{"conf": "justice", "generated_at": "2026-04-26T08:00:02.954878Z", "threads": [{"num": 1, "subject": "Introductions", "response_count": 21, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "autumn", "date": "Fri, May 22, 1998 (01:30)", "body": "Woo woo! First one to arrive at justice..."}, {"response": 2, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Fri, May 22, 1998 (02:01)", "body": "are you going to share? shall there be justice for all?"}, {"response": 3, "author": "autumn", "date": "Sat, May 23, 1998 (22:35)", "body": "Yes, and I'm willing to throw in liberty too! I'm just that kind of person!"}, {"response": 4, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Wed, Jun  3, 1998 (15:31)", "body": "MISSISSIPPI LEGISLATURE 1998 Regular Session To: Judiciary A By: Representative Moak House Bill 196 AN ACT TO AUTHORIZE THE REMOVAL OF A BODY PART IN LIEU OF OTHER SENTENCES IMPOSED BY THE COURT FOR VIOLATIONS OF THE CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES LAW; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES. BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI: SECTION 1. In lieu of any other penalty prescribed by law, the court may allow any person who is convicted for a violation of the Controlled Substances Law to have a body part removed. The convicted person and the court must agree on which body part shall be removed. SECTION 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after July 1, 1998."}, {"response": 5, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Wed, Jun  3, 1998 (15:32)", "body": "It died in committee, according to the Mississippi Legislature page."}, {"response": 6, "author": "jgross5", "date": "Wed, Jun  3, 1998 (15:51)", "body": "it's all true i was there they were goin' over it in committee and everything and i just happen to pull out from under my cardigan, a body part of mine that i had handy it was completely detached it was one of those kind that i hear often get made into wallets when they saw it, they basically all said in unison, \"HOLY jeezez, let's not do this. not such a good idea after all. strike it from any further proceedings. Gawud, we need a keg! it's so friggin hot today! Mildred, is that Chester out there wheelin' in the beer? Well get the door!\""}, {"response": 7, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Jun  3, 1998 (16:26)", "body": "justice... raise your hand if you think justice is a synonym for fairness?? nope. wrong. not in this country baby. shall I vent about the inequality in sentencing, in due process, in appeallate courts. shall I go on about corruption (even though I have zero proof), apathy and assorted hodge-podge. or shall I march my stomping, child-advocating feet over to 'vent at will' and do it there?"}, {"response": 8, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Wed, Jun  3, 1998 (16:34)", "body": "start a topic on Child Advocacy I say"}, {"response": 9, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Jun  4, 1998 (14:13)", "body": "it'll get me all worked up"}, {"response": 10, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Jun  4, 1998 (14:26)", "body": "hot and sweaty like or moist and mean like?"}, {"response": 11, "author": "riette", "date": "Thu, Jun  4, 1998 (14:33)", "body": "Good idea, Wer - no, not the moist and mean bit. The Child advocacy bit. I know nothing about it, but I know kids don't have it exactly fair in this world. It's because their fate lies in adult hands."}, {"response": 12, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Jun  4, 1998 (15:36)", "body": "so we can all sit around and gripe about it or actually attempt to make a difference. No topic needed."}, {"response": 13, "author": "autumn", "date": "Fri, Jun  5, 1998 (22:59)", "body": "No lack of proof either that it's needed...."}, {"response": 14, "author": "TIM", "date": "Sun, Nov 15, 1998 (12:22)", "body": "Actually children are just the tip of the iceburg. The system is set up to prey on the defenceless."}, {"response": 15, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Mon, Apr 19, 1999 (15:38)", "body": "I would like regulars of this conference invite to visit the International Conflicts conference here on the Spring: http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/InternationalConflicts/all This conference is dedicated to the disputes between groups all over the world, be that social, cultural, political or ethnical differences."}, {"response": 16, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Jul 12, 1999 (10:22)", "body": "I've recently begun to analyze our system of justice. I found the bug in the code. It's at Line 1 of the Code of Justice. They forget Line 0. If they put in Line 0, the rest of it isn't needed."}, {"response": 17, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Tue, Jul 13, 1999 (03:41)", "body": "and what should Line 0 read?"}, {"response": 18, "author": "moulton", "date": "Wed, Jul 14, 1999 (11:37)", "body": "Line #0 should be an entry into the Best Practices for Civility. The Civility Code. Uncommon common sense."}, {"response": 19, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (00:34)", "body": "common sense seems to be most uncommon amongst the people that surround me daily..."}, {"response": 20, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (00:40)", "body": "It is the least common commodity world wide and make a lie of the very name."}, {"response": 21, "author": "moulton", "date": "Tue, Jul 20, 1999 (18:08)", "body": "That is correct. Common sense is uncommon. Little by little science uncovers another element of common sense, proving how elusive it is. justice conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 2, "subject": "'Hypocrisy' an essay by Timothy McVeigh", "response_count": 6, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "autumn", "date": "Fri, Jul 24, 1998 (23:05)", "body": "Is this how he spends his time on death row?"}, {"response": 2, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Fri, Jul 31, 1998 (02:01)", "body": "didja read it?"}, {"response": 3, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Tue, Nov 23, 1999 (16:00)", "body": "Sorry, Host, but I could not get the link to work. I did want to read it, but am a little late, no?! There appears to be no place else to put the following, but it belongs in the Justice served??? topic, if there was one: Four Jailed for Killing Man, Stewing Flesh MOSCOW (Reuters) - A court Monday jailed four people in the western Russian town of Pskov for killing one of their friends, chopping him into pieces and trying to sell his flesh as stewed meat. Interfax news agency quoted the Pskov city court as saying the four beat up their friend and then killed him in a drunken brawl. His body was cut up and his flesh boiled before being handed over as fresh meat to another friend for canning. The four killers were given sentences ranging from five-and-a-half to 18 years while the receiver of the ``meat'' went free as the court was not convinced she knew where it came from, Interfax said."}, {"response": 4, "author": "terry", "date": "Wed, Nov 24, 1999 (12:50)", "body": "Man, times are getting tough over there."}, {"response": 5, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Nov 24, 1999 (13:03)", "body": "Bad enought they jailed a guy here with 16 kids for stealing food to feed them (someone should tell him what's causing them!)...times are grim, indeed over there, and that guy was their friend. Wonder what they do to people they don't like?! Perhaps I don't need to know..."}, {"response": 6, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Nov 24, 1999 (13:05)", "body": "Little wonder no one over there is concerned about the Y2K problem. Life is so grim that they cannot imagine it getting any worse. We shall see... justice conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 3, "subject": "Media Bypass - The Uncensored National News", "response_count": 77, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Fri, Jul 24, 1998 (12:29)", "body": "Their mission is To educate Americans with regard to their unalienable rights guaranteed by our Constitution. To investigate and publish the relevant news that is whithheld by the mainstream media. To expose and raise public awareness of misinformation and injustices perpetrated by government. To advance alternatives and support those working to preserve and restore traditional American values. http://www.4bypass.com/"}, {"response": 2, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Jul 14, 1999 (17:10)", "body": "I think this Topic is one of the most important on all of The Spring. However where do we in the US get free and unadulterated press? Ever listen closely to Radio Free America? At least they insert a quiet disclaimer stating that the news contained herein reflects the policies of the current administration. Good luck. I seldom get my news from the US press. The BBC and Deutche Welle are two favorites. How do we know what the agenda of the group mentioned above really is. Apparently, each of us see things differently. Therein lies the rub."}, {"response": 3, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (00:37)", "body": "that's easy...you read everything, make an informed decission, and spread your own disinformation..."}, {"response": 4, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (00:44)", "body": "And, soon you also believe your disinformation when it makes its way back to you from some other \"reliable' source. Isn't technology wonderful."}, {"response": 5, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (02:07)", "body": "Bearing accurate witness is neither easy nor safe. In many organizations it is illegal to bear accurate witness."}, {"response": 6, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (02:15)", "body": "The Secret Societies and the Gnomes of Zurich and Trilateral Commission are all out there. Perhaps it is best to hole up in your corner of the world and make it as good as you can...or bury your head in the sand...or be like Chicken Little. The world is a scary place!"}, {"response": 7, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (02:43)", "body": "but then I couldn't manipulate those groups as easily..."}, {"response": 8, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (02:48)", "body": "You have to join them. Become one of them. Think like them. By that time it will be difficult to know who is manipulating whom. But, is that not the nature of the challenge? Too easy, and it would be no fun!"}, {"response": 9, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (02:51)", "body": "similar, yes"}, {"response": 10, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (02:57)", "body": "Your other option is to infiltrate them. Highly hazardous to your health and all those you know and love, but incredibly exciting."}, {"response": 11, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (03:05)", "body": "and last, and possibly the most fun, is to convince them that they need to come to you..."}, {"response": 12, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (03:09)", "body": "...as a consultant with an exhorbitant amount of money flowing from them to you for the privilege of having you around."}, {"response": 13, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (03:12)", "body": "see, that's the part I'm still working on..."}, {"response": 14, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (07:49)", "body": "Or to keep you quiet. Think of the tobacco industry hiring scientists studying the dangers of tobacco smoking, so that they could fund their studies and shelve their reports."}, {"response": 15, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (11:57)", "body": "That whole deal makes me most curious. I have a whole bunch of chemists in my family of one sort or another, and all are active in research (though not in the tobacco industry.) Not a single one would even think of negative research, let alone the transmission of faulty data. That is the ultimate sin in research and is little more that intellectual prostitution, IMO."}, {"response": 16, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (12:03)", "body": "And, to do the research and to know it is not being published makes it that much more insidious. Can scientists be bought off so easily? They must have been well paid, indeed. The very idea rebels against everthing I believe in."}, {"response": 17, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 15, 1999 (23:21)", "body": "I publish all my research. But to gain that freedom, I had to give up my job. Even when I worked at Bell Labs, I was not free to publish my findings. Now I do publish it, and it frankly alarms some people. I don't really know why, but it does."