The Individual Evolution and Accountability

One of the centerpieces of the Individual Evolution, the one for which I often get the most resistance from academics when the subject of personal identity comes up, is the concept of correctional institutions and the penal system.

My personal frustration with American law enforcement and the justice system aside, it's a good question.

If an individual is an accumulation of events, is it fair to punish people? Is incarceration a logical social reaction for the commission of a crime?

My answer is, and always has been, pretty flat:

No.

I don't answer that way because it gets attention. I answer that way because its true.

If the theory, as presented, is correct, and if an individual, as they exist at any given moment, is really the result of an accumulation of events (the product of the pushes and pulls of personal perturbation), it is not productive to simply imprison an individual in an environment even more prone to violent crime than the general population.

This is a serious problem with the theory of incarceration as retribution, which our justice system operates on. It's also one of the reasons why the criminal justice system has failed so miserably at rehabilitating criminals, and why prisons are subject to massive overflow, and are filled with repeat offenders.

The prison system operates on a central premise that I am attempting to undermine. That is:

Each individual has an inherent and constant nature which, while it can be changed under extreme circumstances, is relatively static.

My objection to this is simple. People don't change (generally speaking) when they're subjected to perversity, they become perverse.

Individuals have a tendency to embrace the environment they are a part of, to put themselves in positions that recreate experiences they've had before. There are plenty of reasons that I could justify this (many of them are semi-Freudian and, as a result, absurd, but many are viable, logical and simple).

Victims of pedophilia are far more likely to become pedophiles.

Why?

The logic of prisons suggests that exposing individuals to the harsh nature of hostile environments corrects them (assuming that "correctional facilities" are meant to be correctional, and not retributive; retribution may seem to fit the just prescription, but it does little to address the individual).

Given the prison method of logic it seems that one subjected to the suffering of sexual abuse, who understands how horrible and destructive and traumatic it is would be the last person to commit a sex crime.

This is, simply, not the case.

Rehabilitation, correction, or whatever term we're interested in using, needs to acknowledge that the nature of the individual, the state that the individual is in at the moment and the circumstances which dictate their future acts, are better off if an individual is exposed to circumstances which are, in short, a drastic improvement over the life they had before, not a crippling view of what life might become in a society of criminals (which is the "Dante's Inferno" or "Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come" approach that the prison system is about imposing).

Am I saying we should improve the lives of those who commit crimes?

Yeah. As a matter of fact I am.

What's wrong with a justice system that shows a person who steals a television that they can develop skills and get a job and buy their own television? In my opinion (and you are entitled to disagree, if you feel the urge) the notion of locking a person up so that they are in a small cell with only a few hours of sunshine a day, only to let them out, is more ridiculous.

When they get out, they still want a TV (maybe even more than they used to). They still don't have any money (because they couldn't get a job). Their circumstances are exactly the same as they were before. Why will their decisions be different?

If this sounds utopian, it is in a lot of ways.

There are cases where individuals will have to be incarcerated because they cannot be rehabilitated, their behaviors cannot be changed. It is not a universally effective method, but it is worth trying, given how large scale the failure of the modern techniques has been.

Boredom: An Ethical Quagmire

Boredom is, I think, the most common affliction among modern students. School is boring, homework is boring, and so on. Rarely do we find something inspiring and, as a result, rarely are we happy.

There are some great stories about the problem of stagnation and while I don't believe that it's ever possible to really come to a complete stop, but I know that some moments are more inspiring than others, and I know that we can't always be filled up, or change the course of history like the March on Washington.

The real problem, though, is how do I address boredom?

There are people who tell you that you have to work. You just do. Why? Because you do.

There are reasons to get good grades and reasons to make money, which justifies the boredom in some degree, but can't the boredom be removed? Can't we be productive and happy? Or is what Twain had to say in Pudd'n'head Wilson pretty much right, that we have to do what we'd rather not.

I have always stood firm behind the belief that if something is boring you, then you should look for a way to make it interesting, or question whether or not it is really important for you to be doing it at all. Sometimes the conclusions will get you into trouble. My dad, of course, has never been happy when I've decided that homework is often a waste of time.

The point, though, is not to replace boredom with nothing. Don't fill the void with T.V. for the sake of T.V. (it can be great if you're watching something you care about). Don't use this as an excuse to escape work because you're lazy. This is really where it devolves to the honor system.

Do something that is going to make you think. Watch something that is going to make you think about anything. Download a TED talk that looks interesting or surf youtube looking for videos that expand your brain (whether it's your musical taste or your understanding of science). Link your way through wikipedia articles on physics or history.

Sam Harris talks about changing your moment-to-moment perception of the universe, and that's what we should be shooting for.

If you're bored, like I am, try to fundamentally change the way you think about everything. Trust me, it's a lot of fun.

A Butterfly

My little brother and I watch a show called "Scrubs," mostly the reruns from older seasons on Comedy Central.

I know that the show is a hit or miss for a lot of people, but it's not always about the humor or the emotional content of a show, and sometimes ideas and connections come from weird places. Trust me, a TV show on Comedy Central is one of the last places I expected to be posting on this blog about.

In the third season of Scrubs there is an episode called "My Butterfly." The focal point of the episode is, as the title might suggest, about a butterfly, but more specifically about the way in which even where a butterfly lands can affect someone's entire day.

What the episode tries to emphasize is the little things and, while the narrator might not be entirely aware of this, there are even subtler things than the outcome of a butterfly's landing that impact his day.

Think about it like this:

If someone smiles at you on the bus, you might be in a good mood. Your being in a good mood might cause you to be a bit more forgiving on that particular morning, being particularly tolerant of a late person, whether a co-worker or an employee. Whatever.

Your tolerance of that person might raise their self-confidence and motivate them. Their personal motivation might lead to an improvement in their work (because it's a well known fact that when people are confident they work better) and that might lead to success for the company, for that individual and all those surrounding them. If that is, say, an employee of yours, that's good for you directly, but even if it's a co-worker, the benefit that your co-workers have indirectly on you is significant because they keep things moving in the company, which means you have a job.

Imagine working under conditions where you are happy and everything is going ideally. It's nice, pleasant, even if it's work.

When you are working in conditions that you don't like, it's like your own personal hell.

Sometimes, a smile on a bus or a subway train or on the street is the difference. Sometimes it's a friendly greeting. Sometimes it's a butterfly flapping it's wings a little bit longer.

It's not always that simple, in fact it's usually not that simple, but it remains true that the impact we have on those events, both in benefitting from them and distributing them (made much easier when we are benefitting from them) is incredible.

This is just my opinion, just my outlook, but it seems like it's really important (when you think about things this way) that you are conscious of how others percieve you. Not necessarily in what they think of you as far as how you look and who you are, but in terms of how you feel about them and, as a result, how that makes them feel about themselves and the rest of the world.

That consciousness is something that takes a lot of time (I am fairly sure that I'm going to be working on it the rest of my life, maybe longer if I'm lucky). It's just something to think about when you don't feel like appearing happy, when you don't feel oblidged to do it today, because you don't want to. Think about the impact that it will have on others.

As far as I'm concerned (I'm not the Dalai Lama, so I'm not necessarily concerned the same way a guy like him is, but it's still relevant) karma isn't just about the big things you do and the gifts that you give, physically speaking. It's about how consistently you make people feel welcomed in your own way. It's about how you greet people and your ability to be conscious of how everything you do affects those people because, trust me, it does.

If a butterfly affects people, you can be sure that you do.