There is no category of social dysfunction that is more clearly a result of primitive concepts than the area of crime. Our approach to this problem would be comic were it not for the pathos of human suffering and its devastating effects upon societies. Although we have the ability to be thinking human beings, this is an area where no society accepts the real nature of the problem nor the indicated solution.
Crime is an area of social dysfunction where all of our conceptual pathogens reach a crescendo, where our cumulative cultural stupidities make their most garish display. Would we but dare to look, the problem of crime, and our approaches to it, point the way to solving most of our social dysfunctions.
Crime, as is also the case with every other human activity, is a reflection of the individual's mentality, what the individual has learned and failed to learn, the premises and reasoning patterns that have become deeply ingrained. Crime reflects the ethos and the content of what a society is teaching! The level to which it is manifest within a culture is a reflection of the objective rationality (or absence of it) within that culture. The high level of crime in the United States is a statement of our high level of cultural delusion, and our subsequent corruption.
In the United States, governing systems are generating criminality faster than the society can store it. And, yes, that is what we do with crime, we generate it and we store it. We ferment it with a yeast mixture of ignorance, delusion, hatred and official brutalization. Now, as a result, it fills our criminal courtrooms and spills over into our civil courts. It oozes out the cracks and back into the streets.
As if our systems of punishment and containment were not generating crime at a high enough rate, our institutions categorize and codify ever-increasing additional areas of human conduct as criminal. This results in further stimulating the development of real crime in these areas, in terms of real damage to persons and property.
Our institutions will not solve the problem of crime. Our institutions maintain the delusions that are the source of crime. Our institutions use crime. It is one of government's primary sources of growth and expansion.
Humanity's approach to the problem of crime is diametrically opposed to the indicated solution. Until societies are willing to relinquish their delusions, the problem of crime, together with other pathogens of delusion, will continue to move the species toward disaster.
Humanity's approach to crime has its roots in primitive impulses, that of lashing out at a real or perceived transgressor. It is born of an impulse to anger and vengeance. Throughout human history our fundamental approach to crime has progressed no further beyond the savage impulse.
Our answer to crime has ever been to punish and/or to kill. We have never moved to rehabilitate because to do so would be in opposition to our primitive impulse of vengeance and to authoritarianism. Humanity's premises are not open to examining crime as a problem to be solved.
In this area, we still operate on an instinctual level that predates the human animal. Nor is there any indication that this emotional impulse is about to disappear. To effectively deal with the problem of crime we must supplement our natural drive with reasoned behavior.
As in any other area of governing, validity, in terms of the problem of crime requires that government activity be limited to areas where it promotes human effectiveness toward species survival and positive development. As government can never validly own the individual, its only valid role is limited to that of being a tool of humanity, a tool for the orchestration of positive group activity. Where that orchestration generates dysfunction, validity is lost..
Governing activities, laws, rules, regulations and involvement in human lives can never be valid where they generate dysfunction. Nowhere in the life of the species, does government generate more dysfunction than in the problem area of criminality. Nowhere does a problem area display a more pressing need for the destruction of cultural delusion than in the area of criminality.
But, there is a great barrier to any progress in this area because effectively dealing with the problem of crime would clearly display humanity's fundamental pathogen. It would show the nature and effects of cultural delusion.
If we got real with crime, all the protective devices by which our institutions maintain popular delusion would be clearly displayed. Where objectively rational systems were instituted, the foundations of our myths and the ability of our institutions to maintain populations in ignorance and superstition would be destroyed.
This is why government will never, can never, be the source of solutions to our problems, or of species salvation. It has neither the inherent drives nor the integrity to do so. Effective corrections can only come from wedding our systems, laws, rules and regulations to the real nature of existence and that of the species. Effective directions and systems cannot issue from delusional opinion, but must be born of objective reality.
No governing system, including democracy, can be effective in the long term unless its activities are in sync with factual reality. A democracy will be effective only to the degree that the electorate is objectively rational and educated toward accepting physical reality.
Under the increasing press of population, criminality and antisocial behavior is growing exponentially within this society. As with any social problem area, government formulates systems for dealing with crime that reflect the culture.
Typically, our controlling institutions instill delusion/ignorance, then use the resultant dysfunction as a means to further growth and entrenchment.
Once a crime is committed, it cannot be uncommitted. A thief may be made to pay back money he has stolen but he can never 'pay' for the crime itself, the trauma and anguish perpetrated upon the victim. The damage is done. It constitutes a net loss to the society.
An act of revenge cannot restore that kind of damage. Instead, more often, it reinforces delusion and misdirection in the case of the avenger and, unless the criminal is killed, generates further inflames the criminal.
Retribution does not affect the restoration of damage done by the crime and, conversely, since the criminal has already rationalized his or her behavior, it only generates further anger or personal degeneration.
In any true crime, the criminal has rationalized his or her own behavior before the crime is committed. The act resulted from belief system pathology in the first place, so the criminal will not accept punishment without reactance. Punishment, as an objective, insures not only that the real problems of crime will never be addressed, and that the criminal will be further dehumanized.
The stance of our Criminal Justice System is completely authoritarian, its tactics of force and punishment are directed toward the destruction of the human spirit; toward the dehumanization of the individual upon which it feeds. This system has no motivation toward the establishment of internal social controls. It does not recognize such control as being possible or desirable. Within our official systems, social control simply means behavior suppressed or imposed by force. Government's motivation and premise structure positions it 180 degrees out of sync with nature and social functionality.
The limits, beyond which our present systems can no longer contain criminality, have already been exceeded. Already, the control of criminality outstrips government's ability to contain it.
Punishment is not only the object of our authoritarian systems, but is an inherent characteristic of any authoritarian system. Authoritarianism, being fundamentally unjust, carries the seeds of criminality. Given the slightest encouragement, the seed sprouts and proliferates. Our failed systems reinforce the premise structures which leads to criminal behavior in the first place. Many of our extant subsystems also thrive on crime and punishment.
Anyone who has spent a day behind bars will have it indelibly etched in memory. Anyone who has spent time, in terms of years, will never fully recover. It systematically
undermines the individual, slowly destroying any hope or vision of personal worthiness and one's propensity toward positive accomplishment.