}, {"response": 18, "author": "moulton", "date": "Sun, Jul 25, 1999 (11:20)", "body": "Letter From John Hines to Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine Senator Snowe: MAINE: The Way Life Should Be Perhaps not. Today at Brunswick smiling sailors will welcome little children to climb aboard killing machines. They will smile as they invite the children to pull the triggers of the killing machines. The children will be dazzled by the majesty of their moment with the killing machines. No one will tell the children of the blood, the wrecked lives, the destroyed sewer systems, the disatrously devastated chemical plants, the shambles of electric plants, of civilization's shards broken by these killing machines. Today we lie to the children of Maine. Lies. Official lies. The government's lies. Lies to the children of Maine. That isn't the way life in Maine should be. You responded, twice, quite clearly that when you vote to fund the School of the Americas, you vote to support democracy in Latin America. What would my sweet dead friend, Juan Moreno S.J., respond? What democracy! The democracy of the rich against the poor^Kscarcely the only democracy Latin America knows? What would the campesinos of Chiapas respond? The democracy of the paramilitaries trained and armed by the military trained in low level warfare against their own people by the cadre of the School of the Americas? To pretend, to assert in the boldest language, that the School of the Americas is training soldiers to defend democracy is the pretense of a lie. The way of lies is not the way life in Maine should be. You created the funding for three additional destroyers, destroyers the Navy itself did not want, to be built at Bath Iron Works. The Navy brags that the Aegis destroyers are the most lethal weapon in the world. They are designed to fire nuclear-tipped Cruise missiles to destroy massive numbers of human beings. They are designed to fire laser tipped Cruise missiles to destroy with dazzling precision unfriendly embassies and other unfriendly assets. We fired over 3,000 of these in Yugoslavia. We threw three billion dollars up in smoke and wreckage. Isn't all of this military hardware about profit and the personal power of the few, like you? Aren't we lying to the people of Maine about the real Motives for building this war machine? The way of lies is not the way life in Maine should be. Awkwardly yours, Copy: Bill Slavick, Pax Christi, Maine John Hines 20 Green Street Gorham, Maine 04038"}, {"response": 19, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Sun, Aug  1, 1999 (17:28)", "body": "My favorite definition of propaganda is: A lie that is repeated over and over and over...until it is accepted as truth. Having just studied Communications I can tell you what young hopeful reporters are told. Just report what you have heard...do not question it's validity. What happened to the reporters who went out looking for the truth? I have a dear friend by the name of Neil Boggs who was a news reporter on the national, Whitehouse, and International level. During the Regan administration, deregulation opened the door to corporate rule of the media. He showed us a film in which some famous news reporters were asked how this would affect them. Neil walked out of the business, but others were unwilling to give up their careers and the cushy paychecks...and decided to play by the new rules. Have you ever called the media when you saw gross injustice? In Northern New Mexico, a plant moved upstream from a pueblo many of the children are now being born with birth defects and people are suddenly going blind from the contaminated water. The media is not interested. It is not in the interest of the corporation to let this become mainstream knowlege. I work at a public radio station...we refuse to take money from any corporate group...but ours is not an easy battle to keep a balance of voices out there. We are at best, a consevative/liberal station. Why? Because we are housed at the University. My father used to tell me.... read both sides of any issue...then make up your own mind. I studied Documentary Theory and the main message we were taught was that there is no unbiased way to present an issue...there is only the truth that you manipulate to present your case."}, {"response": 20, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Mon, Aug  2, 1999 (01:29)", "body": "Oh please. \"Having just studied Communications I can tell you what young hopeful reporters are told. Just report what you have heard...do not question it's validity.\" I've been one of those nasty journalists for 25 years, Debra, and for the last 12 of those years I've been teaching \"young hopeful reporters\" at a large western university how to do public affairs reporting. I also teach media ethics. What you say here is simply not the truth."}, {"response": 21, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Mon, Aug  2, 1999 (02:51)", "body": "It was my experience in the classes I took. Perhaps it was because the department was being let go to pot. That was part of the reason I decided to deversify in my studies. My reaction was the same as yours when the profesors in question said that. I was told that I would never be hired if I insisted on digging below the surface."}, {"response": 22, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Mon, Aug  2, 1999 (03:04)", "body": "I wish I could introduce you to Neil Boggs. He had the film where the nationally known figures talked in length about these things. He has retired and moved to Yucatan. He showed us film clips to show how the media manipulated the pictures we saw. A very famous one was a Viet Nam officer executing a man who was on his knees by shooting him in the head. This footage was used to stir up public opinion...when in reality the officer had just come to his village and found his family slaughtered by the man in question. Nothing was said by the media about why the man had gone nuts and done this horrible thing. Another were early pictures of Abby Hoffman at peace rallies. The illusion that their were hundreds of people there was created by doing tight shots. Neil had all the footage and in the long shots you could see there were only about 50 people there. An interesting footnote...Neil's house was burned down and all his personal film archives were lost. I did not in any way mean to demean your character. I had good teachers and bad in my departments. Neil was one of the best as far as I was concerned because he showed how media (even film) can be used to create images that are not as honest as we would like to think."}, {"response": 23, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Aug  2, 1999 (05:56)", "body": "For all the brouhaha in places like Utne, no more than 100 people were reading those conferences, notwithstanding the much ballyhooed claim that Utne was the largest online community in North America. That's a lot of tsuris and grief over an audience of barely 100 souls."}, {"response": 24, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Mon, Aug  2, 1999 (10:37)", "body": "Wow! So it is more of the bigger, better, faster, new and improved hype that is used in commercials? I have a freind who was hooked on these pyramid schemes. A very intellegent man in most cases. He would bring these promo films over that he was sold by and which he used to sell potential customers with. One of the films was for NSA water filters, The gentleman they used to speak was a voice all America grew up with because he had been the narrator on tons of Walt Disney films. (I didn't know the m n's name but I immediately knew him from his Walt Disney narrations.) I tryed to explain the subconscious effect this had on the average person's mind. The tune used was also an American icon. \"Cool Clear Water\" As I told him, whoever put the film together, had been a master at subconscious manipulation. Advertising agencies know that if they can trigger the ego, trigger some basic human need, that they have a better chance of roping you into their agenda. So Utne uses ego, come talk to the nation. Have a voice that is heard. (grin)"}, {"response": 25, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Mon, Aug  2, 1999 (12:27)", "body": "I hit some WRONG KEY and went backwards here, and when I went forward again I had lost the whole post I was carefully writing to respond to you, Debra, so please forgive me for not taking the time to recreate it with quotes, which takes more minutes than I've got today. Damn. OK. What I tried to say to you, Debra, was that you didn't \"demean my character\" -- you said something about what all student journalists are taught that was false, and I corrected it. I regret that any journalists might be taught not to dig into a story, but I acknowledge that there might be some professors out there who would tell this the lie that they won't be hired if they do that. May those professors retire early and move on to creating other works of fiction that are less harmful."}, {"response": 26, "author": "moulton", "date": "Tue, Aug  3, 1999 (09:12)", "body": "Fiction is a great scam. You get to tell the truth by pretending to lie."}, {"response": 27, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Tue, Aug  3, 1999 (09:46)", "body": "Fiction is cool. You get away with telling the truths others lie about. You can get people to follow your argumentation, reading about matters they would not even talk about, much less discuss constructively. Yet, here you can seed ideas they would frown upon in conversation or reading the newspaper. May I refer to e.g. the writing of Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac to support this stand? Or the allegories by B. Kort? Or works of T.C. Boyle? Or J. Swift? Do not demonize the tools. It is the tool-bearers and their causes you must look into."}, {"response": 28, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Tue, Aug  3, 1999 (14:22)", "body": "and their toolboxes, as well..."}, {"response": 29, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Wed, Aug  4, 1999 (11:40)", "body": "... and while you're at it, check out their lunchboxes, too, and don't miss to investigate the thermos!"}, {"response": 30, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Aug  5, 1999 (01:33)", "body": "This isn't about the guy taking wheel barrows filled with sand home each night, it is?"}, {"response": 31, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Aug  5, 1999 (12:30)", "body": "(Quick, Wer- duck! Marcia's here to find out who dug up the beaches! Put that darn shovel down, man!) Ahem - Hi Marcia! Naw, it's about some ole nasty geezers North of Response 20, and their evil impact on young enthusiastic impressionable minds. Basically the academic tragedy one can witness so often... It also is about misunderstandings, manipulative use of media - by the way, did you hear about the media consultancy that worked for the UCK in Kosovo? Media warfare is really interesting and really real, too!-, and about how evil the establishment's tricks are. It could also have been about the tricks, how to discover and evaluate them, if the trick's ethical value changes with the cause it is applied for and with its users - or even about if these tricks have ethical values by itself, or if they are rather like tofu, just tasting like whatever sauce they're in. Also it could have been about the use of fables and allegories from Aesop to Kort, about what these fictionous works might be useful for and about what not. Perhaps it could have been about something like how not every comparison that sounds authoritative and rational is truly adequate and fitting, you know, how stuff like that can be distorted without external trace to support one's point in an argument. But that wasn't in the lunchb-, in the air, right. Just wasn't. Too bad. Nothing here... (Wer! Keep down - you'll give us away!)"}, {"response": 32, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Aug  5, 1999 (13:06)", "body": "You can keep playing in the sand - turns out the guy was really stealing wheel barrows! The entire point of an allegory is a pithy statement of image one is left with when it is over. Some of the North 20 posters need to keep that in mind. I tend to get lost in their verbage. I guess not a lot of improvement has occurred since I took ethics in Journalism long ago in college. In fact, it has probably gone by the boards by now. In the best of worlds, Ethics never change. Good cannot become evil and evil become good no matter how well disguised. Butm by bending and refracting the light illuminating them strange things happen and the good can seem evil and the evil, good. We need to pay attention to what is really being said."}, {"response": 33, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Aug  5, 1999 (13:35)", "body": "Ok, so - tell me, can ethics change? Or are the the same for everybody all over?"