And I got to thinking: who does jail “correct”? That jail, at that moment, was probably filled with some combination of screwed up scared kids, psychopaths, and the continuum between them.
Who winds up in jail? Disproportionately, the children of single mothers who grow up in poverty brought on in large measure by only having one income, and that often largely from the government.
These kids have major psychological problems, and jail does nothing to “correct” this. They are in pain, lonely, confused, ignorant. Often, they have dropped out of school because no one ever taught them to value it, no one ever spent time, among other things, teaching them to read; and because their wounds make it hard for them to concentrate and sit still.
What makes sense to me is that anyone accused of a crime is put through due process, and, when convicted, subjected to a psychological evaluation. People who are not psychotic, who are in states of severe but treatable trauma, are given treatment. When they are relatively “healed”, such that it seems likely they will not commit crimes again, they are released.j
Note: this has nothing to do with reconciling their crime with their sentence. Horrible decisions can be made under the influence of drugs, despair, and stupidity.
Untreatable psychopaths, of course, we never release. And for capital crimes, why not let the criminals themselves decide what they want: a lifetime in prison, or death?
These are random, as yet unorganized thoughts, but don’t you think our system could be more intelligent? Can we admit in principle that we are in fact a society, and that even given our diversity, a certain amount of consideration should be given to each of us?
Perhaps this looks socialist. I don’t view it that way. What I want to do is expand the tribe in ways socialists would never be able to.
And Emerson:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Obama wants a war in Syria. Why his handlers want this, I don’t know. The best guess I have seen is so that the Gulf can build a natural gas pipeline across Syria–that Assad is presumably resisting in return for Russian favors, since Russia would lose marketshare and margin with new competition.
So, having failed to make his case a year or so ago that we should be supporting the very ISIS bastards and psychopaths he now wants to bomb, he is now saying he will bomb them anyway, in Syria, in what Assad has said will be an act of war. If he is smart, Assad will let Obama do this. But if ego or stupidity get in the way, he might use some of his Russian anti-aircraft missiles against us. Then Obama gets his pretext, maybe.
This seems doubtful to me, though. Do we really want a situation in which we are fighting BOTH sides in Syria? I would not support a war even in those circumstances. I personally don’t understand how we can’t confine our activities to Iraq, which we more or less assumed custody for when we invaded. What made sense to me seems, maybe, to be what is happening, which is somewhere between a few hundred to a few thousand Spec. Ops types wandering around sniping, calling in air strikes, and occasionally laying ambushes, optimally with local troops. ISIS thinks it is legit. A thousand dead on their side from people actually willing and able to fight would change their tune.
But the people behind Obama live in realms of abstraction. They do not do practical things for a living. They are not responsible at the end of the day for a work performance whose utility they can demonstrate. They are functional imbeciles, and there is no containing the stupidity of determined idiots, when backed by the power of America’s CEO.
Just putting it out there. Let’s hope an understanding of their very, very fragile standing in the polls, and the strong likelihood of getting their asses handed to them in November, keeps all of these turncoat sacks of shit on the straight and narrow.
But psychologically, can we not equate the two? The core stipulation of Individualism as a creed is precisely that individuals are exactly that: non-dividable; indivisable. Surely no social autonomy can be postulated without individual autonomy? Surely no society can be responsible without individuals who are responsible? Surely no large morality can be built without individual morality?
Did Sade individuate? No, of course not. He was only a fraction of a human being. I suppose humans are divisible, but not without violence. He wanted to be buried in the wild, where weeds would cover up all evidence of his failure.
I was watching some kids play tag today. Given my newfound need to reconcile animal instincts with our subjective sense of autonomy, it occurred to me that these sorts of games are not all that different than the games we see animals play, which teach them needed skills.
Then it occurred to me that in efforts to suppress these instincts, to suppress all traces of violence and aggression, that we more or less teach passivity and following restlessness. We suppress things that need healthy expression, without which we cannot be fully human.
We have all seen one or another of sundry visions of a dystopia which seeks to mute instincts, to teach humans to wage peace by becoming, effectively, automotons. Surely this is imbecility?
And I think of sacrifice, which is an old topic of interest to me. When I was studying Vedic myths, I argued that several very important ones (the Purusasukta, and a hymn to Soma I can’t find at the moment) echoed very old practices of human sacrifice. It is certain that the old texts call for a human head underneath the Agnicayana altar (in a modern performance of it, the Brahmins decided to use a squash, if memory serves.)
Sacrifice is a way of incorporating structured violence which feeds the animal instincts, without allowing it unregulated, free reign. It is, of course, a very poor way of doing it, but primitive peoples knew no better.
I look at myself, and the progress I have made by learning to separate sensations from emotions. I am convinced this is the path forward. But each of us must walk it in our own way, and that is exactly contrary to socialist notions of “science”, and a “best way”, and a knowledge elite.
And I think of the terrible horrors of totalitarianism. It is precisely an echo of human sacrifice, of notions that the collective good must supercede that of individuals. But where “primitive” cultures knew when to stop, when they allowed themselves to feel emotions of expressed rage and violence, and to let them burn, and they subside in a ritual order, the Fascisms do not. They come to be in the suppression, consciously, of primal instincts in favor of allegedly higher abstractions. And thus the violence does not have a cathartic effect; it has no end. It cannot end. It can never accomplish an actual purpose which cannot be named.
And this is the role of Satanism, which is clearly connected to Leftism. It constructs a ritual order, of CONSCIOUS cruelty, sadism, violence, hate. But even there I think we know too much for it to work. I cannot quite express this sense in words, but I feel it is a creed doomed to failure. It is a rationalizing of instincts that by that very process are separated out. A naivete is needed, which is gone forever, barring global catastrophe and global cultural regression.
No: we are at a time when we can and should grow beyond childish things. Everything that everyone wants can be had. It can be had consciously, and fulfillingly.
Oh, I have plans, but who knows if they will come to fruition?
I had an interesting experience the other day that I interpreted as a synchronicity. I was driving in the countryside, thinking I was making progress, and the thought intruded “But there is always death”. I may die, or be sideswiped with some experience I cannot predict, and at that EXACT INSTANT a bird flew into my car, which was going about 60 miles an hour, and no doubt died instantly. In all my years of driving, I have never killed a bird, and have only once ever killed anything (an armadillo in the middle of the highway in the middle of the night in north Texas.)
I had another odd experience today I don’t feel like going in to, but will say simply that this world is connected in extraordinarily interesting ways, and I hope that as a civilization we at some point come to realize this, and act on it.
People are a blessing; so too is solitude.
Difficulty is a blessing; so too is ease.
You could build quite a few good lives with these primary colors.