A Letter to Neale


Reader question:

Dear Neale... How can the current society ever forgo the use of punishment as a means to prevent damaging behaviour, when all of its people are not yet living by the triangular code of awareness, honesty and responsibility? How can the police force effectively do its work when there is not the tool of punishment to do it with? Most of what the police does 'works' to a certain extent because they can resort to punishment in the form of fines and sentences. Without it they are powerless. Signed with Screen Name: "xen"


Neale Responds:

Dear "xen"...Conversations with God says there is a vast difference between "punishment" and "consequences." The answer to your question is to put into place in our society consequences that are not purely and simply punitive. Throwing a person in jail for five years for possessing marijuana, for instance, is insane, and solves nothing. Fines and sentences that are remedial, reparative and restorative, and not simply punitive, make sense. Brutal and simple revenge ("an eye for an eye") is neither reparative nor restorative, but is the mark of a primitive society.

Love,

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