There is an abundance of research into punishment as a deterrent to crime, all of it indicating a fundamental ineffectiveness. The threat of punishment works as a deterrent only if it exists as a clear and present danger or if the impetus toward a particular criminal activity is relatively weak.
The best one can hope for, under such a system, is psychological transference, where the criminal embraces the oppressor, in which case the individual is still pathologically damaged, having abandoned self in favor of the tautologistic beliefs of the
oppressor, becoming an additional oppressor. Either as a criminal or a born-again echo of the system, this individual will still be detrimental to the society, and the species.
Just how effective punishment really is, can be seen all about us. It can be seen in the rate of recidivism among released prisoners and the growing savagery of our children. It can be seen in the ever-growing black markets for any commodity or service that has been codified as illegal. It can be seen in the almost unilateral mistrust, if not open hatred for our courts and any form of police power. It can be seen in the growing anger of the people.
Across this nation there is a struggle among our institutions for dominion over social dysfunction. One faction, that of mental health, is headed by the American Medical Association, and its offspring, the American Psychiatric Association, which is pressing to define increasing categories of social deviancy as diseases, bringing increasing segments of the population into their domain. This includes the various drug addictions or habits, alcohol addiction and various and sundry behavior patterns. The quest for officially sanctioned dominion in no way reflects the ability to effectively address the subject problems. The motivation is not found at such lofty levels.
On the other hand you have government attempting to criminalize the same behaviors. Either way, society loses. Law enforcement, and their supporting factions in government would punish any deviate behavior; anyone with a problem. They press for accelerated criminal codification of behavior and the building of more prisons, law enforcement agencies and increased jurisdiction.
On one hand you would have unlimited 'treatment', or dependency-switching programs, and on the other you would have unlimited criminalization, and the rapid culmination of a Police State. Either way, or with a combination of the two, the society will reach a point where it can no longer carry the load. When that point is reached, the stock-piled criminality, and otherwise destroyed humanity, will be unleashed upon whatever is left of the productive elements of the society.
In the process of diseasing and criminalizing the society, the system will dehumanize and institutionalize millions, destroying human functionality instead of nurturing it. Either way, the system will be creating increased dependency and irrationality.
The mental health side looks to increasing numbers of government-subsidized programs and increased official recognition and codification to support their jurisdiction.
The law and order side would have more police power and prisons, more courts and stiffer laws, always addressing the problems by force and punishment.
Again, we see a dichotomy, as with our political polarized thinking, in which the society loses regardless of which side, or which combination, is chosen. The answers lie elsewhere.
Either side can only increase the dimensions of existing problems. Both are blatant frauds, unable to solve problems in the areas they address. Neither have anything viable to offer. Neither is anything a society can afford.
The use of drugs and alcohol has a long history in the story of humankind. Until this century, governments left the problem pretty much alone, dealing only with some of its effects. However, with the industrial revolution and the resultant increase in human productivity, societies have become increasingly stable and governments have had the enhanced opportunity to grow and increase their sphere of domain over populations.
This has resulted in an increased codification of human behavior and increased control over materials produced and distributed. There has always been an abundance of
individuals and institutions who press for control over others and to impose their own codes of conduct, such is the nature of authoritarianism.
In the United States, as controlled substance laws proliferated and the pressures increased in the enforcement of such law, prices escalated and ever-increasing numbers of individuals and organizations entered the black markets for the quick profits of supplying those commodities.
By the seventies, spurred by governmental prohibition, drugs were in epidemic use among the young people. Government, in response, increased pressure on the suppliers. As a result, increasing numbers of suppliers moved to marketing drugs of more potency, higher profitability and ease of concealment. Cocaine, requiring less space than marijuana, was far easier to import and was much more profitable. Government propagated and stimulated the coke and crack epidemic, whether by intent or default.
Throughout the seventies and eighties, our government increasingly turned its attention to the suppression of drugs. In the process, it has managed to subvert a large part of our population and the economies of a large part of the American Continent.
It has turned our society into a Roman Circus, where the evening news is a gala event of blood and force, featuring every conceivable type of crime and the destruction and confiscation of private property, the rounding up of drug offenders and the wholesale violation of natural and Constitutional human rights by government.
With cocaine, crack, 'designer drugs' and now, 'ice', which is reportedly even more addictive, there is every indication that the problem of 'drug abuse', with the help of governmental stimulus, will continue to increase.
Society becomes increasingly preoccupied with drug 'rehabilitation programs'. In virtually every case, these programs are scams, organized to take advantage of some government program. They are not usually rehabilitation programs at all. They are dependency switching programs in which the individual is encouraged to believe that he or she is incapable of solving the problem alone, and to switch dependency from the drug to Gawd, the church, the group, the program, etc. Many of the programs cause the user to be endlessly preoccupied with staying clean, forever rummaging in his or her feelings about it, attending meetings with other users and "testifying".
The real nature of dysfunctional drug and alcohol use is never addressed, that addicted condition is caused by, and largely held in place by the belief structure of the individual.
The over-use of drugs or alcohol, to the point that their use interferes with an individual's productive activities, is reflecting a life which has little meaning for its owner, at least to the point where he or she has nothing better to do, and where there is an absence of purpose and drive.
If a person would not rather be doing something other than setting in a bar or doing drugs, that person's life is of little interest or enjoyment. That parson has never developed a purpose for the self. The problem here is that we have been led down the path again; we have been lied to about what we are and the meaning of a human life. We have been told such things as that it is something precious; that it is the 'creation of Gawd' or the 'temple of the soul', that if you believe and keep your nose to the grindstone and bla..bla, you will have a full and meaningful life, etc., ad nauseam.
The reality is that a human life will have exactly the value, or purpose, that its owner gives it, nothing more, nothing less.
Bear with me while I repeat that. The individual's life will have no more meaning than the individual gives it. If one is to have purpose and meaning and get something out of living, those are values and achievements that only the individual can generate. No one or no thing, can do it for him, or her, and no entity can make the case be otherwise.
Now, one can accept the cause of another, with a wide range of fulfillment, but that, too, is the individual's choice. The true believer or the slave has little choice, with commensurate fulfillment.
