Exile: the worst punishment in Family culture
Added 2020-10-07 16:18:18 +0000 UTC Exile is the worst punishment in Family culture.
Normally punishments are about shame and restorative justice. Make someone feel the sting of what they did wrong, understood how it hurt others, and restoratively bring them back into the fold. Usually this involves having your name published, and sometimes an extended "silent treatment"-- which is excruciating for exhuberantly social Family lizards.
But if you do something really terrible-- intentionally hurt someone or betray the family-- you can't be healed or restored. An individual like this can't just be kicked out. They've proven that they're not only unfit for the family they belong to, but unable to participate in Family culture in general. Therefore, they are branded and sometimes mutilated, and kicked out on the street. Marked as a non-person, an outlaw who will never be adopted or absorbed into a new Family. And they won't find much comfort from "normal" nameless either, who usually resent exiles for reinforcing the stereotype of nameless as criminals and deviants.