}, {"response": 34, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Aug  5, 1999 (13:53)", "body": "According to my dictionary, ethics = the principles of conduct governing an individual or group. If they change for the group promulgating them, it is very slowly and with the concent of the group - if they are truly autonomous. Other ethical standards can be forced upon them (eg slavery), but this is not the group's choice. They differ widely from group to group, and I think it would be dangerous to try to impose one set of ethics on another's group. That is what wars inevitably are about after the erritory (the real prize) has been won. This very problem is ongoing in Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. Perhaps religion (organized, that is) has caused the most damage over the centuries. More lives have been lost contesting my religion against yours and knowing I am right and killling you is also right in this instance. What rubbish!"}, {"response": 35, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Thu, Aug  5, 1999 (14:04)", "body": "Ethics is frequently confused with law. Laws set a minimum standard of conduct -- \"go this far and no farther. If you cross this line, you've broken the law.\" Ethics is the high bar on your pole vault, the thing you shoot for. \"This is what we strive to be. This is the best practice, the most good, the solution that will bring about the least harm and the most good.\" Violating an ethics code won't land you in jail. More and more frequently, people do legal things that are completely unethical. It's much easier to do that because you're abiding by the letter of the law. Much tougher to do the ethical thing that's illegal -- that's civil disobedience."}, {"response": 36, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Aug  6, 1999 (17:14)", "body": "Ethics, being an instance of Best Practices, evolves with the advance of knowledge and the advance of technology. What was yesterday's best practice may become today's obsolescent and contraindicated practice, because it has been supplanted by a superior practice with fewer downside risks or side effects."}, {"response": 37, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Fri, Aug  6, 1999 (23:39)", "body": "The \"best practice\" may change as more information becomes available, as Barry notes. But the ethical principles underlying the decision do not change over time."}, {"response": 38, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Mon, Aug  9, 1999 (05:22)", "body": "N., does that mean that in your opinion there are basic ethical principles common to all people, which are something like \"eternal\" values?"}, {"response": 39, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Aug  9, 1999 (10:01)", "body": "Nan is on the road this week, and may not have a chance to check in for a few more days. I dunno if Nan would buy into the model I use, but ethical behavior, as I see it, is functionally indistinguishable from the optimal policy under a comprehensive system model. In particular, that means the optimal policy is unlikely to reduce to unilaterally imposed rules enforced by sanctions."}, {"response": 40, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Mon, Aug  9, 1999 (10:27)", "body": "Hmh. Explain the difference to me, now you're talkin': If \"ethical behaviour\" = \"enactment of best practices\", tell me - whose best practices? Whose benefit? Who calls the shots, who judges? Are people who deviate unethical? And those best practices are universally the same to all people, but adapt over time? And last not least: Why are you so confident a sanctions- (or incentive-)run system excludes implementation of best practices (i.e. disallows \"ethical\" behaviour)?"}, {"response": 41, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Aug  9, 1999 (12:47)", "body": "Ethics embraces bilateral protocols, Alex. Your questions assume unilateral protocols, and hence are incompatible with the notion of ethics."}, {"response": 42, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Mon, Aug  9, 1999 (13:27)", "body": "(Weeeell, you sure don't mind about commenting questions. You don't mind them. Hmh. Will I ever be happy with a response of yours?) Phrases such as \"BEST PRACTICE\" weren't introduced by me, I was just trying to get into a vocabulary you would relate to easier, since you did not understand other things I posted in the past (or at least there was no indication you did... but then, there weren't a lot of indications at all).- My questions do NOT assume \"unilateral protocols\", my question was maybe in part \"Do YOU assume unilateral protocols?\", and who are the parties in question, and how do they measure against each other, and where and how are the \"ethics\" generated, and what are their properties ACCORDING TO BARRY. You know - good, oldfashioned askin' stuff. No harm. Questions. Let's just note for the record that my questions are NOT rhetorical questions which answer themselves, or sarcastic remarks against your ideas. I don't deal in that trade much. Those were questions I asked you because I wanted - once more - to see how you evaluate concepts behind something, and what you make of it in relation to your idea. Once more, it didn't work. And there are still many things in my questions not adressed by your reply. \"Ethics embraces bilateral protocols\" - that just doesn't say it all, does it?"}, {"response": 43, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Mon, Aug  9, 1999 (13:35)", "body": "Alexander, pin them against the wall until they explain themselves. It is the only way we learn from each other. Terms have to be clearly defined and accepted by all in the discussion. No throw-away lines permissable to avoid thinking seriously about the post preceding yours. Is it the nature of New-Think to avoid discussion and understanding of what the other is trying to say / ask? You deserve a thoughtful answer. I most devoutly hope you get one."}, {"response": 44, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Aug  9, 1999 (19:56)", "body": "My goal is to discover how to evolve from a culture of unilateralism to one of bilateralism or multilateralism. I have not yet discovered how to do that. It is not clear to me that those currently embedded in the unilateral culture are familiar with the possible successor cultures. It occurs to me that if they were aware of the successor phases of cultural evolution, they would embrace them as superior practices in which all parties are better off, by their own lights. But it appears to require a leap of faith that, to the best of my knowledge and experience, cannot be induced unilaterally. One has to patiently await for evolution to takes its ineluctible course. I fear I shall not live long enough to realize that dream."}, {"response": 45, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Tue, Aug 10, 1999 (00:08)", "body": "and if we are waiting on evolution, isn't it possible that the \"optimal\" solution today would no longer be optimal at the end of the time period needed for the evolution to occur? and, correct me if I'm wrong, but if something evolves into an \"optimal\" condition, doesn't that mean it has both filled a niche, and hit a dead end?"}, {"response": 46, "author": "moulton", "date": "Tue, Aug 10, 1999 (07:52)", "body": "It's already non-optimal. Optimality is not necessarily a dead end, because the space of feasible options gradually enlarges with new knowledge and technology. The history of best practices is a sequence that pushes against the boundaries of knowledge and technology. The advent of better communications opens up new opportunities to discover possibilities for exploring mutual interests. The discovery of mutual interests pushes back the darkness of complementary ignorance and reveals previously uncontemplated alternatives, from which better practices may emerge. We do not wait on evolution. We are part and parcel of the process of evolution. Evolution is waiting on us. We are the ones we are waiting for."}, {"response": 47, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Tue, Aug 10, 1999 (09:19)", "body": "Barry - \"The advent of better communications opens up new opportunities to discover possibilities for exploring mutual interests. The discovery of mutual interests pushes back the darkness of complementary ignorance and reveals previously uncontemplated alternatives, from which better practices may emerge.\" I'm with you on that. Would we not have this here Spring, I would not address you. I would not think about what you say, and would certainly not provide you with a different view upon your ideas, \"from which better practices may emerge.\" But I do, and I care, and I think it might be worth for you to really look at this, and invest some modest effort: You still haven't told me - among other things - how something will be identified as \"optimal\" and something else as not. Please do tell me! And: How much does any given individual's voice count in this? Or, does the indivual count at all? What are Best Practices here? Or in other words: \"Who are the parties in question, and how do they measure against each other, and where and how are the \"ethics\" generated, and what are their properties ACCORDING TO BARRY\"? And I do not see this one adressed yet, either: \"Why are you so confident a sanctions- (or incentive-)run system excludes implementation of best practices (i.e. disallows \"ethical\" behaviour)?\" This last question is really interesting, because I see societies that are - at least for Western audiences - very ethical, or at least more so than we, BUT WORK ON SANCTIONS (or incentives, which is the same) EXCLUSIVELY, so please help me understand your concept on this."}, {"response": 48, "author": "moulton", "date": "Tue, Aug 10, 1999 (19:07)", "body": "The notion of optimality assumes an agreed-upon value system (which could in general be a vector field). Then, within the agreed-upon value system, each alternative is evaluated to identify those with the greatest value. In some cases, when the value field is multi-dimensional, there will be a Pareto-optimal frontier with multiple equi-valued alternatives. But basically, it's a calculation. Note that it requires that the parties delineate and define their common value system. A great deal of conflict occurs because one or more parties has not clearly delineated their value system, leaving it a mystery to be solved by the other parties. In discovering mutual interests, every stakeholder has a voice, and nothing is agreed upon unless everyone agrees. That's called consensus. Consensus is often slow because some parties may be weak at model-based reasoning, and unable to reliably anticipate the downstream consquences of approving one or more choices. When this happens, the status quo, no matter how mutually harmful, remains in effect, to everyone's detriment. The parties in question are those who come to the table and assert their interests. A sanction-based system fails to rise to the level of best practices because there exists a superior system that avoids damage to any of the parties. By Pareto-optimality, zero damage to anyone is preferable to non-zero damage to some parties. This principle is found in the Hippocratic Oath (\"First of all, do no harm.\") and in the sayings of the Dalai Lama (\"Help people if you can. If you can't help them, try not to hurt them.\"). It's also found in Bellman's principle of optimality (\"No matter what has happened so far, do the optimal thing going forward.\") Deliberately damaging one or more parties is suboptimal."}, {"response": 49, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Tue, Aug 10, 1999 (19:25)", "body": "how does one \"correct\" accidental harm?"}, {"response": 50, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Wed, Aug 11, 1999 (03:41)", "body": "(A favorite subject around this place...)"}, {"response": 51, "author": "moulton", "date": "Wed, Aug 11, 1999 (05:17)", "body": "The optimal response in the event of a misadventure is to intervene minimally to prevent, neutralize, minimize, or ameliorate the damage. I call this the \"Bounty Model\" after the paper towel. Clean up the spill with the quicker picker upper. Do not damage the party who spilled the milk. When I was in college, everyone took turns being the \"wake-up person\" who got up first, put the house in order, and then woke up others in time for their first class. One morning when I was the \"wake-up person\" I found that one of the last persons to go to bed had scrawled graffiti on the bathroom mirrors in soap. Before anyone else was up, I cleaned up the graffiti and told no one about it. Minimum intervention to neutralize the damage. Had I made a big fuss about it, the practice would have likely c ntinued and become more common."}, {"response": 52, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Aug 24, 1999 (19:03)", "body": "I've only just returned to this topic and cannot access the link above because it is outdated..."