If an individual is doing alcohol or drugs, it is a cinch that he or she is not getting much out of living, otherwise, the that person would be doing something more rewarding.
Before one can get something out of life, one has to put something into it, enough work and involvement to grow and achieve some satisfaction from one's activities. Before one can enjoy living, one must have a feeling of growing and accomplishing, doing something worthwhile. Such an individual is not going to be excessively drinking or doing drugs, simply because it will make them feel like they are wasting time. They will be too jealous of their time to have time for the meaningless.
A human life is worthwhile only if the individual makes it worthwhile. The parasites of the culture would have us believe that a life is precious for no reason. They would have us love what is not lovable, respect that which is not respectable and cherish that which has no discernible value. If we do this, then we will support them! This line of reasoning is a large part of what has brought us to our present human condition. Those who wake up and recognize this fact are soon moving in other directions. They no longer have problems with addiction.
There is real crime, which is an actual attack upon person or property, and then there is crime by pronouncement or legislation, relevant only to cultural perceptions and sentiments.
The latter case, codifying behavior as criminal, simply because the majority of the people, or officialdom, doesn't like it, eventually and inevitably generates real crime and real criminals. Our present systems are generating real criminality at a rate no society can long endure without degenerating into savagery and chaos. Our systems prevent either rehabilitation or elimination of the criminal.
Obviously, any society is going to produce some defective or ineffective members and this dysfunction will often be expressed in criminality. Just as obvious is the fact that, for a society to remain stable and to have any hope of being a self-correcting system, it must be able to rid itself of highly damaging criminality, either by modifying behavior or by extermination. Either of these courses finds paralyzing resistance within our present systems. The American way is to stockpile crime, building more and more prisons, producing more attorneys and a criminal justice system that constitutes the greatest criminal entity within the society.
Present systems are mutually exclusive with effectively addressing the problem of crime. The System is charged with providing solutions, to mandate and proscribe, a role for which it possesses neither the necessary rationality nor the integrity. So, its activities reflect what it is capable of, playing to the baser emotions and impulses of the culture and using the problem as means toward its own ends. Our systems addressing the problem of crime are just as corrupt as the criminal, in terms of attacking person and property, as well as the monetary load it places on the society. The systems addressing the problem of crime function as the greater detriment to the society than the criminal, in its approach to crime.
The growth of criminality is detrimental to the society but a boon to our Authoritarian Systems. There is virtually no crime in which the greater damage to the society results from government's response to it.
A large segment of officialdom depends upon high levels of criminality for its continued existence. Large numbers of workers within The Criminal 'Justice' System not only depend upon crime for their livelihood and careers, but for personal gratification as well. The criminal becomes an outlet for a myriad of personal frustrations, prejudices, hatreds and delusions.
Our criminal justice system generates criminality within government. Increasingly, official criminal behavior is brought to bear on the public. Nor are there any mandates within the system for effectiveness in reducing crime, nor for addressing the real problems of crime or the criminal, within or outside of government.
Our criminal justice system, along with other authoritarian punitive entities, including relevant legislative bodies and state and local policing agencies, constitutes the most dangerous and destructive systems of governmental dysfunction within this society.
These systems represent the greatest pools of false premise structure within the society. Virtually all of our baser fantasies come together here and are given the power of law to directly and physically degrade the lives of people and the stability of the society.
Vesting further power to address the problem of crime in such a completely misdirected systems is beyond mindlessness. I can think of no greater cultural stupidity, in view of the fact that these approaches are so clearly damaging to the society. Our present systems generate a multiplicity of dysfunctional effects which are anything but conducive to 'law and order', social stability or the reduction of criminality. These systems represent nothing more than institutionalized barbarism.
We refuse to recognize that our premises and practices don't work and that authoritarian governing cannot be effective as the solution to our problems, especially that of crime. We refuse to recognize that the only truly effective means of dealing with crime is to replace the beliefs of the criminal with factual knowledge, thus providing a basis for internal control.
Further, it is obvious that it is the individual who is on the front lines and must bear primary responsibility for dealing with crime as it occurs. It is the individual who exists in sufficient numbers to effectively address the problem, directly and immediately, and who has the motivation to do so.
The people, who have been made so vulnerable by present systems, are caught between two criminal entities, without an effective means of redress, the crime and the government. The individual has been made virtually defenseless. While being the object of crime, the System works to suppress the individual's ability to defend. Our government usurps our natural right and function to defend ourselves and our interests, and inserts barriers to such defense in the form of restrictive legislation, such as lethal force laws, the restrictions of weapons, use of weapons, tactics, etc.
The problem of crime, by its nature, predominantly falls to the individual, although the single entity, whether it be an individual, a business or other organization, may not be able to cope with the criminal, particularly if it is in the form of organized crime or a gang of thugs. The individual needs backup that can be called upon.
The individual entity needs to be able to marshal public defenses. However, that assistance should be as back-up to the individual entity, not as having sole or primary responsibility.
The fundamental responsibility should always remain with the individual entity, be it a person, a business or other organized group. And it should be limited to defense. It is only through this principle that there is the possibility of coping with crime within a society. In addition, increased factual knowledge will be required within populations to reduce the high levels of popular delusion and ignorance, the nutrients and stimulus for crime.
This change in responsibility is also necessary in limiting governmental intrusion. Government, alone or as having primary responsibility, has neither the motivation nor the integrity to effectively address the problem and will continue to use crime as a means to growth, moving the society toward a police state.
The rationality, integrity and reality-orientation, necessary for effectively addressing this problem, is not an innate characteristic of government. It is found in government only to the degree theat individuals within government can thwart the authoritarian drives, blunting their negative effects. Characteristically, this is very little. Change in the nature of our institutions can come only from an electorate demanding those changees. Such mandates cannot come from predominately deluded populations.
Vesting the ultimate responsibility for the control of crime, or any problem, in government, is a recipe for tyranny, oppression, and the creeping pestilence of excessive controls, as the monster we have created continues to grow.
We watch increased police brutality and disregard for social function as levels of frustration and hatred rise within the society, especially within our large cities. Since the threat of punishment becomes decreasingly effective as population numbers and levels of dehumanization continue to rise, authoritarian government becomes a critical problem. Already, our citizens have more to fear from police, ruthlessness of officialdom, and the criminality it has created, than from criminality alone, both in terms of physical danger and in monetary costs. The totalitarian state with its paralyzing suppression of the individual, and destruction of the amenities of living, becomes increasingly palpable.
