The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.
Peter KropotkinRead
Have not prisons - which kill all will and force of character in man, which enclose within their walls more vices than are met with on any other spot of the globe - always been universities of crime?
Interpretation
Prisons can cultivate more negative traits than they eliminate, functioning as places where crime is learned rather than deterred.
Peter Kropotkin argues that prisons tend to suppress personal will and character, often leading to an environment that fosters crime instead of reform. He suggests that rather than being places of punishment that rehabilitate, prisons are more akin to institutions that teach and propagate criminal behavior, making them as dangerous as the vices they are meant to correct.
In practice
In a discussion about the effectiveness of the prison system, one might quote Kropotkin to argue for reform.
The law has no claim to human respect. It has no civilizing mission; its only purpose is to protect exploitation.
Man is appealed to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at best tribal, but by his perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can re-trace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support- not mutual struggle- has had the leading part.
It is only by the abolition of the State, by the conquest of perfect liberty by the individual, by free agreement, association, and absolute free federation that we can reach Communism — the possession in common of our social inheritance, and the production in common of all riches.
When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions!
Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor.
No evolution is accomplished in nature without revolution. Periods of very slow changes are succeeded by periods of violent changes. Revolutions are as necessary for evolution as the slow changes which prepare them and succeed them.
Because creation was made in the image of a God who is equally one and many, the human race will finally be reunited and our racial and cultural diversity will remain intact in the renewed world. The human race finally lives together in peace and interdependence. Glory to God in the highest goes with peace on earth.
The deepest hunger in life is a secret that is revealed only when a person is willing to unlock a hidden part of the self. In the ancient traditions of wisdom, this quest has been likened to diving for the most precious pearl in existence, a poetic way of saying that you have to swim far out beyond shallow waters, plunge deep into yourself, and search patiently until the pearl beyond price is found.
Our challenge is to join forces of the old and the new- experience and experiment, history and destiny, the world of man and the new world of science- but always in accordance with the never-changing word of God.
At a certain point, I just felt, you know, God is not looking for alms, God is looking for action.
People must be free to work, to save, to own their own home, to take risks, to invest in each other and, in essence, to control their own lives.
Even if you play perfectly, a fault of your opponent's can destroy the entire beauty of the game.
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