I have a problem with recidivism

I've got a big boner for criminology. Yesterday, my contemporary ethics class began a weeklong straddling of the death penalty and the criminal justice system. I was actually enticed to look up from my computer and pay attention and recall everything I'd learned in my criminology class a year ago. All the old questions of crime and punishment, retributive justice versus deterrence, and which school of criminal justice I subscribe to came rushing back in a way I hadn't considered since...

...well, since the last time I found myself being punished. Because punishment is fun!

But I think punishment is much more interesting on the microscopic, everyday level. Nevermind these bigger questions of the death penalty and mandatory incarceration times and things like that. Look around you. How do your friends punish their enemies? How do you punish your enemies?

Hell, how do you punish your friends?

Because we do all of those things on a semi-daily basis. Say your roommate kicks you out of your own room for one evening. Maybe he's smoking meth or humping the girl of your dreams or something. How do you retaliate?

• You could do it the way we did it in the 90's, by being super passive-aggressive and complaining to one another about how much we hate so-and-so. We throw around that PA word a lot in contemporary society. It's one of those pseudo-psychological phrases you learn in middle school and use to sound smart, but it's much more nefarious than that. What you're doing is weakening a person's ability to make trusting bonds in their life. Weakening their friendships. De-constructing their social framework behind their back. Just, you know, realize that the end result of everyone being passive-aggressive is that no one trusts anyone.
• Direct confrontation. I'm pretty used to the passive-aggressive retaliation at this point in my life, but when someone actually comes up to me and asks me dead-on to explain myself, I often fall short of words. And that's part of the punishment: Looking like an idiot. I'd say that direct confrontation only happens on drunk Thursday nights at pub when you're still tired from the week and liable to start a fight.
• There's another, more evil form of direct confrontation that happens by proxy. Instead of telling you to your face that you're a douche, people have been known to get all of their friends to do it for them.
• Being emo. Today's self-pity society has learned to take advantage of other people's feeling by inflicting kamakaze punishment on others. Think passive-aggressive without actually talking to people about your problems. Just hole up, don't talk to anyone, be really sad when you do talk to people, and eventually the person you're trying to punish will feel so incredibly bad that they'll bear the bulk of the psychological burden.
• Being fucking insane. Just get all hopped up on drugs and stumble around campus, mumbling to yourself and requiring a three-man team to put you back to bed. Just like being emo, you will eventually get the attention you're seeking.
  
• Not being at all. The tricky people among us are actually unfazed by petty things like this example. They play the didgeridoo and probably enjoy the outdoors. In the end, they let their inaction and utter lack of hate propel them into a happiness that neither meth nor sex could ever help to achieve.
  
• Then there's the elaborate, movie-style retribution path that really only happens in movies.

The ultimate form of knowing one's self is knowing your retributive side. It's the side that we have to deny because, really, no one likes to admit that they are the same vengeful beast as the rest of us. But we are.

We're all human.