Atlantic - "At the extreme, critical parenting can amount to abuse. But even less severe perfectionism in parents has been tied to two phenomena that have, in turn, been linked to undesirable outcomes for kids: helicopter parenting and authoritarian parenting."

My woke daughter is a shadow of her former fun-loving self – and I'm starting to dislike her - "“I like girls and boys,” she announced recently. She meant it in a romantic sense. I sighed inwardly. Here we go again, I thought.   Never mind that, as a young teen, her bedroom wall was covered in posters of Robert Pattinson and that she had the same boyfriend for several years through secondary school. She has now decided that she is attracted to both sexes... my daughter doesn’t like girls and boys; she likes boys. But she says she is attracted to both to jump on another woke bandwagon, because for snowflake Gen Z, it’s trendy to be gender-ambiguous.  In the past couple of years, I have listened to it all. Trans rights, patriarchy, plastics in the ocean. I agree with a lot of it. But my daughter’s insistence that the world’s ills are mainly down to me is becoming grating. And she sees it as her job and right to make me see the error of my ways and atone for her lost future.  To begin with, I was proud that she was becoming politically aware and encouraged her when she joined her fellow sixth-formers to boycott lessons in protest against climate change.   Equally, I was scorned when I mentioned how convenient it was that the protests were always scheduled for a Friday, allowing students a long weekend. And when I pointed out on Monday mornings that maybe she’d prefer to walk to school and lower her carbon footprint, I was branded a “boomer”.   I was supportive too when, along with her middle-class white friends, she joined a Black Lives Matter sit-in in the local park, attended by no people of colour, because very few live in our village. I am a lifelong advocate of equality. I also understand about irony, but when I tried to talk about white saviour syndrome and virtue signalling, I was cancelled and told I could never understand because my white privilege makes me part of the problem and not the solution.   Now, most discussions end in disagreement. Harry and Meghan? My view: spoilt hypocrites playing the Hollywood PR game to a tee. Her view: victims of a racist, colonial system. Obesity? My view: a public health disaster in which people need to eat less and move more. Her view: body-positive people such as TOWIE’s Gemma Collins are aspirational role models. Socialism? My view: dangerous pipe dream that stifles innovation and ambition. Her view: utopia.  She has opinions about everything and they are all rigidly held. Increasingly our conversations involve me biting my lip, then changing the subject to safer ground, such as the weather, or plans for the weekend. It is exhausting.   I do understand that every generation has an obligation to shock their parents. And it must be tough for today’s teenagers, whose parents grew up through punk rock, New Romantics, acid house, binge drinking and recreational drug use.   We are quite unshockable. So, all that’s left for rebellious teens is to smash up a few historical artefacts and blame their parents for all the ills of the world.  I used to love talking to my daughter, but often now it is like wading through verbal treacle. I just wish she could lighten up a little and stop being so preachy."

How Do I Get My Parents to Stop Bankrolling Their Adult Son? - The New York Times - "For 15 years, my parents have paid for my adult brother to live in an upscale apartment in the expensive city where he went to college. He doesn’t work. He barely graduated from college, lost touch with his friends, then flunked out of graduate school. My parents were mortified, and I encouraged him to find work. But he never did. Now my parents are resigned to supporting him indefinitely. With the pandemic ebbing, I keep trying to convince them that they should push my brother to apply for jobs and engage with the world. But when my brother refuses, my parents are cowed by him. So, they continue to support him, giving him nice hand-me-down cars and taking him to fancy dinners. This is madness! What more can I do?"
Maybe they don't want to be proclaimed "toxic" if they refuse
It's amazing that the columnist supports continuing to enable this self-destructive behavior

How Should I Talk to My Son About His Career Dreams? - The Atlantic - "A few months ago, on a college tour, our 18-year-old son announced that he had found his purpose and future career: He wants to do stand-up comedy.  The fact is, he’s got some talent in this area. He’s comfortable onstage, he’s a great physical comedian, he can do accents, he’s charming and funny. At the same time, at 18, he’s undisciplined, he’s a procrastinator, and he gets debilitating migraine headaches when he is sleep-deprived, dehydrated, malnourished, or stressed. The late nights, lack of a consistent schedule, and intense stress of that lifestyle seem like a terrible idea for a kid who probably needs lots of structure and a good night’s sleep to function in the world. Then I start thinking about how he will pay the bills, buy a house, have a family—all the real-life considerations that an 18-year-old does not think about. But I know how hard (and possibly unrealistic) this path can be... We don’t want to be those parents who crush his dream, but we don’t want him living in our basement at 35, getting paid $200 a week to perform at a local club, and finding himself crippled career-wise because he spent years not learning how to make it in the real world."
If they don't fully support him they're going to be labelled "toxic" and cut off

