Desirability converts ordinary choices into status reports other people read about themselves. Your yes feels like a promotion they can flaunt. Your no feels like a downgrade they need to defend against. In that environment, every boundary you set becomes emotionally loud, even when you whisper it.

Proportionality is why we instinctively feel it’s wrong to, say, banish someone from society just because they failed to pay a parking ticket or because they relapsed into addiction. There’s a deep human intuition that responses to wrongdoing or hardship should not destroy a person’s basic dignity and prospects. The law isn’t always so compassionate, but the ideal persists as a guiding light.

Demanding optimism from someone in crisis is like demanding a patient recover by attitude while we hold back the medicine, backwards and, even when well-meant, cruel in effect.

If punishment isn’t meant to help me understand what I ought not to do, then what was it for?