}, {"response": 53, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Tue, Aug 24, 1999 (19:08)", "body": "Would you like me to paste the last ones into email for you?"}, {"response": 54, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Aug 25, 1999 (11:11)", "body": "thanks (you did)... I was actually trying to access the link that (i think moonbeam) posted... it is no longer active... any idea on what the article contained?"}, {"response": 55, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Aug 25, 1999 (11:50)", "body": "As soon as I get on the main PC, I'll let you know. This laptop is not much better than telnetting as far as going back and checking is concerned. Curious that the link should be dead so soon...Unfortuantely, I did not access it at the time, and Barry's Buddies are not on this week."}, {"response": 56, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Aug 25, 1999 (13:25)", "body": "Stace, don't know waht to tell you. I downloaded the entire topic to search for the link and it does not show up anywhere, so I read them all over again, and still found no link. Might it have been in Justice 5 - Violence in America? If you can give me the number of the post or the topic, I will hunt it down for you. We need to get these discussions active again."}, {"response": 57, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Aug 25, 1999 (16:00)", "body": "no biggie... the link was to a newspaper... I'm sure the article was timely at the time... they just didn't archive it logically... thanks for helping though!"}, {"response": 58, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Aug 25, 1999 (16:57)", "body": "OK, I recall. It was from the Albuquerque newspaper about a local good-guy lawyer being shot and killed just a few steps from the court house, if I remember correctly."}, {"response": 59, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Aug 25, 1999 (17:42)", "body": "oh better left unread methinks... we had one of our fellow coworkers written up in the paper yesterday... they found her in a makeshift coffin in her own basement, they believe her daugther murdered her and put her body downstairs..."}, {"response": 60, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Aug 25, 1999 (18:06)", "body": "Good grief...are they poisoning more than our water or something? Some guy in Honolulu admitted that he cut off his wife's head. Is there OJ-itis spreading everywhere? (I think her link must have been in Justice 5 - violence in America, and no, you do not want to read it...!) Stace, I am so sorry...!"}, {"response": 61, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Aug 25, 1999 (18:50)", "body": "thanks... but I didn't know her... just made it extra freaky that she is a JMer... somehow brought it closer to reality.... (most of the news seems very far removed from my reality...)"}, {"response": 62, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Wed, Aug 25, 1999 (19:48)", "body": "Between Littleton and this, you have had more than your share of violence brought home. Again, my sympathies. It must be very difficult...*hugs*"}, {"response": 63, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (01:39)", "body": "The gist of the newspaper article I linked that has expired already (this comes from an ABQ Journal column): Monday, Aug. 16, 1999 \"Last week, a Santa Fe lawyer known for representing the underprivileged was gunned down as he walked from his office to the courthouse. Carlos Vigil, 52, was killed in a drive-by shooting and police started looking for a former client for questioning. Vigil's death shocked the close-knit Santa Fe legal community. Friends and colleagues said Vigil didn't practice law for the money. Rather, they said, he just wanted to help clients get fair deals. He often took food or firewood for payment from clients who couldn't afford to give him anything else for his services.\" Carlos was indeed one of the good guys."}, {"response": 64, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (01:52)", "body": "Nan, thanks for posting that again, for those who missed it."}, {"response": 65, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (01:55)", "body": "Well, somebody asked... and I've been on the road until this evening."}, {"response": 66, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (15:28)", "body": "We did...again thank you. Stacey found the link dead (newspapers do that since they cover so much.)"}, {"response": 67, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (19:41)", "body": "Yes, I know. You're welcome. I wish there were a bio page on this software -- then you'd know I've been a print journalist for 25 years and know one or two things about my subject, and that I'm the senior professor in the print and online journalism program at a major university. Lots of online papers archive all their stories. Some (like my local daily) don't save anything older than a week. Some (like the NYTimes) charge you to access the archives. Most, however, archive their coverage and offer it free. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood."}, {"response": 68, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (20:18)", "body": "I studied to be a technical journalist, but married a newly-created college professor and did research for him for years, then for myself for further degrees and fun, then for whomever needed it. I am most dismayed to note that archives for newspapers are noticably lacking on the internet. Is it not possible to scan them in?! Or is it the expense of doing so? We have an uncommonly intelligent membership at Spring. There is a Plastic Surgeon in Drool Conference, and editor/publisher Alexander everywhere but Drool. There are many many people here who would astonish you with their credentials were they commonly known. I am delighted to know more about you!"}, {"response": 69, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Fri, Aug 27, 1999 (00:16)", "body": "Archiving on a website requires someone (a librarian type) whose time is dedicated to relocating all the already-scanned stories from past days and weeks, usually on another server. It's both an expense and a time issue. IMO, rhat's why many of the archives aren't free, and also why so many zoned editions on large dailies (e.g., the Northwest section of the Boston Globe) and smaller newspapers don't have online archives."}, {"response": 70, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Fri, Aug 27, 1999 (02:34)", "body": "That was the conclusion I had come to, also. It is unfortunate, because we are going to lose this important source of local information as we continue to consolidate and amalgamate the media into one medium which is no longer free nor valid in newsworthiness. Maybe it is my day to grouch some, too...!"}, {"response": 71, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Fri, Aug 27, 1999 (11:45)", "body": "Lexis-Nexus archives a surprisingly big chunk of the \"small stuff\" -- or at least they did as recently as a year ago. Things may have changed, but back then when I was searching for a story that had run in the Northwest section of the Globe and couldn't find it on their archive, it turned up in L-N. No photos, of course, but all the text was there and that's what I wanted."}, {"response": 72, "author": "moulton", "date": "Tue, Aug 31, 1999 (13:37)", "body": "The story, with photo, is on my web site."}, {"response": 73, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Tue, Aug 31, 1999 (19:29)", "body": "I know it is. I was using that as an example for a class that was learning to search the Web, and found (by accident) that L-N had archived the story whereas the Globe had not."}, {"response": 74, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Sep  9, 1999 (13:54)", "body": "*(moonbeam) * Thu, Aug 26, 1999 (18:41) * 7 lines *I wish there were a bio page on this software You just stop over at the Porch Conf, there's a Bio top. Not too many folks use it, though. You'll see. Ah, heck, I just feel like that, so here's the link: http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/read/porch/23 One reason people can do without that here is that many people who come freshly to a conference make use of the Introduction topic, usually topic 1, to say what their interest is relating to this conf. Personally, I find it refreshing that at our Spring, you are what you post, not what CV you post. If people think you have a point, they do - be you of the rocket-science league, or just regular folk. Be what you post."}, {"response": 75, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Thu, Sep  9, 1999 (19:52)", "body": "Thanks, Alexander. I'm no rocket scientist. Just a long-time journalist and short-time grandmother. And yes, I do believe I am what I post, at least I'm sure not trying to be anything else."}, {"response": 76, "author": "terry", "date": "Fri, Sep 10, 1999 (09:15)", "body": "Who do you journal for, moonbeam?"}, {"response": 77, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Fri, Sep 10, 1999 (18:35)", "body": "Now that's a good question, Terry. Mostly these days I teach the craft and try to finish writing a book, though I came to this ivory tower from the ranks of the ink-stained wretches. More info: http://www.usu.edu/~communic/Dept/Faculty/williams/nwilliams.html justice conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 4, "subject": "Let's talk to a prisoner", "response_count": 6, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "autumn", "date": "Mon, Aug 24, 1998 (22:20)", "body": "How about Ira Einhorn?"}, {"response": 2, "author": "wolf", "date": "Mon, Aug 24, 1998 (22:34)", "body": "not me. sorry. have received email from prisoners who are lonely and are writing from their brother's account. something strange about it. i would NOT give my address to someone in jail."}, {"response": 3, "author": "terry", "date": "Tue, Aug 25, 1998 (02:23)", "body": "Ira's not in prison. He's only confined to a quaint little French village and lives with his girlfriend, Anika Flodin. He's on the Internet somewhere."}, {"response": 4, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Wed, Aug 26, 1998 (13:14)", "body": "I get mail from prisoners off and on, all the time... and, yes, it does take a little getting used to..."}, {"response": 5, "author": "riette", "date": "Fri, Aug 28, 1998 (09:34)", "body": "So get one of them to talk to us, muffin!"}, {"response": 6, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Jul 12, 1999 (10:28)", "body": "I began visiting and writing about prisoners a few summers ago when my friend and colleague, John Hines, invited me to go with him to meet Phil Berrigan who was awaiting sentencing in the Cumberland County Jail (Portland ME) for his role in the Ash Wednesday Peace Action against the USS The Sullivans at the Bath Iron Works. You can read the chronicles of my relationship with the Prince of Peace Plowshares on my web site at http://www.musenet.org/plowshares . See especially the archives of our reports originally posted on Cafe Utne at: http://www.musenet.org/utnebury/Spirit.14.html http://www.musenet.org/utnebury/Spirit.56.html justice conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 5, "subject": "Critical Analysis of the System of Justice", "response_count": 73, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Jul 19, 1999 (13:01)", "body": "The system of justice in our culture is founded upon a widely held assumption that few bother to examine. The assumption is that society can be regulated by a system of rules (or laws) enforced by sanctions or punishments. By profession, I'm a Systems Scientist. What we do in Systems Theory is to construct models of complex real-world systems. This discipline draws upon math, logic, and computers to model the most complex systems (like weather systems or economic systems) but we also use more pedestrian analogies and metaphors where they help to explain the basic structure of our more sophisticated models. Part of Systems Science is the discovery of optimal methods of regulating the behavior of complex systems, either to maintain stability or to drive them to a desired goal state. Feedback Control Theory is a cornerstone of Systems Science. The general idea of Feedback Control is that one observes the actual state of the system and compares it to the goal state. The difference between the observed state and the desired state is the error. The problem to be solved is to compute the optimal control to drive the error to zero. To do this, the feedback control system must invert the System Model, to find the differential control to steer the system so as to keep the error as close to zero as possible. This is how your Cruise Control works, c ntinually computing adjustments to the fuel feed to speed up or slow down the car as needed to