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# A Parable of Dental Restitution
- URL: https://ungovernablemanfarmer.ghost.io/a-parable-of-dental-restitution/
- Published: 2026-09-27T00:10:11.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-07T07:45:02.000Z
- Author: Ungovernable Man Farmer

*Punitive Violence in Alternative Societies and a Defense of a Lawless Periphery.*

**CW:** Descriptions grotesque of violence and self harm.

This here story I am about to unfold was told to me by comrades many years ago. I only know of the details second hand and they themselves were unsure of some of the finer points being some distance away as it happened and at least pretending to mind their own business. My account is almost certainly riddled with inaccuracies, but I do trust the people who told it to me and I have seen enough similar events to believe it is true enough to be used as an apocryphal case study.

My comrades were attending a major annual counter cultural gathering and many folks from a wide variety of alternative life styles came from all over the country and some from beyond. My comrades had set up their camp adjacent to were a large group of train kids were congregating. Apparently, at some point of in the evening the train kids determined that one of their own had in the recent past been responsible for another, who was not present, falling or perhaps being pushed off of a moving freight train that they had been riding together. My comrades were unclear as to whether the fall had resulted in death, but were under the impression that there had been serious injury at best. For the sake of the narrative we will assume this was the case. They were also not clear as to whether the charge being levied was intentional harm or serious neglect. For our purposes today, I don’t think it really matters.

I am sure you will not to surprised to learn that train hopping is, in fact, extremely dangerous. Death, loss of limb, or other life altering injuries are extremely common. Crews are usually considered to be responsible for each other and to practice high degrees of team work. Train hoppers and other vagabonds will often make explicit commitment to each other when they decide to travel together. Regardless of intent or degree of actual harm. The culprit, had been charged and been found guilty of breaching a sacred social contract by a “jury of his peers”. The punishment, they determined, was that the offender be made to pull out a number of his own teeth with pliers or face immediate and harsh violence from the group and be expelled from the community, presumably indefinitely. He choose the pliers and did perform the restitution demanded of him. Apparently immediately afterwards, all was well and everyone went back to partying together, including the “guilty” party and those close to the person he had seriously harmed, or at least allowed to be harmed. In this case, swift brutality did, in fact, heal community, quickly and thoroughly. They went from very serous conflict over very real harm to sharing resources, including drugs and alcohol, the most coveted of commodities, in the matter of a few hours.

You may be disgusted or disturbed by all of this. After hearing this story the group that was present, all of whom had sent, most if not all of our adult lives in alternative communities, were split on the morality and efficacy of such vulgar display of “justice”. We did all agree on one thing, though. Everyone involved including the person made to do extremely painful and permanently disfiguring self harm and the people seeking reparations for a dead or severally harmed found family member, would almost certainly rather handle things the way they did than to turn to the law. Even if the legal system was a viable to them, which of course, it was not.

According to my friends recounting this experience, it did not take very long for the accused to accept responsibility for the damage done. It is entirely possible that was due to coercion and not genuine guilt or remorse. If that was the case, I will wager it was not the threat of violence, however real or sever, that was the deciding calculus in the mind of the surrounded defendant. Remember, this was all taking in place in a densely populating encampment of several thousand people. Obviously my friends were close enough to observe what happening and they reported that they were not alone. He could have run, he could have screamed for help. Many traveling people stay perpetually armed to some degree, he could have attempted to fight his way out or at least stalled long enough for intervention. It is fair to say he had several options available to him to avoid unilateral violence and I think it is fair to assume, that if he had survived The Long Road long enough to find himself in this situation, his survival skills where honed enough that he had considered all of them and decided against any. The real enforcement mechanism being deployed by the community in the was not the threat of physical violence, it was the threat of exile, and that, in my opinion is a beautiful thing.

