La violenza precipita nella prigione maschile – Dopo che i detenuti venivano insegnati sull’antica filosofia greca di stoicismo
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14878957/Violence-mens-prison-inmates-ancient-Greek-philosophy-Stoicism.html
di ThatchersDirtyTaint
12 commenti
I’m somewhat surprised that the Daily Mail don’t seem to be against this. But if it works it works, and anything that reduces violence is good.
Alternative [source](https://platosacademycentre.substack.com/p/transforming-prisons-with-stoicism)
It should also be taught in schools to help with the anxiety issue with kids and teens.
Society overall lacks an appreciation for classical theory on motivation and happiness, but it might be returning as the luxury consumer goods boom is now faced by largely unassailable economic constraints on people.
I would say, for anybody interested, to not only look into classical stoicism, but also to look into the Humanism movement/era of psychology, primarily including the theoretical contributions of Fritz Perls and Carl Rogers.
‘You cannot achieve happiness. Happiness happens, and is a transitory stage. Imagine how happy I felt when I got relief from bladder pressure; how long did that happiness last?’
– Fritz Perls.
But the issue, as psychologist Steven Pinker rightfully identified, is that humans actually have an innate, primordial aversion towards meaningful psychology and neurology because it risks compromising the concept of free will. As his view has notably been paraphrased: ‘The fear is that biology will debunk all that we hold sacred’.
It all sounds very nice, but the article offers no evidence or analysis to back the claims beyond asserting that lots of prisoners are attending the classes. I wasn’t expecting a randomised controlled trial with rigorous analysis, but anything at all would have been nice.
almost as if we start educating and treating prisoners with respect, they stop being violent…weird that…
Good news, however for the love of god please don’t teach them about Diogenes.
Philosophy in general is something that should be taught more.
It naturally encourages better critical thinking. Whereas trying to teach critical thinking directly just leads to stubborn people saying “I already know how to think critically”.
Yeah I’m sure some handpicked platitudes from Meditations are absolutely transformative.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect perhaps? Basically, could the lessons be about anything but having someone talk to them like students rather than prisoners would be good for them? Is what I’d be interested in knowing
I think the ancients would not be surprised. Their basic attitude was that people can be *taught* moral thinking.
There are certainly exceptions to that, but maybe even in prison, the exceptions are not the rule.
If we all swapped religion for philosophy society and politicians might get somewhere.