maintain the desired speed. Computing (and inverting) a System Model is a key concept in Systems Theory. The general method of inverting a system model requires a computational technique known as Successive Approximation. Basically, one guesses at the answer, plugs it into the System Model, computes the result, and sees how far it misses the mark. Then one adjusts the original guess to a (hopefully) better guess, and repeats the process. This goes on indefinitely to produce a sequence of Successive Approximations until they conv rge to the sought-after solution. The general computational methodology is called Recursion, and is honed to a high art in Systems Theory. Sir Isaac Newton was one of the first mathematicians to propose recursion to solve for the roots of arbitrary equations. Our society is a system that can be modeled in the classical way that anything is modeled in Systems Science. If one does that, one can use the model to discover the optimal strategy to regulate society. The prevailing method of social regulation -- rules and sanctions -- can quickly be seen to be far from optimal. At best it's merely ineffective. At worst, it's counterproductive, driving the system to a state worse than the initial one. But there is another problem with rule-driven regulation. Rule-based systems such as our legal system are inherently limited by the theoretical limitations of rule-based systems in general. Rule-based systems are fairly weak. They don't support the calculation of general system models or their inverses, for the simple reason that rule-based systems don't support recursion. The solution to a system model can sometimes simplify to a ruleset, but a ruleset cannot generalize to capture a system model that requires recursion in order to solve it. The latest system models of human dynamics are of the class that require solutions more powerful than can be captured by dissociated rulesets and sanctions. Thus we now have the beginnings of a formal proof that the foundational assumption of our system of justice is unsupportable and untenable, incapable of achieving the desired goal, and arguably the cause of damage to the fabric of society. There is a solution, but the solution will require a fundamental rethinking of the mechanism of regulating society, and the abandonment of the limitations of rule-based regulation enforced by sanctions."}, {"response": 2, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Mon, Jul 19, 1999 (17:31)", "body": "Just what I say! Hello Barry, we haven't met yet, but I've seen your mark on the \"US Culture of...\" topics I created in the Cultures Conf. I'm looking forward to see you pull hats out of rabbits and do other wonderful things. Do you do tap-dance? Curious, Alexander Resident ***CENSORED DUE TO UNCLEAR SPELLING***, The Spring"}, {"response": 3, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Jul 19, 1999 (19:44)", "body": "Only metaphorically."}, {"response": 4, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Tue, Jul 20, 1999 (12:06)", "body": "Hmh. A thinker, huh? No offense, though. But there is one thing that amazes me: you are concerned about social problems, but you approach that area from angles I probably wouldn't. You care about the symptoms and problems. Again, not that I know a bit about stuff, but \"fundamental rethinking of the mechanism of regulating society\" does not really thrill me. Is that like \"rethink to get the kinks out of the current concept\", and then \"rethinking it to fix the rethinking bugs\", and a reform later to represent interests of certain interest groups, etc.? I would expect something like \"fundamental rethinking of society\" ought to be more to it, rather than fixing problems with a running system. Hmh. I see about three buckets of flaws in that suggestion, plus the odd gallon of enraged outcries. Still, what do you say, Barry? Alexander Resident ***Censored, Because If I Had A Clue, I Had Something - So, I Still Don't Know About That Silly Spelling Problem I Have***, The Spring"}, {"response": 5, "author": "stacey", "date": "Tue, Jul 20, 1999 (13:48)", "body": "ACCCK! Point me in the F-ing right direction... Alexander... what are you so vexed about? You asked me how to spell bigot... did I miss the implications involved?"}, {"response": 6, "author": "moulton", "date": "Tue, Jul 20, 1999 (18:22)", "body": "Here are the symptoms: School children are slaughtering each other at alarming rates and few know why. Americans are swallowing record amounts of analgesics, antacids, and antidepressants. Violence in our culture is out of control. Our jails are filling up. There are some 2 million adults in prison now. I'm clenching my teeth 24/7 and I can't tell you why. I'm receiving terroristic threats by phone, by mail, and by e-mail now. It's becoming so routine, I don't even bother to report it anymore. Most of the people I know are either in extremis or denial. I suspect a bug or two in the culture. Hrmmm... Let's put on our deerstalker and take a look... My my my... What have we here? Rules enforced by sanctions and punishments. How quaint. Ooh.. Here's another cute practice... Shaming and blaming. Where *do* they get these ideas? I could never build a system on those principles. Not one that worked anyway. Why those practices can be seen to the cause of anger, rage, depression, anxiety, feelings of oppression, feelings of injustice, feelings of despair. Who designed this system anyway? Sheesh."}, {"response": 7, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Wed, Jul 21, 1999 (01:36)", "body": "in one point of view, we did, we do live in a democracty afterall... (actually, it's more of a socialistic republic but if I said that I never would hear the end of it...) School children are slaughtering each other at alarming rates and few know why. (I do, irresponsibility caused by the socialistic republic I referred to earlier...) Violence in our culture is out of control. (Overpopuulation...think zero population growth for awhile...) Our jails are filling up. There are some 2 million adults in prison now. (so empty them...I'd sleep better!) Most of the people I know are either in extremis or denial. (or in extreme denial...or megalomania...or paranoia...) I suspect a bug or two in the culture. Hrmmm... Let's put on our deerstalker and take a look... My my my... What have we here? Nihilism and egocentrism, just like I thought..."}, {"response": 8, "author": "moulton", "date": "Wed, Jul 21, 1999 (10:14)", "body": "Time for some more evolved thinking, methinks. :)"}, {"response": 9, "author": "stacey", "date": "Wed, Jul 21, 1999 (12:17)", "body": "so tell us Barry... how would you do it?"}, {"response": 10, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Wed, Jul 21, 1999 (15:26)", "body": "and if you need some help evolving your thinking, just ask!"}, {"response": 11, "author": "moulton", "date": "Wed, Jul 21, 1999 (21:07)", "body": "I would organize a Social Contract Community, prolly on another planet. Planet Orenda. It would be a gated community. Nobody gets in unless they have a working Urim Processing Unit and a fully charged and operational Thumminator."}, {"response": 12, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Thu, Jul 22, 1999 (02:21)", "body": "Meanwhile, back in the Real World... SERIOUSLY. I believe the question was serious. Could the answer be, too?"}, {"response": 13, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 22, 1999 (04:40)", "body": "The point is, *I* don't have the power to do it. If there is a community who genuinely desires to craft such a culture, I would be honored to be part of it. But I know of no way to do the thinking for an entire community, and to specify a solution that works for everyone. Even if I had the processing power to do all that thinking, I don't have access to the data. I barely have access to my own feelings. To make it work, everyone has to participate in constructing the solution, through a dialogue process. Which means we need to begin with an educational system that empowers us to do that. We did something like that in MicroMuse, an online community. That would be a model, I suppose, for doing it in real life. But there are other issues, since real life has a more complex material economy than cyberspace."}, {"response": 14, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Thu, Jul 22, 1999 (07:19)", "body": "The fault lies perhaps in the thinking part. I am not much a fan of thinking, and feel that perhaps it is the greatest obstacle for any such attempt. Intellectualizing the problems. This does - while being busy with the problem - nevertheless create a distance between the thinker and his subject. Getting stuck in analyses, etc. Would there be a more hands on-concept? Or something perhaps non-flashy, but pragmatic and workable?"}, {"response": 15, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 22, 1999 (09:09)", "body": "There is no reason I know of that anyone in our culture should be denied the pleasure of learning how to think. Every week in the Children's Discovery Center at the Museum of Science here in Boston I put out a collection of puzzles. And visitors of all ages -- but especially children -- enjoy discovering how to solve them. The methods of reasoning involved in solving these puzzles vary widely from one puzzle to the next. Almost none of the methods of reasoning are taught in school. Take for example, he Tower of Hanoi Puzzle. The best known method of solution is called Recursive Goal Seeking. Most visitors who make a determined effort to solve that puzzle discover the method in about 15 minutes, depending on their age and the amount of coaching they get. I didn't learn about recursion until I was in grad school, yet I find that most children can master it with this puzzle at the age of 7 or 8 in less than half an hour. Children feel empowered whey they learn to think. And they win euphoric highs hen they solve these puzzles with minimum coaching."}, {"response": 16, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Jul 22, 1999 (11:10)", "body": "I don't believe anyone wants to deny anyone 'the pleasure of learning how to think.' But sometimes overthinking an issue can be a problem. Barry, I did ask seriously. How would you do it? I didn't ask why you don't do it (i.e. '*I* don't have the power to do it') I asked how would you do it? I certainly don't expect anyone to 'think for an entire community' but you seem to have so many negative reactions to the present way of doing things (reactions to our present societal and justice structure) that I was sure you would have suggestions for alternative measures..."}, {"response": 17, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 22, 1999 (13:03)", "body": "I just do it anywhere and everywhere, with those around me, if they care to participate. If they don't care to participate, that's their privilege, too. The Museum of Science is the one physical place I've done it the longest. Online I do it wherever I'm tolerated, which is mebbe 4 sites besides MicroMuse."}, {"response": 18, "author": "stacey", "date": "Thu, Jul 22, 1999 (13:32)", "body": "okay... I certianly respect that you make an impact by doing not by talking but the fact of the matter is... I don't learn virtually by watching... so, if you would, spell some of these things out for me. What changes could be made to improve the state of affairs? Believe me... the suggestion that 'by doing things will change globally' is not foreign to my mind... I'm just trying to pick the brain of someone who has some very definite beliefs... to me it's like learning about a religon... I may not accept it wholeheartedly but by asking and questioning someone who supports a different thought process/belief set I can gather more information that I can either choose to incorporate into my general philosophy or at least know enough about it to make a decision against adopting the ideas... C'mon Barry... sounds like you enjoy teaching... TEACH ME (by sharing more about your ideas on how to facilitate positive change)"}, {"response": 19, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 22, 1999 (18:23)", "body": "The first thing to note is that learning is the quintessential emotional experience. All learning -- whether voluntary or involuntary -- is accompanied by emotions. This observation is important. Since learning is an inherently emotional experience, anyone who is proposing to intervene to facilitate learning needs to be prepared to pay attention to the affective emotional state of the learner and to artfully adapt the intervention. This is what a good mentor does instinctively. As learners become incr asingly responsible for their own learning, part of their responsibility is to report their affective state. Where is the learner fascinated, intrigued, confused, bewildered, puzzled, frustrated, anxious, bored, or chagrinned? So part of the culture change is turning on permission to mention emotions, and learning to identify and name them reliably. The other part of the culture change is to interpret emotions as clues to the progress (or lack of it) in learning, and make effective use of those clues. I don't enjoy teaching so much as inducing euphorias in others who experience pleasure upon successful learning. I get a kick out of inducing a good euphoria in those who seek my assistance in learning."