No solution lies within present systems. It requires a fundamental shift in premise structure. If a modification of criminal behavior is feasible, official retribution is the last kind of treatment that can affect that change. Additionally, if either rehabilitation or extermination is indicated, punishment becomes truly meaningless, serving no purpose in either case, other than that of allowing the public to partake, vicariously, in the joys of revenge and brutality.
Extermination, where it is indicated as necessary, should logically be carried out with as little fuss as possible. It should be clearly justifiable and impart as little damage as possible to the exterminator or to the people. Logically, extermination should be devoid of torture, as painless and as immediate as possible. After all, the only objectively defendable purpose, in such a case, would be to rid the society of the defective, not to practice public atrocity or maintain an ongoing soap opera.
The public needs to understand that there is a necessity for some extermination, wherein punishment is not a part of the determination nor the method used. It is important that the public understand that the extermination has been an objectively rational act. No other act in a society has such potential for generating empathy for the condemned or for hatred for the system.
Under present systems, death sentences are pronounced arbitrarily. Then, the appeal process typically keeps the condemned alive for ten years or more, dissipating tens of millions of dollars in court costs and the maintenance of prisoners. The unrelenting problem of ridding society of its preditors, even in terms of its most criminal, cannot be effectively addressed under present systems.
My criticism of our criminal justice system is not to say that there should be no official governing function in the matter of policing or holding criminals, nor that the victim should be given Carte' Blanche in dealing with the criminal. Objective reasoning should attend either case.
Our Criminal Justice System does nothing toward solving the basic problem of crime, that of educating and reality-orienting the criminal, overcoming the ignorance, delusion and ineffectiveness that provided impetus for criminal behavior in the first place.
Our Criminal Justice System does not touch the beliefs that make the criminal.
Rehabilitation cannot take place within our systems. Since our Criminal Justice System is not directed toward rehabilitation, it possess no mechanisms for determining the feasibility of rehabilitation, does not recognize the necessary prescription for rehabilitation and has developed no methodology for rehabilitation. It is completely devoid of the possibility of affecting rehabilitation. Reform is impossible from within, and from without only after a marked change in popular mentality.
As a social problem, Crime is actively embraced and incorporated within governing systems, where it becomes a large part of the organism of the public sector. It is treated and nurtured as a routine procedure and function of governing. It draws ever-increasing resources from the society while mandating bureaucratic growth and structures, in the interest of unbounded government. These systems will resist any movement toward a meaningful reduction of crime.
In encouraging the growth of its own alter-ego, our Criminal Justice System uses crime as a rationale for its own expansion and for increasingly forced social controls. Crime is used as the bricks and mortar in building a Police State. The organism of Government, with its present premises and structure, will never, can never, move to address the true causes of crime nor effectively work toward its reduction. This is asking an organism to diminish its own importance and function. The problem is not crime, it is one of Authority/Crime. Within modern societies, the problem of crime is not effectively addressed because no one is willing to look beyond our traditional cultural systems, or question premises. Reform requires relinquishing cultural delusions and traditions. The problem of crime is endlessly misstated and its nature obfuscated.
Crime is held to be a moral problem. The term is so fraught with delusion and emotionality as to be less than worthless. As is the case of any other functional aberration of behavior, crime is primarily a pathology of cognizance, of human mentality. It thrives in environments of ignorance and superstition, never exhibiting Itself to a significant degree among predominately rational individuals.
Crime represents an ignorance of, or the attempt to abridge, the mandates of nature; to gain instant gratification by force and/or stealth, mindless of the effects upon victim or the society. It is a function of both distorted perceptions and deficit of knowledge.
Criminality, like any other form of behavior, represents a summation of the individual's mentality. It represents a sum total of what the individual is, and includes the stresses the individual is experiencing, as well as attitudes and emotionality.
The criminal behavior of an individual may be held in tact by a few key beliefs or an intransigent and extensive web of beliefs, but in every case, will persist so long as those beliefs hold sway. The key to reducing criminality is the destruction of the beliefs, replacing them with reciprocal knowledge, as well as supplemental knowledge needed to gain social functionality.
Overwhelming pressures, or emotionality, can override a socially functional predisposition, propelling an individual into a momentary act of criminality. But, even here, responses to those pressures are very personal, a reflection of individual characteristics, physiological as well as psychological. Under the right inducement, an individual can be made to do practically anything, but the act will still reflect individual cognizance.
Only with these basic insights firmly in mind, can we begin to develop a criminal justice system capable of effectively dealing with the problem.
Obviously, I am not concerned here with the wishes and passions of society or of our governmental functionaries. This is not because I am insensitive to the driving emotions or the deeply ingrained tenets which underpin our systems. It is simply because our present premises, systems, approaches and emotionality do not work.
Simplistic dichotomies such as getting tough on crime vs being lenient, are forever misdirected. Only certain procedures, based on the real nature of the human being, will effectively reduce criminality. Only practices in step with natural systems can ever achieve an effectively functioning social system and a workable solution to social problems such as crime.
Our systems are dysfunctional because they reflect the irrationality of our beliefs and are pitted against natural drives and conditions. Our perceptions ultimately determine our success or failure. Where we fail we can only blame our premises and practices, not surface manifestations, the criminal or a lack of cultural morality.
Any culture will produce members who exhibit behavior detrimental to the survival and well being of both individuals and the group. For a society to maintain functionality, some means of reducing criminal activity to tolerable levels is required.
As crime escalates, the helplessness of the public is keenly felt and anger builds. Victims of crime, or those under the immediate threat of the criminal, have a natural right to respond and defend themselves. Society, in the form of its vested power structure, routinely usurps this natural sovereignty of the individual. Doing so is considered highly civilized and does in fact relieve the individual of the danger of aggressively confronting the criminal. It also insures the continued growth of criminality.
More often than not, our systems result in the criminal being free to continue victimizing others. Only a small percentage of criminals are caught and convicted. Sadly, the system provides the victim with a false sense of security and the criminal with a greater sense of success.
