Exploring the Mind

Discipline and Punish

Law is order, agreed upon rules;

You formulate punishments based on crimes,

The goal: to associate signifier with sign,

The act of disorder must be done only by fools.

Who is the one who weighs the two extremes

Of pleasure and displeasure, that make regimes

Prosperous and peaceful; ideology at work

as in perfect theory, there are none who shirk.

Why then, are there people who break the law?

How do they benefit from societal withdrawal?

For punishment, loss of liberty

Re-enacts a form of slavery

That is by no means pretty,

                                        and systematically immoral.

Wait...

              Could it be,

That the system benefits from people's knavery?

That for some people, hierarchy

                                                      has a distinct dictum:

That some 'advantage' can be found,

                                                       In the penal system.

But why is there reason?

To see that some people benefit from crime, when the system is particularly careful to make it disadvantageous. The reason I see, in some societies, is respect; 'street-cred' a thing, yet it perpetuates the problem, which becomes a cycle. How can we stop this?