}, {"response": 20, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 22, 1999 (18:25)", "body": "See this article (which Moonbeam is currently adapting and enlarging into a book)... Bring a Candle, Not a Sparkler"}, {"response": 21, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 22, 1999 (20:12)", "body": "I've discovered four deeply rooted assumptions in the culture that, to my mind, are not supportable or tenable, according the best available scientific research and analysis. Assumption #1: Society can be regulated through the mechanism of rules enforced by sanctions. Assumption #2: Blame is sufficient to establish cause and effect. Assumption #3: Inducing feelings of guilt and shame leads to desirable learning. Assumption #4: Having power makes the first 3 assumptions true."}, {"response": 22, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Jul 23, 1999 (06:42)", "body": "Barry, I wonder why I have the impression you barely read through my postings. When I say I do not appreciate \"thinking\", you come out the curve with some thinly veiled accusation of big-brotherism, censorship, etc. I do wish you would take a bit more care. Especially since your own statement \"The first thing to note is that learning is the quintessential emotional experience.\" does not exactly contradict my stand, but rather supports it. To me this is a very personal concept, but also a suggestion to others to consider whether their super-brainiard ways do not have flaws, and to try and look if there are other approaches to deal with stuff. Maybe low-profile, but more satisfying. (Disclaimer: \"Personal\" refers to the author and implies that the author's agenda in this matter is neither of missionary character nor a crusade. The author has nothing to give, especially in the \"tru teaching\"-department, nor has he the wish to preach dogma and gather followers.) And I somehow have the impression that is even something you yourself are trying to point at. Satisfaction. Endorphine releases. Learning. Attempting. Frustration. Retrying. Satisfaction. Endorphine re... Or in other words, a puzzle well solved is worth a dozen chocolate bars. (Know what? I'm a generous fellow. This quote is cute, right? You like it? Aw, come on, fella, no need to be shy around me! Say, how about if I gave it to you? You care for it and treat it well and have it put somewhere in print - it is, after all, a VERY nice catchline - and credit it to \"Anon., The Spring, 1999\". No charge. A Gift.) Solutions that one FEELS good about, rather than solutions that only LOOK good, or that one THINKS are good, isn't really sure about. ***************************************** Re: The Kortian Assumptions Yes, nice. But then - these things are what the western cultures are based on (note that these patterns my or may not be found EVERYWHERE). These are thinkoid schemes, and you do right to denounce them. Still, they work more or less. Why is that so? Because the benefits have up to now outweighted the negative aspects. Do not neglect that why they are there goes back to a certain agreement within the society in question (this has been discussed in different topics in the Cultures conference; I have noted that while this is a very painful thing to hear or experience at times, it has not been rebuked as far as the content of this argument is concerned). Why is this changing now? Because we are reevaluating our value-sets. We want a different world (if only within our species, mind you). # 1 - Brute Forcism. You'll never convince a fella you just bashed up, but you'll convince your audience you're all business about things. I see this in e.g. the horrible tradition of Detention Hall in American schools, or the wars currently lead under NATO and UN mandates to get the world to get in line. Best example is perhaps election campaigns - you do not aim at convincing the other candidates, but the audience. Bash the guy good w/ some really funky and sly moves, and they are with you all the way. Note: I do not discuss whether the use of sanctions is justifyable or not. It's whether we like the sanctions, or the very concept of sanctions. Be good, get treat. Be bad, feel stick. So very much, huh, pre-feudal.) # 2 - Scapegoatism. Need I say more? For US citizens: See McCarthyism, for Germans: See National Socialism, for children: See The Dog (as in: \"The dog ate my homework.\") Nice tool employed by thinkers to distract from the fact that their solutions do not FEEL very good. # 3 - This is true. Fortunately, we both know there are other ways... Still, it is maybe sometimes more important what is learned than how (\"I will not drive my neighbours from their house and kill them.\", \"I will not support unjust sanctions against people of a different religion, nationality, or political belief.\"). I wonder if e.g. the act of taming warmongerism and militarism in a society justifies use of #3, when it reliably leads to the neighbour's better sleep and sweeter dreams. # 4 - Well, there is that. How would you substitute this power? I wonder about this \"true\"-aspect. Truth is always the truth of the winner, as is history. He who can scribble this response here can make me be without a point. The fact is, # 4 is not - as you suggest - an assumption deeply rooted but incorrect (and perhaps inacceptable to some), but a concept that proves itself. This goes back into prehistoric ages, but can more reliably be proven with historic research (e.g. the Japanese people held that the Emperor was - as descendent of sun-goddess Amiterasu - himself a person endowed with divine traits, a living god; due to being defeated in their aggressive imperialism, this belief so deeply at the base of their culture and state-religion was abandoned under pressure of the victors). You may FEEL you are right, but this is not the truth. The truth is what people in ten, fifty or a hundred years will say. W"}, {"response": 23, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Jul 23, 1999 (06:58)", "body": "\"Oh my, so many words! I guess I'll rather skip it... Plus it's all so DRY and CRITICAL... What's this guys problem anyway? Why is he spoiling everything for us?\" Listen, ... Ah. Exactly that: LISTEN! You might find out. (Or ask.)"}, {"response": 24, "author": "aschuth", "date": "Fri, Jul 23, 1999 (07:00)", "body": "(Or ask Stacey. She knows more about that topic by now than anybody would ever care to. Some goes for our young Master William.)"}, {"response": 25, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Jul 23, 1999 (07:20)", "body": "The things that interest me now are the things that are the most deeply embedded (yet unexamined) assumptions in the architecture of the culture. Are rules and sanctions a good way to regulate society? Why or why not? What other regulatory processes exist that might be preferable? Is blame sufficient to establish cause and effect? Is there a scientific way to establish cause and effect in which the answer is not a function of the party with the authority to fix blame? Are guilt and shame a viable tool to regulate behavior and induce learning? Why or why not? How are induced guilt and shame related to the emotions of remorse and embarrassment? What happens in a society where one party has the power to impose rules and sanctions and to fix blame? What happes to a society where the inhabitants engage in a recurring contest to induce guilt and shame on each other? What alternatives could there be?"}, {"response": 26, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Jul 23, 1999 (07:33)", "body": "Alexander, if you are not much of a fan of thinking, I can accept that. My post was in response to Stacey, who did express some interest in learning more of my thoughts. I could see no way to respond to your expression of a distaste for thinking, and so I did not respond. De gustibus non est disputandum. Over on MicroMuse and in earlier incarnations of the Orenda Project we did create working models where we practiced bringing these ideas to life. I am hoping to open an Orenda Community here in a new conference that Terry has approved and that William will be setting up soon. In the meantime, I can talk about it, but I'd rather practice it than mention it."}, {"response": 27, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Jul 23, 1999 (07:49)", "body": "In order to make any progress in addressing the embedded assumptions in our culture, we need to demonstrate that the downside costs are rising while the upside benefits are fading. The findings of James Gilligan at Harvard and Scheff and Retzinger at the University of California support and reinforce the findings of Girard at Stanford, that a society founded on rules and sanctions, blame, shame, and guilt, is producing increasingly unacceptable downsided costs (primarily a rising tide of distributed viol nce throughout the culture) while failing to achieve the purposes for which those cultural tools were invented. More importantly, the emotional health of the society is suffering under the present regime of assumptions. Americans are consuming record quantities of legally obtained analgesics, antacids, and antidepressants. Others are eschewing the drug culture in favor of meditation and spiritual practices. Just yesterday there was a big international story about Falun Gong, a non-denominational meditative/spiritual practice derived from Bhuddism and Taoism. I expect to see a lot more of this trend until the sp ritually toxic practices of our culture are discontinued in favor a more enlightened cultural model."}, {"response": 28, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Sat, Jul 24, 1999 (15:56)", "body": "that has become a theory I have been pondering...people have learned to worship the government materially, instead of anything remotely spiritual, thus the lack of responsibility so in evidence around us..."}, {"response": 29, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Sat, Jul 24, 1999 (18:26)", "body": "Are rules and sanctions a good way to regulate society? Why or why not? What other regulatory processes exist that might be preferable? In answer to that question: I feel that there are certain rules that are needed to perhaps insure the protection of a group. (tho shalt not kill, steal, bear false witness....you get the gist. However, we have been regulated to the point of insanity.... Wear seat belts... I almost became paralysed in a minor accident because my seatbelt jammed my rib into my spine... Many of the rules are set up to cover the actions of the real criminals... no smoking in public places... yet the pollution from factories are killing millions people and if you live downwind or downstream you can't escape them... and anymore who doesn't love downwind or downstream from one of these corporate killers. Is blame sufficient to establish cause and effect? Is there a scientific way to establish cause and effect in which the answer is not a function of the party with the authority to fix blame? The problem with affixing blame, is that the people in Authority decide what is blame-worthy. The recent Welfare Reform is a good example. I live in the poorest state in our country. Wages have been kept low to attract big business. Unions were *violently* squashed before they could start up. Minimum wage is not a living wage...In fact by some estimations it would take $14.00 an hour to stay off all forms of welfare. Yet the poor in this state are being blamed for being poor and having been driven onto the welfare roles to survive. Welfare has been cut...but no one is addressing a living wage for an honest days work. When I first got divorced and had my two samll children to support, I went to Human Services and said...I can afford my rent...clothing...and food for my children...all the their basic needs...but I need help with medical expenses. I was told I would have to quit my job and go on the welfare roles to get medical expenses covered...because it was a package deal. To make matters worse I recently found out that prior to passing welfare reform the Legislature passed a bill that denies federally funded legal representation to welfare recipiants. I have thrown this tidbit out to people to see their reaction and I can count on one hand the number of people who got upset by that fact. Read your Constitution we are guranteed legal representation. Oh and by the way if there really are spelling police in here...I have a disability that precludes me from that type of censorship. Plus I think perhaps you should be reminded that before we see any Books in print...they are sent to an editor. If the great minds who had spelling and punctuation problems had had their work censored because of these types of problems...I wonder which texts would never have made it to the bookshelves. -------------------------------------"}, {"response": 30, "author": "moulton", "date": "Sun, Jul 25, 1999 (08:34)", "body": "Notice to the Spelling Police and the Emotions Police: If Debra is Dyslexic, then I'm Autistic. So go suck a sock. But first, help yourself to a Salted Peanut."