Of the habitual criminals generated by the society, very few are caught by the authorities. Those who are caught are maintained at the expense of the society, currently approaching fifty thousand dollars per year per inmate, their numbers growing far beyond the society's ability to cope. Few of those, for whom rehabilitation is not a possibility, are exterminated.
Effective rehabilitation would require a rejection of virtually all of our cultural premises. It would drastically cut or eliminate existing systems, procedures and programs. For rehabilitation to occur, not only would government premises, processes and structures have to be drastically changed, but possibly even the Constitution would have to be amended. No false indoctrination would be allowed within our jails and prisons. No false indoctrination would be allowed within any government function, including public education. That would eliminate all religious indoctrination or support of religious beliefs.
The society increasingly struggles just to survive the problems resulting from current levels of official delusion and involvement. If one carefully notes the convoluted involvement and the insidious and rapacious side-effects of government in the pursuit of the 'criminal', or even handling the problem of the drunk driver, there can be no doubt that to vest more power in government only hastens our own destruction, both as individuals and as a society.
Without addressing our basic premises, we can have no Criminal Justice System capable of effectively dealing with the problem of crime. Without accepting the dictates of nature, as it pertains to intelligent life and the human animal, we cannot gain even an understanding of the problem or recognize the principles that could move us toward solutions.
The authoritarian principle is at the heart of our own Government's burgeoning growth and its inability to solve problems. It places the state in an adversary position with its citizens. The people become, not only grist for the mill, but the enemy as well.
The simple fact is that force, and particularly arbitrary force, not only generates reactance within populations, but suppresses individual initiative, seriously reducing the effectiveness of the society. Authoritarian government, in the process of imposing arbitrary mandates upon a people, invariably trigger diverse reactance and dysfunction among the population. In addition to the resistance to mandates, where strict compliance is enforced, the individual suffers severe decompensation and, in essence, loses self identity, the life losing meaning apart from the group. Such an environment severely limits thought and personal drive. The individual stops thinking, waiting to be told what to do and what to think.
The drive to enforce governmental mandates, devoid of reality based indices, inevitably result in oppression and a stultified and deluded public, further reducing the effectiveness of the society.
Though able to operate as an oppressive parasite for hundreds or a thousand years, in preventing objective solutions to problems and in suppression of real knowledge, such government is doomed to ultimate failure. Being a large component of governments, globally, authoritarianism has shaped the problems we find today.
For governments to be effective and self correcting, they must operate on reality principles, not the authoritarian principle, public opinion or cultural traditions. There must be, and its subjects must recognize, objectively valid reasons for any mandate.
Under present premises and practices, real problems remain unaddressed and the pathological side effects escalate. You cannot fool Mother Nature and you cannot solve problems through idealized, emotionally based or arbitrary procedures, even though the procedures reflect popular support.
In the course of this century, we have watched and felt the progressive loss of individual freedom and the inevitable accumulation of problems due to the growth of authoritarian government. Those born in the early years of the century feel the loss of freedom most keenly.
What human history shows us are continuing cycles of the rise and collapse of authoritarian regimes, the rise and fall of governing systems operating on arbitrary objectives divergent from reality, with laws, rules and regulations forcibly imposed, eventually bringing disaster by their own negative side-effects, either from within or without. Each case represents lessons unlearned.
The dysfunctional side-effects of authority, and of force, are of such magnitude that they can work only for a limited time. They cannot function as a permanent basis for social organization. They represent the most common reason for the disintegration of social systems.
Whether or not authoritarian activity is ever justifiable, as a temporary or 'expedient', as in the case of national defense, may be a difficult question. That it should constitute the primary form of control is not.
There is, as yet, insufficient objective rationality and reasoning to have moved human societies away from the cultural delusions and toward reality-based systems. However, there is significant movement in rational directions in business and industry. In these areas, unlike government, the effect of delusion is immediately felt.
Authoritarianism is easy to institute but highly resistant to rescission. Notice how the increases in authoritarian government and jurisdiction occurs quietly, as a creeping fungus, growing with every real or imagined problem. It never willingly retracts. Any new law lays the foundation for further encroachment and growth.
Privation and hardship under brutal laws can be tolerated, but such law must show objective functionality and necessity. Arbitrary authority is not enough. The law must be clearly reality based, not authoritarian. The individual must recognize the necessity for a law, a rule or a regulation. The human animal can live very well within the parameters set by nature or a rational government, but becomes dysfunctional in a system of arbitrary constrictions born of delusion.
As populations continue to grow exponentially and human life progressively loses its meaning and value, there will be privations. However, they will not be well tolerated. Toleration requires rational self control, a reasoned acceptance of the adversity, or the rule, or the law. Such control is internal. Where we continue on the authoritarian path, there can only be escalating irrationality, degeneration and violence.
The bitter pill few will accept is that we cannot solve our problems through government systems reflecting present premise structures. We cannot solve our problems through authoritarian systems. Social control must be predominantly internal, just as the motive energy is internal to the individual.
Whether we are talking about the problem of crime, overpopulation or the problem of smoking in public places, we can only solve our problems through objective rationality; through addressing a problem in terms of its own indicated real nature. Only then can our instituted laws and rules move us toward self-correction.
Ultimately, this becomes a question of the survival of intelligent life: Can populations, through the cultivation and growth of individual rationality, dismantle authoritarian forms of government, shifting to minimal, reality based systems in time to avert their own degeneration?
At this juncture, there is little to indicate that the answer will be positive. After all, nature provides no mandate that Humankind should survive. Like the lemmings, the vast majority seem perfectly willing to believe and to follow, even unto death. Even where authoritarian systems are rejected, such as in the case of the Soviet Union, there is little indication that the basic fallacies are being recognized. Old premise structures and ideologies take on new costumes but the fundamental premises remain.
As has been said in every way I know how, idealized solutions never work. In a governing 'machine' which has wheels within wheels, 'zero tolerance' is one item which clearly shows the fallacy of idealized solutions. 'Zero tolerance' is a mindless attempt to actualize an idealized condition, in which our policing and judicial systems tolerate no infractions of the law regarding possession of controlled substances. The enforcement of this policy has led only to injustice and excesses of police and judicial power and the confiscation of private property, increasingly without due precess and as a means of looting.
