Here is where subversion also exposes a core weakness of the punishment/fear model and the domination model in general. Nothing had its own importance, its own value, its own need for attention. Everything had to do with what the dominator saw. Nothing mattered but getting caught—or not.
Rebellions of this seemingly subtle kind and of all kinds motivate us to become aware of the unquestioned meaning perspectives about punishment and behavior. When we do, we discover that punishment works in opposition to what most if not all of us want for children and for adults for that matter.
Speaking reflectively and honestly, many students reported relationships with employers that were marked by the same sort of domination and rebellion: "You can't talk that way to me!", "You can go . . . yourself!", and "You can take this job and shove it!" Some even reported rebelling when there was no particular domination; they just had the feeling of needing to defend themselves against it anyway. When that feeling came up in interviews and got expressed, which it did more times than not, these students recognized that it did them very little good. They saw that their rebellion held sway over their actions for their own good and their responsibility for choices they had made.
When we think about how a becoming self operates freely through perception, learning, and action, we know that to participate fully in that continual process, a child and an adult need to take responsibility for her/his actions and the full scope of consequences of those actions. The more personally responsible we become, the freer we become. If we want freedom, we take responsibility and when we take responsibility, we encounter our freedom.[30]
Punishment and domination separate children and us all from any real relationship with how we choose to act and from the consequences of those acts. When we listen to the lessons taught by domination, punishment, and fear, we don’t concern ourselves with what we have done. We only concern ourselves with whether we get caught doing that act, whether we get the blame for the act, whether punishment follows the act. When asked what they did wrong, the classic, if not clichéd response from many of those incarcerated is: "I got caught." This reflects no sense of personal responsibility, of any real relationship to actions or consequences. "I got caught" only concerns to the response of the punishing and dominating authority to an action not to the action itself. In that sense, most if not all crime, every breach of conduct finds in its roots the impulse to rebel against the dominating authority.
Because of the pervasiveness of our feelings about domination and punishment, we work at the avoidance of discovery even as we know we act in a way contrary to law and to a positive living environment. Many people choose to keep a police radar detector in their cars. An Internet search for "radar detector" brought up a company which displays this motto: "We're always helping you 'stick it to the man.'" Someone with a detector knows they commit a crime, do the wrong thing when they speed. They know that but deflect any personal responsibility for the act by placing the onus of their own action on the discovering agency of "the man," a police officer whose main job comes in hunting down speeders on the highway. As discussed before, aggressive driving at any speed brings real consequences, but our relationship with those consequences break down in face of our overweening relationship with the dominator and the dominator's instruments of control and punishment. By making this meaning perspective a deep part of our consciousness, the dominator separates us from our fully responsible self, takes away our freedom to see the world, learn from what we see, and act freely in response. Everything colored by punishment and fear separates us from our relationship to our acts and our becoming self.