Power punishment

Electrical insulation is continually being improved. The motor manufacturers make use of this and other technological developments to put more power into smaller, lighter, more efficient packages. Modem insulating materials can withstand heat, moisture, and corrosive atmospheres, and new metals can withstand more mechanical punishment. Computer design techniques are also helpful. 

To punish Prometheus for his deceit and his fondness for humans, Zeus forbade men fire—a symbol of creative power, life force, and divine knowledge. But Prometheus would not let his children be 00) denied this greatest of gifts. He took a hollow reed, stole fire from Mount Olympus, and gave it to man. With this divine power, creativity, ingenuity, and culture flourished in the land of mortals. 

The period, however, appointed for the continuance of the captivity of the Jews, as expressly foretold by Jeremiah, was not accomplished—the power of God was yet to be shown in the punishment of idolatry, and in the protection of his servants at Babylon. They were still to seek the peace of the city whither God had caused them to be carried away captives, for not till after seventy years should be accomplished at Babylon, was God to perform his good word in causing them to return . ... 

Pain and fear of pain are perhaps the most powerful of aversive stimuli and the most immediately important for survival since they carry the threat of tissue damage. Melzack and Wall (1988) described three components of pain sensory-discriminative from peripheral nociceptors, emotional or motivational-affective, involving limbic system punishment pathways, and rational or cognitive-evaluative derived from cerebral cortex. Excitatory and inhibitory feed-back systems link all components. 

This point parallels the objection to the "cop at your shoulder" standard sometimes invoked in discussions of criminal responsibility. That the accused would have resisted if they had had that kind of incentive is supposed to show that they possessed powers of self-restraint sufficient for legal responsibility. Similarly, if you knew your drug taking was subject to immediate punishment, then you would have had a certain kind of reason to abstain. If that knowledge would have led you to abstain, then you are at least minimally responsive to reasons.17 My objection is that the counterfactual incentive might be compulsive as well. 

If involuntary treatment seems to work, it is because the client has become submissive in response to authority. Involuntary treatment teaches the victim to become docile and to manipulate to avoid and escape punishment, and it motivates the so-called therapist to rationalize abusive acts. As I describe in detail in Beyond Conflict (1992a), victims of coercion hide their true feelings from those who exercise arbitrary power over them. 

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