Instead of generating a decrease in drug use, it functions to drive up drug prices and generates further loss of respect for government, as that authority becomes increasingly ruthless, unjust and criminal. It generates further growth of a police state and injustice to the owners of confiscated property, who are usually not the one's involved in the illegal activity.
'Zero Tolerance' serves as a ruse to affect the wholesale confiscation of private property, a disregard for the Constitution and an unimpeded consolidation of state power. Police organizations across this nation are increasingly running search and seizure operations without due process, confiscating money, cars, boats, planes, houses and businesses, anything of value. Anything is open to seizure, frequently with the planting of 'evidence'.
Police agencies are increasingly seizing property on suspicion alone, the victims never being arrested or charged with breaking any law. An absence of evidence is no defense, and is easy enough to plant where needed to make a case. All it takes is for someone to drop a seed or a small bag! Moneys resulting directly from the seizures, or resulting from the sale of seized property, are largely turned back to the agency and used at the discretion of the agency, an irresistible incentive for further criminal activity on the part of the agency. Even in cases where the victim persists and moneys are returned, it is returned only in part.
In an increasing pattern, the property seized does not belong to the person from whom it is confiscated. The drug dealers are using stolen, rented or leased boats, planes, houses, etc. The ideal of zero tolerance functions only as a rationale for government extortion and seizure.
The war on drugs did not work from its inception, and every indication along the way has shouted that it was only compounding problems. Yet, these clear signals have not deterred policy or practice. Government never admits error. Every President involved, every bureaucrat, down to the cop on the front line, continues to press for more involvement, more of what clearly does not work. The media is just as guilty. The public never hears what a total wash the War On Drugs really is and is either too demented or too corrupt to reason their way to recognizing the fact.
The secondary effects of the war on drugs are almost unilaterally negative, as it increases the magnitude of the problem it proposes to solve. Perhaps the worse aspect of this "war" is that it generates its own raison d'etre.
After prohibition has generated a massive, global black market and millions of addicts, for that prohibition to be suddenly gone would produce an ugly scene, indeed. With the danger from criminal prosecution gone, supplies would increase rapidly and prices would plummet. Many addicts, suddenly gaining access to an unlimited supply, would quickly succumb. Such a tragedy that would be, having to experience the ultimate results of their own choices.
Eventually, the market would reestablish itself, much lower than the current level, as the nature and effects of the drugs, apart from government, became crystal clear to everyone and the number of users dwindle, both through natural attrition and because of increasing numbers of people rejecting the drugs. The problem would not go away completely, of course, but it would no longer be the deadly threat to society that it is under prohibition.
The drug problem, as a threat to the society, can be laid entirely at the doorsteps of government. The War on Drugs is fought clearly to the detriment of society. It has perverted, not only our own society to a large degree, but the whole American continent, generating unprecedented levels of crime and encouraging corruption at all levels of society. It is a major source of criminality and strife.
Drugs have always been with us. They have always been a problem. However, it was not until government became involved that the problem reached proportions which threaten to engulf the society. This lesson should have been learned during the twenties with the prohibition of liquor. Drug abuse, left alone, is a self-limiting problem, but with government involvement it becomes devastating.
For government to cease and desist in this area is the only acceptable solution. Individuals, dealing with the problem, is as close as humanity will come to a solution. Nothing less will be effective. Nothing less is acceptable.
Crime in all of our major metropolitan areas has reached such epidemic proportions that it can be considered 'out of control'. The police are beginning to back away from areas where battlefield conditions exist. They are swamped, as is the rest of our Criminal Justice System. Plea bargaining and overcrowding puts the criminal right back on the street. Jails cannot be built fast enough. Appeals tie up the courts and allow the system to extract the last dime from the defendant, further reducing the likelihood of any rehabilitation. The amount of society's energy and resources, displaced from constructive endeavors, is staggering. We are approaching the limits beyond which the society cannot maintain such waste, neither in terms of resources or the social pathologies generated.
We, as a society, are reaching the limits of our carrying capacity, as evidenced by the increasing signs of social degeneration, as well as damage to our infrastructure and the Earth ecology. The lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats and secondary parasites thrive on this waste and dysfunction, at the expense of the society, and use our pathologies to justify more laws and bigger and more oppressive government.
The private citizen, our only source capable of generating the wisdom and the numbers necessary to effectively address the problem of increasing criminal activity, is kept effectively neutralized, a pool of victims to be exploited. We cannot effectively protect ourselves or property without an almost certain risk of vindictive prosecution by our criminal systems, in the process of jealously guarding and advancing their own power.
Under our system of retribution, the criminal is isolated and maintained apart from the rest of society. There are no real efforts toward 'rehabilitation'. Conversely, the criminal is subjected to an environment which further increases his or her dementia, increasing frustrations, hatreds and irrationality, fueling the most savage of impulses. In our prisons, there is wide-spread sexual and violent brutalization, as well as the dissemination of criminal knowledge and the encouragement of criminal attitudes. These places are, in fact, criminal universities, actively shaping criminal behavior.
The shaping of criminal behavior begins early, e.g., a juvenile detention facility that subjects inmates to inhuman conditions, a holding cage where twenty to thirty boys are jammed together, the number being determined by how many the space can hold in standing position. The same facility has crowded day rooms where violence and sexual assaults are daily, as reported in one case, by a child who had been held there for cursing a school principle, the guards stood back and watched, laughing, as they watched a restrained child being sodomized by some twenty boys. In this same facility, the boys are made to take frequent showers together, where sexual assault and violence is commonplace, without intervention by the guards.
In American prisons, the one area of human mentality which could affect rehabilitation is further damaged by the instillation of further delusion. The convict's ignorance and belief system, which triggered the criminal behavior in the first place, is usually ignored, except for an attempt to instill further irrationality and delusion in the form of religion. From legislation through enforcement, through prosecution and execution of sentence, our criminal 'justice' system functions to generate criminality and is responsible for most criminality within the society.
