There are plenty of proposed solutions for the many problems plaguing the world. From what I’ve seen, they broadly fall into one of two categories, which I’ll call the incentives approach and the healing approach. The incentives approach uses a combination of rewards and punishments in an attempt to steer everyone toward certain kinds of behavior and away from other kinds. The healing approach involves looking under the surface to find out why people behave as they do and what can be done to change things at a deeper level. Here is my take on both of them.
If you’ve read my post on punishment, then you might already have guessed that I dislike the incentives approach. There’s far too much pain in the world, and most of the pain humans cause each other (and other species) could be eliminated. Punishment only adds to the pain and keeps existing problems going, so I’m completely opposed to that as a way to change behavior. After all, I want others to treat me well because they care about me, not because they fear what might happen to them if they treat me poorly. How about you?
Even if punishment were dropped altogether and only rewards were used to influence, that is still only a surface-level approach. It focuses much more on the person doing the influencing than on the person being influenced and doesn’t take into consideration the reasons that the person being influenced may not want to do what’s being asked of them. It also tends to make one see others as human doings rather than human beings, which causes all kinds of problems. One of those problems is making it easier to harm, wish harm upon, or be ok with harm inflicted on anyone who doesn’t do as they’re told. Hardly a recipe for true, lasting peace.
In addition to the cruelty, another big downside of the incentives approach is that a system based on punishment and threats of punishments has to keep using them incessantly to get close to the desired outcomes. The question that naturally arises, then, is what happens if the threats and punishments fail or can’t be used? What happens if people who normally can’t get away with intentionally hurting others can suddenly do just that? In such situations, whether they’re families, schools, prisons, or entire countries, there is often violent breakdown and almost always death as folks turn on each other. Those in power and those without power are both often hurt and killed as tons of suppressed anger explodes on everyone and everything in sight. Much of that anger comes from those who’ve been punished and want revenge, which is the same issue created by attempting to solve problems through fighting. There must be a better way, and I believe there is.
The healing approach is quite different. Ultimately, it is all about getting down to the root cause of bad behavior. By finding out the why behind the what, several things become possible. One of them is having compassion for someone who is almost certainly acting out due to some deep-seated pain. That compassion is sometimes enough on its own to inspire a lasting change in behavior. Even if it doesn’t accomplish all of that, it still makes it much easier to find the source of that pain and figure out ways to heal it.
Here’s an example of the different approaches in action. Suppose someone shows up quite late to work for the third day in a row. The incentives approach would be to punish them and threaten to increase the punishment if they’re late again, with little to no interest in what’s making them late. The healing approach would use curiosity and compassion to find out that they’re arriving late because of overwhelming grief due to the death of a loved one that makes it hard for them to sleep, wake up, keep track of time, and so on. Once that underlying pain is discovered, healing becomes possible, which would make it much easier for the person to resume arriving to work on time. If you were showing up late due to grief over losing a loved one, which approach would you prefer to receive?
You might be wondering what makes me think this actually works. Aside from the logic of this idea, there are real-world examples of it in action. There is my own experience with the letting go technique as described in Letting Go by David Hawkins. That has allowed me to heal from some incredibly pain situations (most notably, my dog Sawyer’s death), increased my courage, and made my life far better than it was before I started letting go. Beyond that, there are prisons in some countries that focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment. They seem to have great success even with those who’ve hurt or killed others in brutal ways in that those folks are extremely unlikely to hurt anyone again once they get out of prison. Most powerfully of all, as I’ve written about before, MDMA therapy and psychedelic therapy have shown to be incredibly effective at healing trauma and even totally eliminating PTSD. Anything that heals trauma will release fear and anger, dramatically reduce violence, improve physical health, strengthen relationships with others, etc. That is far more effective than offering rewards for good behavior or punishment for bad behavior. Indeed, when enough negative emotions have been released, you will no longer even wish to do things that hurt others, let alone actually do them.
I have an example of how I used the healing approach with Sawyer one night. Long after I had told him good night and he went to bed in my parents’ room, he came knocking on my door. After I put him back to bed multiple times only for him to continue knocking, following me around, and vocalizing, I realized he probably needed to go outside. I took him out, he took care of some business, and he went to bed just fine once we came back inside. If I had instead used the incentives approach to punish him for getting out of bed, then that probably would have made our relationship worse, and he might have had an accident in the house, which would have been bad for everybody. Thinking about the root cause of his behavior allowed me to figure out the problem and help him solve it, which took hardly any time, improved our relationship, and gave everybody a good night.
Here is another good example of using the healing approach with Sawyer. Another night, also after he had gone to bed, I was about to turn in for the night when I saw him on the foyer floor. Figuring that he was likely there to cool off, I took him and his cool pad back to my parents’ room before going to bed myself. While I don’t know if he went back to the foyer at all during the night, my parents seemed to think that he stayed in their room once he had the cool pad there to cool off as needed. Again, I’m glad I figured out what he was needing and gave it to him rather than feeling upset and punishing him for getting out of bed.
The more I look at the problems in the world, the more I see failures of the incentives approach to solve those problems. Further, the more I see new problems that the incentives approach creates while trying to solve the older problems by using violence in an attempt to bring peace. In contrast, I see incredible success with the healing approach in the few places it is used, which reminds me that peace can only come via peaceful means. While that gives me some hope for a better future, I still worry that so much harm has already been done by incentives that any progress obtained by healing will be too little, too late. I hope I’m wrong about that. Either way, I’ll continue healing myself as best as I can and enjoying the benefits that come along with that approach to life.