{"id":3212,"date":"2008-07-23T06:31:34","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T06:31:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soulhuntre.com\/?p=3212"},"modified":"2008-07-23T06:31:34","modified_gmt":"2008-07-23T06:31:34","slug":"the-shaping-of-human-tools-part-1-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/2008\/07\/23\/the-shaping-of-human-tools-part-1-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shaping of Human Tools: Part 1: Introduction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A long time ago I wrote the first drafts of this essay. I was recently cleaning it up in order to post a link to it somewhere and I was no longer happy with the basic structure of the presentation. It felt a bit stilted to me. This is the first major re-write in more than 5 years.<\/p>\n<p>The topic of punishment is a common one in BDSM community discussions. People debate all aspects of it from the definition of the term itself to whether or not it has any place at all in a relationship. Clearly I am one of those who think that punishment does have it\u2019s place so this will be a discussion of how and why I feel that way.<\/p>\n<p>The community debate rally&#8217;s around several lines of argument that come up over and over. Before we look at those it makes some sense to get our definitions and terms clarified.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Definitions<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Punishment (noun): <\/strong>Suffering, pain, or loss that serves as retribution.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reward (noun)<\/strong>: A desirable or pleasurable stimulus or outcome.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Correction (noun): <\/strong>Punishment intended to improve or rehabilitate. Correction is punishment with a specific goal.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Response (noun): <\/strong>The reaction of an individual to a given situation or stimulus.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Conditioning (noun): <\/strong>The process by which a subject comes to associate a desired response with a specific stimulus. The primary tools of conditioning are punishment and reward.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reflex (adjective): <\/strong>An automatic or involuntary response to a stimulus. In this discussion we will lump those literal reflexes of the human animal in with acquired reflexes and what some call \u201cpattern generators\u201d.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Discipline (noun): <\/strong>Actions designed to produce a specific pattern of thought or decision making. Alternately discipline is used to refer to the result of such training.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Training (verb): <\/strong>To discipline or condition another to conform to a set of desired responses.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With these definitions in mind, we can go on to look at the debate within the community about whether any of this is needed at all.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"\/2008\/07\/23\/the-shaping-of-human-tools-part-2-the-debate\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Part 2, The Debate!<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/2008\/07\/23\/the-shaping-of-human-tools-part-3-how-people-respond-and-act\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Part 3, How people respond and act<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/2008\/07\/23\/the-shaping-of-human-tools-part-4-punishment-and-reward\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Part 4, Punishment and Reward<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/2008\/07\/23\/the-shaping-of-human-tools-part-5-the-importance-of-consistency\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Part 5, The importance of consistency<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>note: It is important for you to be aware that I have no special training in any formal sense about these topics. I hold no doctorate degree in psychology or neurobiology; I am not a therapist nor am I an education professional. What I present here is the result of my research and my experience as a trainer and a teacher over the years. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Image note: The associated image is used under the <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0\/deed.en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Creative Commons license at this link<\/em><\/a><em>, and was taken by Alex Lines and <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/ahl\/sets\/72157605883789461\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>posted on Flickr<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A long time ago I wrote the first drafts of this essay. I was recently cleaning it up in order to post a link to it somewhere and I was no longer happy with the basic structure of the presentation. It felt a bit stilted to me. This is the first major re-write in more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":56232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[278],"tags":[286],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/legacyiamsenseiken.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}