}, {"response": 31, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Sun, Jul 25, 1999 (12:53)", "body": "I would like to note here that I went to a school where my teacher would constantly come up and rap my hands with a ruler because my handwriting was so messy. What no one understood was that I had a problem that was beyond my control. A short circuit if you will, from my brain to my hands. The shame had long term effects on my self esteem that kept me from acheiving what a person with my IQ should have. My handwritting skills did not improve...in fact in college my professors just circled the mistakes but otherwise ignored them because the content of my papers were so above average they were able to overlook this disability. In my Englis 102 Class the professor who met with all his students to discuss their work simply stated to me...I don't know what to say...except you need an editor. I happened to run into the kid who edited my Newspaper pieces before they were published...and he grimaced and said to me...yes I am familiar with your writing...I get the privilage of editing it. If spelling is a problem...perhaps you should incorporate spell check. Content is the important issue in these discussions not technique. I'll take a peanut Moulton."}, {"response": 32, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Sun, Jul 25, 1999 (16:27)", "body": "Gosh, I'm lost in hell here... got peanuts? Did I miss the arrival of the Grammar POlice? I went back and couldn't find even their tire tracks. Must be the light or something. Let me know. ;) * goes back to working on book *"}, {"response": 33, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Sun, Jul 25, 1999 (19:22)", "body": "There were some comments in another topic I believe... about spelling police deleting someones work for spelling erros...I just wanted to let them know that due to my disabilty they would be violating my rights if they used this as an excuse to delete my comments...therefore they will have to come up with a better excuse if they want to shut me up...(grin)"}, {"response": 34, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Sun, Jul 25, 1999 (19:23)", "body": "Got mirth?"}, {"response": 35, "author": "moulton", "date": "Sun, Jul 25, 1999 (21:54)", "body": "My handwriting was so illegible, I couldn't read my own handwriting minutes after writing something. So I switched to back to printing, which I could at least decipher. Then, when I got my mits on a keyboard in the late sixties, I never went back to writing with pen and paper. The cool thing was that word-processors began to show up with grammar-checkers and spell checkers. That was a mechiah. They also had these tools that would calculate readability scores, by counting up such stats as the average number of syllables per word, the average number of words per sentence, the average number of compound, complex sentences, etc. They say one should write at about the 8th grade level. I tend to write at the 16th grade level, according to these indexes. Which is prolly what's annoying a lot of people."}, {"response": 36, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Sun, Jul 25, 1999 (22:15)", "body": "Yes Barry you are annoying but only because you keep telling the truth and people tend to get annoyed when others do that. (grin) Got truth?"}, {"response": 37, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Mon, Jul 26, 1999 (00:05)", "body": "Writing complex information so people without background in that particular complexity can understand it, is an art."}, {"response": 38, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Jul 26, 1999 (08:58)", "body": "I need to discover how to communicate the idea of model-based reasoning. I need to discover how to communicate the idea of recursion. I need to discover how to communicate the idea of non-destructive feedback control theory, non-destructive, non-punitive guidance systems. I need to discover how to communicate the names of feelings and emotions."}, {"response": 39, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Mon, Jul 26, 1999 (14:45)", "body": "Are you trying to tell us you are a needy person? (Hugs Moulton)"}, {"response": 40, "author": "stacey", "date": "Mon, Jul 26, 1999 (15:52)", "body": "hey peanut eaters... THIS IS AN INFOMERCIAL... the 'spelling police' as you so eloquently referred to them... have nothing to do with 'justice' or any other topic apart from some gentle teasing/annoying amonst a group of people that are fairly comfortable with the jokes... trust me, no one will deride you (for awhile!) now...not that any of you have come remotely close to treading on the obscenity line... I do try and remind people that the 'bad' language really has no place if we, as a community, and our ideas are to be taken seriously... Ah... NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY POSTED PROGRAM! (BTW... welcome Debra!)"}, {"response": 41, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Jul 26, 1999 (15:56)", "body": "Moulton hands Stacey a bag of Salted Peanuts and a cup of Grape Juice."}, {"response": 42, "author": "stacey", "date": "Mon, Jul 26, 1999 (16:19)", "body": "Well grassy-arse Senor Moulton! and for you... a sock box!"}, {"response": 43, "author": "moulton", "date": "Mon, Jul 26, 1999 (18:24)", "body": "Cool. I can do those great logic puzzles on how many socks one has to pull out to be sure of getting a matched pair."}, {"response": 44, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Tue, Jul 27, 1999 (03:38)", "body": "Hey Stacey it's great to be among nice salty peanut lovin folk. So sock it to me one more time. (grin)"}, {"response": 45, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Wed, Jul 28, 1999 (23:08)", "body": "What happened to justice? No really what happened in here? Where did everyone go?"}, {"response": 46, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 29, 1999 (03:22)", "body": "I watched Ted Koppel's Nightline on ABC tonight. He did a story on Falun Gong. It occurred to me that what has begun to change is very startling. Beliefs are changing. In particular, the belief in the rule of law is starting to crumble. This is a good thing. The rule of law is a false god, not worthy of belief. When I needed the law, it wasn't there for me. The law was there to protect those in power. What kind of god protects those in power? Not the kind of god I can believe in. I believe in models. There are no model laws. There cannot be any. Laws are incapable of capturing the essence of an accurate, scientific model. Laws fail to explain or predict how the world works. Rather they explain how the world breaks. The rule of law is broken."}, {"response": 47, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Thu, Jul 29, 1999 (12:27)", "body": "\"The rule of law is broken\" -- We've known that for quite a while. And as you noted earlier in another conversational venue, many books have been written that diagnose this problem but they always fall short when it comes to solutions. (We were talking about Philip Howard's book \"The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America\") Did Ted Koppel's program offer any solutions?"}, {"response": 48, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Thu, Jul 29, 1999 (13:45)", "body": "I have on film the (at that time) DA here in Alb. screaming at me that the public needed to get it through it's head that the Justice was not about justice...but about process. So let's rename it...or sue for false labeling...isn't there a law somewhere about that? (tee hee)"}, {"response": 49, "author": "moulton", "date": "Thu, Jul 29, 1999 (15:12)", "body": "Processes have 4 possible outcomes. 1) They can converge to a fixed point (e.g. peace, justice, satisfaction). 2) They can cycle, with a cycle length of N, for arbitrary N. 3) They can go chaotic, visiting an infinite number of states, in haphazard order. 4) They can run forever (diverge) without ever terminating or approaching a solution. The system of justice appears to be somewhere between 3) and 4). There is also a process that, by design, behaves like 1). The present system of justice is not that process. Nor can it be. The architecture of the present system of justice is too weak to achieve that outcome."}, {"response": 50, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Thu, Jul 29, 1999 (16:55)", "body": "Did Ted Koppel's program offer any solutions?"}, {"response": 51, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Jul 30, 1999 (09:02)", "body": "If you mean Nightline in Prime Time, it asked more questions than it answered. Last night's episode was about our obsession with saving time. As to how to craft a process that satisfies condition 1) above, that just happens to be the subject of my Ph.D. research. It's founded on a powerful mathematical theory known as Fixed Point Theory ."}, {"response": 52, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Fri, Jul 30, 1999 (12:19)", "body": "I caught bits and peices of it. The thing that struck me was... that the more time saving devices I have...the less time I seem to have. What seems to be occuring in my life is that, time seems to speed up as society speeds up. There doesn't seem to be any time saved....instead we seem to warp time into hyperspeed as we become time conscious. I spend a lot of my energy trying to slow down and smell the roses...so to speak...to be present in the moment."}, {"response": 53, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Jul 30, 1999 (12:44)", "body": "There is one advantage, which shows up in online communities. Social processes which run slow and ragged in real life run faster in online communities, and are better documented. So patterns become more salient. Deja Vu occurs faster and more reliably. This allows me to engage in Pattern Discovery in online communities and diagnose recursions that lead to thrash and virtual violence. The world runs faster, but then so does our debugging of the culture."}, {"response": 54, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Fri, Jul 30, 1999 (13:21)", "body": "Last night's \"Nightline in Prime Time\" program didn't hold my interest that well - but then, it had to run competition with PBS's \"Mystery\" series, which was excellent. Time keeping and time saving are creations of human beings. A soulless, unnatural thing, the clock will run as fast as we let it, and that means it will run us to death if we don't stop and smell the roses, as Debra so kindly reminds us."}, {"response": 55, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Jul 30, 1999 (22:16)", "body": "You may have missed the segment at the beginning, in the Diner, where they showed a model of the brain, with it's intrinsic timekeeping module. Every musician knows there is an internal metronome, run by a little homunculus known as the metrognome."}, {"response": 56, "author": "moulton", "date": "Tue, Aug 10, 1999 (08:08)", "body": "I was in the local public library yesterday, so I took the opportunity to dig up James Gilligan's book on the roots of violence in the culture. Gilligan is a Harvard professor of psychology whose main research interest is the psychology of violence. Gilligan finds that the cultural practice of inducing shame is a primary factor in violence. Shame induction displaces the naturally occurring emotion of embarrassment, thus interfering with normal learning. Shyness and anger are two of the more common results of shame induction. Another finding is that the cultural practic of guilt induction further exacerbates the problem. Guilt induction displaces the naturally occuring emotion of remorse, thus interfering with normal moral development. Depression and rage are two of the more troubling consequences of guilt induction. Guilt induction seeks to pinpoint the responsibility for a social misadventure, rather than diagnose the distributed causal mechanisms. Gilligan's research dovetails with the models of Girard and Bailey, who have identified the cultural practice of scapegoating as a key phase in the generation of violence in the culture. The key elements then, through which society creates systemic violence is shaming and blaming, scapegoating, and the visitation of authorized, sanctioned, and sacred violence upon the designated scapegoat, who is made to bear 100% of the responsibility for a distributed-cause social misadventure."