Chapter 1. On Pain
This is a book about pain. But I do not quite know what pain is, or how to graduate it. Literature is full of heroes so great that pain becomes small, or cowards so small that almost everything becomes pain. To grasp the essence of pain, one would have to understand the core of the good as well as the evil. I refrain from the attempt.
Those who look at penal history as stages in progress might argue that I refrain too fast. They would see developments, a gradual decrease in pain, which would make ranking possible. From Foucault's (1975) opening description of the gruesome public execution of Damiens in 1757, through the Norwegian Parliamentary invention in 1815 of a tariff converting branding and cutting off limbs into terms of imprisonment - ten years for a hand - does it not exemplify reduction in pain? From slaveries and workhouses with their uncontrolled abuses, to well-ordered penitentiaries, is that not progress? From whipping for disobedience to loss of privileges? From the old smelling stone castles to single rooms with hot and cold water, - does that not exemplify reduction in pain?
I just do not know. Each form would have to be evaluated according to its own time, by those receiving the pain, in the framework of their usual life and other people's usual life, and in the light of what they saw as their sins. I do not see how a scale could be established.
Protagonists of hard-data science might also argue that I refrain too fast. We can certainly measure how the nerves are distributed in the body. Or we can standardize situations and persons, and find out what they report as most painful.
We can, and the more so the closer we move towards the physiology of the phenomena. But at the same time, the closer we move towards nerve-centres and standardized situations, the further we move away from those social, ethical, and religious elements that seem able to neutralize what ought to have been severe pain, or to aggravate minor pain. Guards in concentration camps (Christie 1972) described with surprise how prisoners reacted more to minor than to major violence. "They cried, as children, if receiving a small cuff. But it was as if they did not react at all if very severely beaten, or if friends were killed." Jacques Lusseyran (1963) is very close to saying that he enjoyed life in the concentration camp of Buchenwald. He was continuously close to extinction. Of the 2 000 on his train from France, 30 survived. He had to use his hand to find his way and discriminate between the dead and the half-dead in the infirmary. He was blind from childhood. Social anthropology has accounts of villagers singing outside an offender's house. It proves sufficiently painful to drive the offender to death.
For these and other reasons, this book will not discuss what pain is, whether certain pains are greater than other, or whether pain on earth has decreased or increased. Those questions are greater than social science. But what I can do, and will, is to describe some acts intended as punishments and also some acts very similar to those intended as punishment. I will describe some forms used when decisions on such acts are made. And I will evaluate acts as well as forms.
Moralism within our areas has for some years been an attitude or even a term associated with protagonists for law and order and severe penal sanctions, while their opponents were seen as floating in a sort of value-free vacuum. Let it therefore be completely clear that I am also a moralist. Worse: I am a moral imperialist. One of my basic premises will be that it is right to strive for a reduction of man-inflicted pain on earth. I can very well see objections to this position. Pain makes people grow. They become more mature - twice born - receive deeper insights, experience more joy if pain fades, and according to some belief-systems they come closer to God or Heaven. Some among us might have experienced some of these benefits. But we have also experienced the opposite: Pain which brings growth to a stop, pain which retards, pain which makes people evil. In any case: I cannot imagine a position where I should strive for an increase of man-inflicted pain on earth. Nor can I see any good reason to believe that the recent level of pain-infliction is just the right or natural one. And since the matter is important, and I feel compelled to make a choice, I see no other defensible position than to strive for pain-reduction.
One of the rules would then be: If in doubt, do not pain. Another rule would be: Inflict as little pain as possible. Look for alternatives to punishments, not only alternative punishments. It is often not necessary to react; the offender as well as the surroundings know it was wrong. Much deviance is expressive, a clumsy attempt to say something. Let the crime then become a starting point for a real dialogue, and not for an equally clumsy answer in the form of a spoonful of pain. Social systems must be constructed so that a dialogue can take place. Furthermore: Some systems are created in ways that make it natural to perceive many acts as crime. Others are constructed in ways where the same acts are more easily seen as expressions of conflicting interests. To reduce man-inflicted pain, one should encourage construction of the latter type of systems. In the simplification needed here, and well aware that complex matters are shelved, my position can be condensed into views that social systems ought to be constructed in ways that reduce to a minimum the perceived need for infliction of pain for the purpose of social control. Sorrow is inevitable, but not hell created by man.