Perhaps the most insidious concept that human beings ever invented is the idea of #punishment, the idea that those who have committed some error or #crime "deserve" to be forcibly subjected to #suffering, as if this can somehow make up for the consequences of their errors or crimes.
I'm not talking about material #restitution, I'm talking about #retribution enacted under the guise of a false sense of moral #righteousness.
A belief in the rectitude of punitive action results in a gross and grave misapprehension of the very notion of #justice, bifurcates it into what we might call "normative justice", or the processes by which we ensure equality and equity—or at least, by which we attempt to so do—and "retributive justice", the holding that we can somehow "balance" the scales via ex post facto aggression against a perpetrator of harms or torts. Note that I distinguish "retributive" from "reparative".
Reparative #justice seeks to obtain material recompense for those who have suffered harms, losses, exclusions, or unduly discriminatory actions, whether inadvertent or intentional.
Unfortunately in our society, #reparations are all too often incorrectly perceived by past inheritors of social and economic privilege as retributive against them or their interests and well-being.
Any attempt to reduce the privilege of the privileged is fiercely resisted with all the advantages of power they wield.