Punishment

I run into an awful lot of people who get upset at somebody, and believe they need to be punished, pretty much because the punisher feels that the other person deserves it, in some great karmic sense. I understand that some people believe people who have been bad deserve, or even need, to be punished, but it just isn't practical to run everything from strictly that perspective.

If I reached across the table and punched you in the middle of a normal conversation, that wouldn't be an effective teaching tool. You might be confused and wonder what you did wrong, which seems like it is on the right track, but human interactions are so complicated that the odds of you selecting precisely what upset me are low. More likely, you would decide that I was mean and irrational, and just picking on you. Punishments are truly meaningless if you don't understand what you are being punished for.

Even worse, sometimes people punish other people after explaining to them what they did wrong, but before the other person believes that what they did was wrong. If somebody doesn't believe a punishment is fair, they're going to resent the punishment or the punisher instead of suddenly agreeing with you. If you're particularly lucky, they might even believe you have been bad and intentionally try to upset you again as a punishment.