Usurping the individual's natural right to self-defense, and ignoring the Constitution, government increasingly assumes the right to be the sole source of lethal force. In most states, the individual is said to have the right to protect him or herself with lethal force in the face of a clear and present life-threatening danger. However, laws restricting the use of weapons pretty well insure that the individual will be utterly defenseless should that moment arise, or in fear of official retribution, should self-defense be attempted. The right to bear arms is spelled out by the Constitution, but largely ignored by our national, state and local governments.
Government's assumption of the mantle of protector is fraudulent. It cannot protect. The vast majority of crime committed upon the individual is committed by discrete criminals. These crimes are perpetrated when, and only when, there is no one present to protect the victim. Government cannot protect the individual against such crime. It never could. It never will.
The best it can do, within the present system, is to consume huge amounts of resources in the detection, capture and prosecution of the criminal, after the fact. Such a system insures that most criminals will go free, serving as a strong reinforcement for further criminal behavior.
In most cases, only the individual can protect him or herself against individual criminal attack. The individual, logically, should prepare for this eventually, not only being armed well enough to stop several attackers, but able to bring this defense into play instantly, because, that will be precisely the way it will be needed.
This is the only true defense the individual has, under most conditions. Where the individual is vulnerable to group attack, mutual defense networks should be established, as well as the use of government force as back-up.
These are the stark realities of life in modern urban societies where government, frustration, anger and privation insures the escalation of criminal behavior. The percentage of criminal element has been multiplying many-fold since the early days of our nation. This would not be the case if defense had been left primarily in the hands of the individual; had government not been allowed to legislate barriers to the individual defending person or property, while generating and stock-piling enormous amounts of criminality and social dysfunction.
Is the thought of citizens armed with weapons at-the-ready frightening? Sure it is. However, how frightening is the alternative you see all about you, where police protection has brought us? You are witnessing Authority in its role as primary protector, and the kind of life we are garnering by letting it continue.
The culprit is not, nor has it ever been, weapons in the hands of the public. Crime reflects the premises and practices of the least productive elements of society. Gun control will not reduce our level of violence. It only encourages the criminal by making the citizen more vulnerable.
The pool of criminality, which is being generated by government under present practices, will eventually reach critical mass. When that day comes, a condition of which we occasionally get a preview of in our metropolitan areas, there will be unrestrained looting and burning. We've seen it happening in business sections. With a serious break-down of police controls, stores would be quickly cleaned out, and then the perpetrators would come down your street.
The only force which can possibly change this projection is that of returning the primary responsibility for public safety and the defense of person and property to the individual.
Which would you rather see? The citizens armed or a police state in the most oppressive, blood-thirsty sense of the term, with only the cops and the criminals having lethal force, the public being preyed upon by both.
Criminality is threatening to engulf this society. Criminal mentality is increasingly evident among our leaders as well as the rest of the population. Arbitrary force is true criminality. It is being propagated on a wholesale bases and, if the current path is continued, will be one of the main factors in the destruction of this society. As a society, we are not dealing with crime. We are stock-piling it. Nor is the problem Crime, per se. The problem is Authority/Crime.
The problem of discrete criminal activity can be effectively dealt with only by the armed individual citizen, having the right and the ability to defend person or property by whatever means available or necessary. The problem will not be touched until there is a repeal of lethal force laws and a return of relevant autonomy and responsibility to the individual.
Based on the premises that 1) the criminal must be isolated from society and 2) in order to maintain the continued functionality of the society, effective Criminal Rehabilitation is necessary, this represents the core functions of a true system of rehabilitation.
Accepting these criterion, it follows that incarceration must be reorganized and used to change the prisoner in a positive way. True education becomes the only possibility. A criminal rehabilitation program can be effective only if it addresses the belief system and knowledge deficit of the criminal, since human behavior is primarily a function of cognizance.
What follows is the outline of a plan of rehabilitation directed toward a destruction of the criminal's beliefs and an increase in real education level, in terms of factual knowledge. This would be a program of reality-orientation, the only education that will dependably reduce criminal tendencies and activities.
It requires complete control of the criminal's environment with periods of solitary confinement, particularly at the beginning, increased privileges as the inmate progresses, involving him or herself in the necessary reeducation process, and an eventual full reinstatement of all rights as a citizen, upon satisfactory completion of the program.
The end product would need to have a recognition of the real nature of existence and the human species, some understanding of history, cultures and the causes of social dysfunction. The inmate would also need at least entry level vocational training in an area of known opportunity and interest to the inmate.
Initially, the prisoner is isolated in a small space with nothing to distract from the educational materials provided. The space should provide comfort for only one thing, the gaining of knowledge and the examination of existing premises.
This program would make effective use of the prison environment and assume the rational authority to modify the prisoner's beliefs. In effect, the prisoner would no longer have the right to be irrational or to hold beliefs not supported by objective evidence, particularly where those beliefs result in socially pathogenic behavior.
Such a program would require some modification in the physical plants of our penal institutions. These modifications could be carried out largely by existing prison populations. With civilian supervision, construction crews could be assembled and quickly gain the skills to modify these structures, skills which would be of permanent value to both the individual and the society.
Such a rehabilitation program would, of necessity, take the form of `reverse brain washing'. It would entail a large amount of self-education directed toward orienting the prisoner to the real nature of existence and the necessary characteristics of effective human systems, culminating in the necessary insights to support an awareness of his or her own logical role as a member of a functioning society and at least entry level vocational skills.
What such a program would be directed toward is the generation of rationality, and it's inevitable byproduct of benign and productive internalized self-control. The program would also need to generate self-sufficiency and motivation, which comes only after personal investment and the gaining of insight as to one's own condition of existence and that of society. Therefore, the prisoner would largely be required to educate him or herself. There would be few teachers and these would be there primarily to provide help with the most basic skills of literacy and to monitor belief structure correlation toward evidence-supported ideas, factual reality.
In short, rehabilitation would take place primarily along the lines of self-teaching, directed toward reality orientation and the acquisition of increased literacy, reasoning, real knowledge and vocational skills.
The process would also require the control of educational material with a progression gradient in education level as well as scope of interest. The prisoner would progress at his or her own speed, with enrichment materials and incentives provided in the areas of individual interest, provided those areas reflected reality. No non-reality or delusional educational material would be permitted. No interaction with individuals or groups proffering false information would be permitted. All material would be required to pass the test of emanating from objective evidence.