The traveling life, it has often been told, is an extremely hard and dangerous one. There are predators around every corner. Police officers and other rapists, thieves, and murders to name but a few. Drugs addiction is ubiquitous as are poverty, trauma and alienation and most people who choose to live this way where dealing with all of that before they fled mainstream society. Not to mention the harsh material conditions of being unhoused. Access to community, networks of support, guarded information and technical skill sets can very often be literally a matter of life and death. Beat downs are generally survivable, especially when there are numerous witnesses. Facing the perils of life on the margins alone, might not be. All of this, of course on top of the human condition of being social animals, we all experience. The fact that our boy decided that social belonging was more valuable than than pieces of his own body is a testament to the value of community and solidarity as bastion against a cruel and unforgiving reality. In fact, this entire tribunal convened in response to an inciting incident that was at its core, to some extent, a breakdown of that very same communal support.

It is also important to acknowledge while moralizing such an archaic ritual, everyone involved was to some extent a consenting adult. That is so say they had all at some point knowingly entered into a community held together by a deviant social contract that stipulated violence as an acceptable enforcement mechanism in some circumstances. “The Unwritten Book Of the Road” as the greatest moral philosopher of our time once put it. To be fair, it is likely some or all of them were had fled abusive or poverty stricken homes and would rather have been in a safe and loving household at that very moment. That being said, none of them had been kidnapped from their cradles by a freight train as an infant and all of them had chosen to congregate in that camp that day. It is even entirely possible the defendant was aware something like this might happen They had all chosen not to settle down into shitty entry level job and inexpensive living condition. Often a miserable existence that no one deserves, but one that the vast majority of human beings prefer to being unhoused. They could have stayed in their home towns or cities as the vast majority of unhoused people do. They had all chosen a lifestyle of danger and adventure outside of the reach of the law. Most importantly, they had all decided to do it together.

The main take away in my opinion, is not an analyst of the morality of perpetuating the cycle of violence or effectiveness of ad hoc tribunals as a mechanism to maintain social cohesion. It is that any form of accountability process, even an extremely broken one, could take place in a culture defined by transience and abject defiance of the laws of the state and common social standards. Even that the condemned would to some extent willingly, submit, at great personal cost, despite having outs available to him. 

There is a reason “frontier justice” has generally so sever historically and maritime law is so strict to this day. Where is no organized community safety or social enforcement, predators can operate unchecked and there is no remedy for harm intentional or otherwise. When people come together to do those things without an authority telling them to, and sometimes explicitly telling them not to, that is the bedrock on which new civilizations are formed, even if it is often a rocky start.

As one freight train enthusiast famously put it “We’re kids making model of a world that we might want to live in.” I want to live in a world without carceral violence, where a communities of care can resolve disputes and amend harm equitably and competently. I deeply hope future generations will see our current “justice” system just as barbaric as most of us see punitive disfigurement now. I also deeply believe and to some extent hope, that there will be spaces beyond that more just society. I am very certain that there will be. Every City on the Hill will always have a seedy underbelly. Every brave new Utopia will have limitation to their zone of control. I imagine when everyone is reasonably safe and all needs are met there will be far fewer people falling through the cracks of society, but there will always be a select few that jettison themselves intentionally. Most of them will probably come back to the fold after they have had their fun and found themselves or whatever. A few might perish out there. As for the ones who stay, those who get lost in the woods and choose to build a house out there; its probably in everyone’s if they are organized to some extent and practice some form accountability, even if its not what you and I would find acceptable. As one of our best torchbearers said “On the border of Utopia, I’ll toast to anarchy.”

I hope my grandchildren raise their children in a just society with a with a fair and proportional legal system were punitive violence is unthinkable. I hope that then all of the symptoms of hatred and artificial scarcity that cause young people to flee the barbarity of civilization today have been eliminated. I hope that at least one of my numerous great-grandchildren has a courageous and wild heart that drives them to run away anyway and that they chart their own destiny. I hope they find community with other wild and free spirits who make their own rules together. If you are that grandchild, or anyone else for that matter, I love you, I’m proud of you, and you got this. Just stay off whatever passes for dope these days and ever tell the police a single word. Most importantly, forge alliance with as many trustworthy and competent comrades as you possibly can. If of any of them ever betray you, seek peaceful resolution. Lean on the wisdom and support of community if at all available. If those that harmed are you are unwilling to participate in healing, it maybe because they are suffering their own trauma wrought by the chronic pain of poor dental hygiene. As professional extraction is sometimes necessary and often unavailable to many at the best of time in our society, it may take a village to ensure everyone is in the right condition for reconciliation.