(Punishment part 10)
Consequence vs Punishment
I took some time off from this series to work on another entitled “Ideologues” (which I’ll be getting back to shortly), but I figured I should probably finish this one out though…
As noted in previous installments, humans (or more accurately, the ego parasites controlling them via perception) develop powerful appetites for ‘conceptual substances’ — that is, perceptual effects that stimulate the autonomic nervous system to produce hormones and neurotransmitters, which the ego parasites subsist on.
By far, the most potent, dynamic and diverse conceptual substance is authority. Again, principally defined, authority is the power to determine meanings, order and the outcome of events. The addiction to authority isn’t actually psychological, but instead, physiological.
Well to be accurate, its physiological for the ego parasite, as it is and/or represents a tool for extracting food from the human host. And since the ego parasite controls the human host via perception, the ego’s physiological hunger manifests in the form of a psychological dependency within the perceptive outlook and experience of the human host.
So, from the experiential vantage point, humans tend to develop strong psychological dependencies on behaviors and stimulations that will trigger the autonomic nervous system to release hormone and neurotransmitter chemical compounds; especially those the human body produces (primarily serotonin) whenever the ego perceives or is able to impose or capture authority, either through direct or sympathetic experience.
Punishment is inflicting injury onto things for the sake of personal gratification. Gratification is in essence, the sense of satiation the ego parasite experiences as a result of receiving chemical nourishment from the human host.
The connection between authority and punishment is that punishment is a tool or instrument for capturing, extracting and/or exercising authority from or over perceived (mostly external) values; and authority is a tool for extracting hormone and neurotransmitter cocktails from the human host.
Again, all of this is mechanical…
Unfortunately, most humans tend to confuse the concepts of punishment and consequence.
So the question we’re addressing in this installment is: “Is there a difference between punishment and consequence?”
To answer this question properly, we’ll have to start with the proper framing…
Perceptive valuation, that is, the mode of processing information and reality humans work through is fundamentally paradoxical. As a result of not being able to fundamentally distinguish differences between what the mind (ego) projects onto reality, and what actually exists in reality independent of perception, many if not most of the “meanings” humans manufacture, based on what they are able to capture from reality through perceptive valuation, are fundamentally lacking and chock full of conceptual errors, which, are primarily rooted in equivocation.
Easy way to say that is, because of how perceptive valuation works at a mechanical level, humans are (easily) prone to confusing concepts, as a result of assigning faulty parameters to causal influence and relationships, which subsequently causes them to make false connections and correlations between observed or inferred values, and draw false conclusions, because they can’t tell the difference between how reality actually works and the meanings they’ve simply achieved and projected onto reality in the present, which were achieved and/or captured through a faulty (intellectual) apparatus.
Easier way to say it… Perceptive valuation can’t tell if information is coming or going, because the tools it uses to make sense of things are all projected onto reality.
So what is the difference between consequence and punishment?
Let’s start at the conceptual level…
What is consequence? Well, consequence is an effect that occurs within a given system (or system of systems) when one or more types of balance are disrupted, and the system(s) must take measures to restore or maintain balance. Think of it like this… Every system, natural or created, has a centerline that represents balance. When an effect comes along to remove that system from its centerline, an imbalance is created, which necessarily forces the system to respond to it. The system must maintain, restore (or at the very least, be equipped to maintain and restore) balance, or it will necessarily fail…
A consequence is a natural reaction that occurs to offset systemic imbalance.
So for instance, if a mosquito bites your arm, you instinctively go to smack it without any sort of belief guiding your natural response to protect your body. You might get mad after the fact and curse the mosquito, however, what would be guiding you to swat the mosquito wouldn’t be belief or emotion-based — at least, not at the outset. The consequence of the mosquito biting your arm would be to get swatted.
Punishment must be imposed, whereas consequence is considerably happenstance. Punishment requires belief, primarily intention, ideations of authority and ideations of justice, whereas consequence does not require any facet of belief at all. Punishment is for personal or group satisfaction and/or gratification, whereas consequence is not motivated by desire at all…
The key difference between punishment and consequence really boils down to one word, and that word is “desire”.
Punishment is parasitic; and the core-essence of parasitism is the phenomenon humans know as desire.
Consequence is natural, and is motivated and facilitated by the principle of balance.
If you dangle your body over a ledge and fall, is what happens to your body a punishment or consequence? It would be a consequence. Why? Because gravity has no inherent desire to injure anyone or anything for personal amusement, “justice” or satisfaction. The difference between punishment and consequence is that consequence is automatic, whereas punishment is dolled out according to one’s own sense or interpretation of justice.
In this sense, punishments can be lenient, whereas consequences cannot. A person who’s torturing someone for their own sense of amusement can stop, whereas gravity will not and cannot suspend itself, in efforts to cushion the fall of a person dangling from a cliff. If (the phenomenon humans refer to as) “gravity” were inconsistent, then the entire planet’s system would fail. Therefore, consequences for unsuccessfully attempting to defy gravity must remain constant.
If you misbehave in school, and your parent decides to abuse you because of it, is that punishing or a consequence? It would be a punishment. Why? Because inflicting injury onto you so as to satisfy their desires to feel justice, and their hopes to acquire moral symmetry in their minds is and/or would be rooted in desire.
There are multiple ways to punish, however, consequences tend to remain static and fixed.
If you smack a bear in the face, and that bear isn’t incapacitated, it will maul you. As a punishment? Well, a human might see it as punishment, as they’d likely project their own perceptive values onto the bear, however, the bear would simply be operating according to a preset mode. There would be no real intention to harm the person beyond its natural programing. Like… it wouldn’t injure the person for personal amusement or gratification.
Consequence is a natural principle. Some belief systems refer to it as ‘karma’, and others call it universal balance.
Parasitism is not only fundamentally out of theme with balance and natural organization, but it’s also a source of creating multitudes of systemic imbalance. Individuals and organisms tuned to the parasitic mode, if not in life, will face absolute consequences upon passing from the mortal coil.
The types of consequences parasites (especially humans) face will be based on the types of imbalances they’ve created in the multitude of systems they are and remain broadly ignorant of.
Simply put: “If you took it from the universe, the universe will take it back from you with interest. Not because it wants to, but because that’s just how it works mechanically.”
A person might make it out of this life without facing consequences, but no one makes it out of the universe without facing consequences for the impacts they make on it and its building blocks. That principle is absolute.