A small staff of Rational Therapists would conduct periodic individual and group sessions with prisoners and staff to aid in the process of assimilation, adjusting to the shock and reactance generated by material in conflict with extant beliefs.
Close attention would be paid to the prisoner's belief system in terms of eliminating beliefs or delusions. The therapists would routinely attack beliefs through a questioning technique similar to the 'Socratic' method of questioning, making it difficult or impossible for the subject to successfully avoid an examination of such beliefs. Initial focus would be toward getting the individual to recognize the physical nature of existence, as well as training in reasoning effectiveness. The objective would be the discarding of any beliefs of a magic or supernatural universe.
Operant conditioning and behavior modification procedures would be i imposed upon the inmate in order to elicit activities necessary to the gaining of a functional level of literacy. The granting of privileges and the deprivation of desired activities would be used as positive and negative reinforcement, the carrot and the stick.
The new inmate would be supplied with writing material and one or two books at a time, starting with material reflecting the prisoner's level of literacy and would include areas of the prisoner's interest, if possible. Literary skills, math, science, reasoning skills and a critical analysis of history and social systems would be emphasized in the material.
The usefulness of such a program would not be limited just to the problem area of criminality. Presumably, there is no form of functional mental illness which would not be amendable through such a program. However, the physiological limitations of some individuals would preclude education as an effective means of fundamental behavior modification. The seriously brain-damaged, such as one finds resulting from severe drug use, may never achieve a functional level of literacy and warrant no educational efforts, other than toward the forms of social and occupational function they are individually capable of achieving.
Seriously limited individuals hold no natural 'rights' for maintenance by the society and, logically, should be painlessly destroyed. To do otherwise only expands the parameters of misery and social dysfunction.
Summing up, an effective rehabilitation program would contain the following essential elements:
1) Behavior modification to elicit behavior in line with an effective, largely self-actualized, rational, program of objective education.
2) Control of input, all of which to be directed toward increasing factual knowledge.
3) Deprivation of distractive or disruptive factors.
4) Rational Therapy or rational counseling, particularly directed toward the destruction of delusion and beliefs.
5) Progressive access to diverse reality-related materials and resources, particularly computers and related information handling or production systems.
6) Progressive access to vocational training material and equipment.
7) Progressive interaction with other prisoners through discussion groups, group projects, etc..
8) Progressive privileges of the convict working his or her way back into society in a manner that would be fully productive and self-sufficient.
9) Progressive exposure to enrichment material which might be provided through lectures, special presentations, etc.
10) Release dependent upon gained knowledge and the gaining of skills necessary to the inmate being self-supporting upon release.
11) The restoration, upon release of the prisoner, of all civil rights and privileges as a citizen, no restrictions as to bearing arms, voting, holding office, etc. Full citizenship with an ability to earn a living, and climb as high as talents and efforts could make possible would be the ultimate carrot. If the ex-criminal is treated like a second class citizen, then he or she will fulfill that expectation.
One great impetus toward criminality is the inability of the individual to achieve adequate function and degree of satisfaction within the society. Such inability reflects an absence of skills, knowledge and self-esteem. The latter is common to poor and religion-dominated families and neighborhoods. The poorer and more ignorant the area, the less value the life. There is a lot of surplus humanity.
The problem is not simply one of overpopulation, although this is a large part of it. The society carries a heavy load of the ignorant and unskilled, a condition made inevitable by the levels of myth and delusion within the society.
Within this group there is a growing number that will be physiologically defective, but the overwhelming majority have all the necessary physical and mental potentials. Their main problem will be one of having conceptual barriers to learning. All will be emotionally damaged, most lacking many of the basic skills of literacy, fluency with the language, and the ability to effectively interrelate with others.
All will be seriously impaired in the area of accurate and evidence-based reasoning. These shortcomings can be routinely overcome with the exposure of conceptual fallacies and with reasoning training and practice.
The most formidable will be the conceptual barriers born of defective belief systems. Changes here will come only through an aggressive program of belief destruction, coupled with factual education in areas reciprocal to the beliefs.
With any movement toward reality orientation, learning barriers will diminish. Any movement in this direction will increasingly equip the individual to function within society and diminish tendencies toward criminality.
Our prison populations, were they placed in such programs, would provide an opportunity and a vehicle by which large numbers of rational individuals could be reintroduced into the society in a relatively short period of time. The prisons provide the controlled environments necessary for such an accelerated rehabilitation program.
There is, however, one presently insurmountable barrier to such a program. A realignment of cognizance toward reality orientation is in conflict with the premise structures and agendas of society's institutions and our penal systems. There is an adamant refusal of our institutions to allow reality-orientation of cognitive systems.
One of our eastern prisons, Attica, I believe, had instituted a program whereby prisoners were allowed to have computers in their cells. The prisoners had to provide their own, many of them donated from outside and often put together from discarded parts. The prisoners taught one-another and helped each other to obtain parts and establish working systems. Inmate interest was intense and high levels of computer skills were being achieved, including programming.
The effects were becoming increasingly clear and amounted to reducing conflict and a greatly reduced rate of recidivism for those involved. Those who immersed themselves in computers found useful jobs when they were released.
The prison canceled this program, however. The stated reason: The inability to maintain control over the contents of the prisoner's computer discs! If they do not know what a prisoner is thinking, why should the contents of a computer disk be of any great import? One of the guards reportedly put it more honestly when he said, "We can't have these guys smarter than we are!"
The Bottom Line? Here it is: The problem of crime cannot be effectively dealt with until we are willing to cease addressing Crime with Punishment and begin addressing crime as a problem to be solved.
The foundations of social pathology and dysfunction can not be touched until we are willing to confront our cultural myths, fantasies and blatant lies, and begin to educate toward factual reality, teaching in terms of factual knowledge.
This includes the treatment of crime. Rehabilitation of the criminal requires the destruction of delusion, necessary factual knowledge for the inmate to recognize what is necessary for social functionality and to be a productive member of society. It also requires that a rehabilitated criminal not be treated like a second class citizen. It requires the reinstatement of full citizenship. Are there no alternatives? No. None.
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