The Friend and Family Relationships the Trump Era Broke - The Atlantic - "Goodwin and others mentioned in this article were not comfortable putting me in touch with the friends and family members with whom they disagreed, so I was unable to hear the other sides of these stories... “Politics isn’t just politics anymore,” Emily Van Duyn, a communication professor at the University of Illinois, told me. “Political identity now encompasses so many other things—our social identity, our morals, our values.” This means that when two people disagree about a political figure, much more than a preference in candidates and their policies is often at stake... some interviewees who dislike Trump said that the fact of someone’s support for him would be enough to disqualify them as a potential friend, and it was viewed as a moral shortcoming... “If we fundamentally can’t agree that Black lives matter or that people have human rights to be protected and respected,” Van Duyn noted, “that is a very different divide than, ‘We can’t agree about trickle-down economics.’” Jeanne Safer, a psychotherapist in New York City, is mindful of that caveat, but maintains that people who cut off others over political differences frequently do so to their own detriment. “We can make politics seem like a thing that’s more fundamental to character than it really is, and I think we err seriously,” Safer, the author of I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics, told me. “If you have a long history with people who have treated you well and loved you, is it really all ruined by who they voted for?” These days, many people would impatiently answer yes, but Safer’s view is that people you disagree with “can be wonderful friends, and people who agree with you can treat you very badly.” She also believes, based on her experiences with clients and interviews she did for her book, that something other than politics is at the root of many seemingly political conflicts with loved ones. For instance, when an adult child denounces their parents’ political beliefs, it might actually be less about politics and more about the child’s need to assert their independence. One of Safer’s tenets of political communication is that you should never go into a conversation with the intention of changing someone’s mind. The tone should be inquisitive (“I want to hear more about why you think that”) rather than judgmental (“How could you think that?”)."
Clearly it's always the Trump supporters' faults for being "toxic"

Hate body odour? You're more likely to have rightwing views
Maybe liberals will start not showering

Glug Glug, Vroom Vroom, Thump Thump on Twitter - "FUNERAL INSTRUCTIONS:
* Open casket
* Free bag of tortilla chips upon entrance
* My dead hands hold the bowl of salsa"

Forum: Firms should be clear about paperless objective - "The Singapore Exchange (SGX) as well as stockbroker UOB Kay Hian recently sent me letters saying they want to help tackle climate change and adopt environmentally friendly practices.  The letters informed me that monthly physical statements relating to my accounts with them will cease.  While I support green initiatives, it appears in these cases to be lose-lose for customers and win-win for businesses. I will have to sign in online to access my statements. If I need paper copies, the printing effort and cost will be mine.  On the other hand, UOB Kay Hian and SGX will both save on costs and manpower by stopping the dispatch of once-a-month statements.  The two are now telling clients that they will have to pay to get their own statements on paper in future: $10 a month per account for UOB Kay Hian and $25.68 for a 12-month period for SGX. Businesses should be clear about their objective in going paperless: Is it to save the Earth or to make more money? Businesses that stop sending consumers physical statements will save money and effort.  But instead of passing these savings on to consumers, they are asking consumers to pay to continue a service already in existence.  Older consumers, especially those less computer-savvy, are harder hit by such digital initiatives. They often do not have a choice.   I appeal to all businesses to be sincere in the digitalisation push. Pass digitalisation savings back to clients.  And if some clients prefer the status quo, make it easy and costless for them.
Mano Sabnani"

Floral with notes of cellar: French cheesemaker unintentionally creates entirely new flavour in lockdown - "Dubbed Le Confiné — a play on the French word for lockdown (confinement) — the product of isolation is “chalky inside, with a flowery, greyish and spotted rind.” Somewhere between Munster and Camembert, Vaxelaire told Le Parisien, the cheese “took all the flora from our whole raw milk and the flora from the cellar” to create an entirely new flavour profile."

Robert Sapolsky: “I Don’t Think We Have Any Free Will Whatsoever.” - Freakonomics - "the issue was to try to understand a non-human model for Westernized psychosocial stress. And baboons are perfect for it. If you’re a baboon, you want to live in the Serengeti, which is where I was doing my work. You live in these big troops, 50 to 100 animals or so. None of the predators mess with you, and most importantly, it’s like such a great ecosystem that you only have to spend about three hours a day foraging to get your calories.  And what that means then is you have nine hours of free time every day to devote to being absolutely awful to some other baboon. They had hours and hours of free time each day just to devote to generating psychosocial stress for each other. They were perfect models for Westernized human stress. I think what I’m saying is they’re completely skivvy, violent, backstabbing animals who were really awful to each other...
LEVITT: I spent some time in India once and part of that I was in a national park trying to see tigers and we were riding around with one of the park rangers and I asked him whether he had a gun and he said, “Oh yeah, I carry a gun.” And I said, “What would make you shoot a tiger?” And he said, “Shoot a tiger? I would never shoot a tiger. We aren’t allowed to shoot tigers.” And I said, “What if the tiger was attacking you or some other people?” And he said, “No. Even if the tiger were attacking, I could shoot the gun in the air, but I would never shoot the tiger.”  I said, “Well, what if an American tourist were there? Then, I’m sure you must shoot the tiger to save the American tourist?” And he said, “No, we wouldn’t do that.” And eventually he told me actually with the tigers, it’s not until they kill two or three villagers that they go and find the tiger and then sedate him and put him somewhere else.  So he basically, will not kill a tiger no matter what. And in a weird way — forgetting about your us versus them categorization psychologically — to India, really, these tigers are scarce and they’re valuable. But it was the first time I’ve ever heard, stated out loud, a public policy that simply said that these animals are more valuable than humans, no matter how these animals behave...
SAPOLSKY: We need to be thinking of a quarantine model.  Somebody has a terminal disease which makes them dangerous to other people, and it’s not their damn fault and we can’t cure it, and what you want to do is give them the most normal life possible, the most unconstrained one, where nonetheless, they are not able to damage anybody or themselves in the process. And what those pieces put together wind up omitting is exactly the first one you said, which was retribution.  So if you’re going to go out on a limb and say if we really are going to recognize that we are nothing more or less than biological organisms, not only do you need to abolish the criminal justice system, you also need to abolish every high school graduation having a valedictorian. Because not only will blame and punishment make no sense, but praise and reward doesn’t either, it’s just damn luck."
This suggests that when life is too good, people just make up random bullshit to create enemies
People respond to incentives. So if you stop discourage crime and encouraging being a valedictorian, you're going to get more undesirable and less desirable behavior