}, {"response": 57, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Tue, Aug 10, 1999 (12:50)", "body": "re: guilt and remorse...shouldn't we consider the consequences of our actions before we initiate them instead of after? I mean guilt is a forethought and remorse an afterthought, no?"}, {"response": 58, "author": "KitchenManager", "date": "Tue, Aug 10, 1999 (13:06)", "body": "it just struck me...Barry, I might be seeing guilt in your post in a different context...if you meant it in the other (ie, at fault) then my post above won't make sense, but if that is the context in which you are discussing it, then I feel that guilt isn't comparable to regret in this instance..."}, {"response": 59, "author": "moulton", "date": "Wed, Aug 11, 1999 (05:29)", "body": "The inability to do model-based reasoning is a plausible explanation for failure to foresee the undesirable downstream consequences of a course of action. Few people even know what model-based reasoning is, since it's rarely taught in school or elsewhere in our culture. Guilt is neither a forethought nor an afterthought. Guilt is an ascription layed upon others by a judging agent. Guilt interferes with trepidation and remorse. It is trepidation (an uneasy feeling that what one is about to do will turn out unexpectedly badly) that arrests misadventures before they occur. It is remorse that prevents a recurrence. Guilt induction interferes with the normally arising emotions of trepidation and remorse. That's because in our culture, a finding of guilt is associated with the privilege of imposing sanctions and punishments, turning the scene into one of sado-masochism. The problem with sado-masochism is that the perpetrator (the self-appointed authority figure) has neither trepidation nor remorse for engaging in such a contra-indicated behavior."}, {"response": 60, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Aug 13, 1999 (11:22)", "body": "Revenge violence is on the front page. Underlying the drive for revenge are strong feelings. Feelings of rejections and alienation, feelings of injustice. And from where I sit, it does appear that more and more Americans are experiencing episodes of rejection and alienation, episodes of unfair treatment and injustice. It is also clear that the root of the problem of recurring episodes of unfair treatment and injustice is to be found in our most cherished institution - the law. The law, once venerated and highly respected, has touched more and more people, and has visited more and more unfair treatment and injustice on Americans than ever before. It's a trickle-down economy. The culture of shaming and blaming, of alienation and scapegoating, of sanctions and punishments, is producing a nation of anger. Not everyone can receive injustice, sublimate their anger into depression, and survive on Prozac. Some will turn their anger into revenge. That younger and younger people are doing it should be a red flag that our horrific culture of violence is out of control. And the root of violence is to be found in our adoption of a rule-based system of social regulation, with the rules enforced by authorized and sanctioned violence. That model is no longer tenable or ethical. It's time we evolved to a more humane and civil culture."}, {"response": 61, "author": "dawnis", "date": "Fri, Aug 13, 1999 (13:30)", "body": "I find it interesting that just as our government is cutting welfare roles, an inordinate amount of money is being spent to build more prisons. This tells me the government understands the ramifications of these actions and is gearing up to address the problems that will result. The break down of costs between welfare assistance and prisoner maintenance gives one reason to pause. The cost of assisting people on welfare, pales in the financial breakdown of prisoner maintenance. The War on Drugs is one example of the insanity. The cost analysis of housing this type of offender alone, should make one wonder. We could send these people to the best universities for PhDs with tons of pocket money for a fraction of the cost. The hidden cost to society of sending people to prison for drug use, is unbelievable. The prisoner emerges with a criminal record that precludes him from any substantial income bracket once he/she is released. Therefore they pay for a lifetime, for a lapse i judgment? Looking at the records of prison inmate recidivism paints an ugly picture that our society has chosen to ignore. When we send people to prison for minor offenses such as drug use, what have we done to their lives. It takes very little imagination to comprehend what happens to people in prison. Is it any wonder that recidivism is the end result? Especially when we tag on a life sentence by labeling them as criminals thereafter. Certainly there are instances where having a criminal record follow one through life, benefits the general public. (rapists, child molesters, violent behavior) But what are the benefits of putting drug *offenders* into this population in the first place? Rehabilitation through counseling has been proven by far, to be a more economical way to deal with these problems. However, crime is big business. The largest contributors to political campaigns are lawyers. The crime industry, if abolished, would collapse the economy of this country. Look at the biggest buildings in your communities, no matter how small...(the cost of building maintaining, and running them) The jail and prison system...(the cost of housing controlling, medical attention, and feeding inmates.) the whole judicial body...(Lawyers, Judges, bailiffs, police force) When looked at carefully, a new picture emerges of the most lucrativ and financially stable industry in the nation: CRIME. The youth of our country are going to experiment with illegal drugs...just as most of you and I did. I spent over 20 years as a musician...during that time I was witness to politicians, judges, lawyers and police officers partaking of illegal substances. I played at numerous private parties where these things occurred. Should the youth of this country, or anyone else face prison terms and the life long stigma incumbent with this process if they are caught doing the same? The I Ching states that there is no crime in youthful folly. The Acoma people (the ancient sky city Pueblo here in New Mexico) put it this way...young adults walk backwards. Should they be punished for a lifetime for a natural phenomena in their lives? Should anyone be punished for what is, in and of itself, a victimless crime? The crime involved in drugs is man made. Because our political/legal system has mandated drugs as criminal, the process of growing (or producing) and delivering drugs creates a hotbed for criminal activity. One that could be eliminated by decriminalization or legalization of drugs. When Moulton addresses shame and blame and rule based governance and talks about the Girard Model of Non-violence these are the types of legislated activities that are the result of this mentality. The backward thinking of a government that thinks it can legislate behavior."}, {"response": 62, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Fri, Aug 13, 1999 (20:24)", "body": "."}, {"response": 63, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Fri, Aug 13, 1999 (20:46)", "body": "EDITORIAL: Killing the Bad Guys Adam J. Smith, Associate Director, ajsmith@drcnet.org A study released last week by researchers at the University of Kentucky indicates that teens who went through the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program were no less likely, in the long run, to use drugs and alcohol than kids who had gotten their drug information in health class. The study is the latest in a long line of research raising questions about the efficacy of America's number one \"drug education\" program. More than 70% of American schools use DARE, making it perhaps the single most pervasive curriculum in the nation. Given that rate of application, one would imagine that there was some evidence that it works. In fact, there isn't. DARE, in which police officers come into classrooms for an hour per week for seventeen weeks to teach kids about drugs, self-esteem and resisting peer pressure, has been criticized since its inception on several grounds. Among the criticisms is DARE's zero-tolerance approach, which fails to make distinctions between different substances. Researchers have argued that treating marijuana the same as heroin, for instance, reduces the credibility of DARE's message. Others criticize DARE's law enforcement focus, which tends, they say, to demonize rather than to educate. A DARE \"graduation\" ceremony held in Miami last May illustrates this point. The ceremony was held at the Orange Bowl, with thousands of elementary school-aged DARE \"graduates\" in attendance to receive their certificates. The children watched Florida Governor Jeb Bush, on hand for the occasion, sign a new mandatory minimum sentencing law. But the real fun came at the end. At the close of the ceremony, the children were treated to a special performance by the Florida Highway Patrol Special Tactics Team. The Team rolled out across the stadium's field in an armored personnel carrier. Disembarking from their tank-like vehicle, officers engaged in a \"shootout\" with a group of \"drug dealers.\" The vignette ended with the officers \"shooting\" and \"killing\" the bad guys, to the obvious delight of the cheering children. And so, having witnessed this clearly successful outcome, in which the police shot and killed -- presumably without a trial -- several drug suspects, these thousands of children became the latest class of DARE graduates. Such a display would seem to be directly in line with the ethos of DARE's founder, former Los Angeles police chief Daryll Gates, who once remarked that casual drug users \"should be taken out and shot.\" So perhaps we ought not to judge DARE's success by how many of its graduates remain drug free, but rather by the number who, as adults, are content to stand and cheer while the state shoots down their less obedient former classmates. [from _The Week Online with DRCNet_ Issue #103, 8/13/99 -- at http://www.drcnet.org/wol/103.html ]"}, {"response": 64, "author": "moulton", "date": "Fri, Aug 13, 1999 (21:02)", "body": "There is no narcotic quite so intoxicating or quite so deadly as the exercise of power over the life of another."}, {"response": 65, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Fri, Aug 13, 1999 (23:53)", "body": "Not only is it intoxicating, it feeds on itself ultimately consuming both the victim and the power-wielder."}, {"response": 66, "author": "moonbeam", "date": "Sat, Aug 14, 1999 (00:39)", "body": "http://www.abqjournal.com/news/1attorney08-13-99.htm Speaking of power over the life of another... this is the top story in our neck of the woods tonight. The victim was one of the good guys."}, {"response": 67, "author": "moulton", "date": "Sat, Aug 14, 1999 (09:16)", "body": "Chills run through my shoulders and arms."}, {"response": 68, "author": "fxmastermind", "date": "Sun, Jul  9, 2000 (20:21)", "body": "hmmm"}, {"response": 69, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Sun, Jul  9, 2000 (21:44)", "body": "Umm Hmmm Shall say no more and get me back to Geo where it is safer..."}, {"response": 70, "author": "fxmastermind", "date": "Mon, Jul 10, 2000 (00:29)", "body": "No where is really safe. OK maybe it IS safer after all..."}, {"response": 71, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Mon, Jul 10, 2000 (01:22)", "body": "Good points. There is little chance anything nefarious will go unreported in the world's \"free Press\" if you hunt for it long enough. The internet is a great source of such things, and http://www.google.com is the best of them!"}, {"response": 72, "author": "fxmastermind", "date": "Mon, Jul 10, 2000 (11:17)", "body": "yep http://www.google.com/search?q=barry+kort&hl=en&safe=off&start=10&sa=N and the Spring shows up on it as well"}, {"response": 73, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Mon, Jul 10, 2000 (12:50)", "body": "So do I - to the tune of about 405 hits - almost all in Geo. Especially if your search using your login name! justice conference Main Menu"}]}, {"num": 6, "subject": "juvenile injustice within the az. systema", "response_count": 1, "posts": [{"response": 1, "author": "MarciaH", "date": "Thu, Dec  6, 2001 (17:27)", "body": "Aloha Bonnie. As the mother of a son, I hold you in my heart at a time like this. I will go directly to the website and see what you have to say. I will add the link and make it clickable: http://www.geocities.com/bonnieslaw2000/Uriah_s_page.html justice conference Main Menu"}]}]}