Some thoughts evoked by Vanderbilt Rapes

Psychosocial dynamics of rape:
* An animal’s brain is endowed with primitive drives promoting voluntary-motor functions to enlarge the animal’s DNA footprint.  These drives are steered and restrained by cortical processes in and about the frontal lobe, influenced by information on expected risks and rewards.  The bridling of primitive drives involving social interaction is the essence of civilization.
* Sixty years ago, a pious friend remarked that the sex drive needs extra constraints because it’s so strong and potentially harmful.  It clouds the mind and impairs judgement.
* Western culture has now largely abandoned the mating mores that developed over 3000 years.  By age 20, a guy has had 10 years of dirty jokes and video-pornography, designed to erode romance of mating and respect for women.   Hooking up with a different partner weekly isn’t condemned.  College students are getting inebriated and silly early on a Saturday afternoon, hoping to get lucky with somebody before morning.  Other pressures include fear of missing out (FOMO) and desire to belong and be included.  Sports stars may have groupies.
* In that mix, there is a significant probability that, on a given Saturday night, a guy too drunk to consider the legalities and a girl too drunk to consent will do something defined as rape.  When that happens, what would be appropriate punishment?  Would it be just?  Would it be practical?  What else should be done?  More restrictive campus rules?


Mind in a deterministic universe:
* Determinism is the doctrine that all conditions and events (physical and mental) at a given moment flow inextricably from prior conditions and events.  There is an unbroken cause-effect chain from the beginning of time to the present.  Determinists would recognize a society’s right to detain harmful individuals for safety and punish them for deterrence, but they should not indulge in self-righteousness.  Individual learning, recorded history, scientific discovery, laws, mythology and all responses of life forms to inputs are part of the cause-effect chain.
* Accordingly, the Vanderbilt rapes resulted inevitably from conditions and events at the beginning of time.  Our wish that the rapes had not occurred can translate into policies to diminish future rapes.  Reaction to experiences so as to promote favorable ones and avoid unfavorable ones feels like free choice, though it is determined.
* The brain has many synapses and the mind is tumultuous, so we review many possibilities, make many decisions and take many actions that defy simple explanations and seem to be free expressions of ourselves.  Our system of justice is based on that sense of free choice, agency and responsibility.  But the tumult of a moment is determined by tumult prior to that moment -– according to determinism.


Are sins unbridled primitive drives?
Deadly sins:   wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, gluttony
Commandments:  Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not murder,  commit adultery , steal, 
bear false witness against your neighbor, covet.