Reflections on my incarceration written from my last prison cell, a comprehensive application of modern scientific theory to America's social disorder.
I believed pretty much all of what you explain after student teaching in the high density mostly black city of Mt Vernon NY, student teaching to become a NYC Social Studies and English teacher, which I did not become. Instead I worked for social services, trying to show "heart" to people who were on their way to or back from or were connected to someone in prison. I also had had the experience of attending elementary school in Harlem in the 1960's as the child of WWII refugees, intellectuals who lived in white Harlem. I remember playdates in which a little friend's mother would be out of it, lying on a couch, probably on heroine. I instinctively connected whatever I heard about the Holocaust, which was not a lot as a child, to what I saw in Harlem in it bad times. When were there not bad times in large U.S. cities?
I continued to try to find answers and solutions completing a History Masters even though it did not serve me in my work as a social services worker. I had an autistic child and a second child and was abandoned by their alcoholic father who came around to support us decades later. I had a glimmer of hope when in older age I learned that Bobby Kennedy was running for the office of the President of the United States. I am still holding my breath although I have exhaled some as we await his nomination to HHS. Praying that Trump is not assassinated. The U.S. has spiraled out of control in recent years from 9/11 to the Great Recession to Covid, as has western Europe, but as I continue to tell my fellow Kennedy supporters in our various WhatsApp groups in and around NYC, the toxicity is all connected to the JFK assassination and CIA doings since then, the millions upon millions U.S. armed forces and politicians have killed and the poor blacks abandoned by all.
The gradual degradation of morality being cried about by religious people claiming that prayer should not have been taken out of the schools, makes sense in ways the believers don't even understand. A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged and so it is that fear of the crime wave keeps me off the NYC subways for the most part since moving back to Mt. Vernon. The criminal justice system is so unfathomably appalling, we are beyond Orwellian in our disease, but I take heart in the writers on Substack who bring out the truth and testify before Congress. The justice seekers in America have been divided between red and blue pills but I believe some good things are about to happen. I stay in prayer. I need to stay connected to church fellowships that have something supernatural going on.
I feel as I've said below very sorry for what you have suffered but it's stupendous that you have survived and put truth in writing for all to see. You should have a greater readership. The great length of your writings here may deter some but clearly you need to spill a lot of beans. Someone you might like to engage with is David A. Hughes in London or thereabouts whose Substack is his name. He, like Dr. Mike Yeadon, sees the vaccine development as having been designed to maim, kill and to reduce human fertility (Yeadon's words). The general public that's thrashing about to gain moral bearings again, many of whom latched on to one Presidential candidate or another, are going to need to sort out what the INTENTION was in developing bioweapons. That fine line between Bill Gates really wanting to reduce global population and the CIA and Biden White House wanting to develop bioweapons has to be drawn. However much morality is relative to various factors, people in the global north, in the west, need clarity by those in authority. I am hoping that the new Administration will help carry the day.
As for the inner city where poor black children are deprived of needful nourishment, I see how much sustenance they receive from their churches but we all need to get on the same page to change our politics. The black conservatives in politics in NYC are some of the most trustworthy people I know and I am supporting them in any way I can.
Hoping for a better future and for you to find healing. I find the meditations on the Deepak Chopra app, especially his, to be invaluable. Makes sense as they are based on 5000 year old practices.
It's awesome that you're still trying to reach out to the communities who need it... I thought I kinda understood poverty and the black experience in America from coaching for several years and giving kids rides and helping with meals and homework, and I got a hint - but nothing like what the guys in prison had gone through.
Which captures the more academic side of what I eventually saw inside, and just yeah I don't think anyone is admitting that our minority communities have had their family system gutted for generations by the War on Drugs and prisons as a whole.
Thanks again so much for all the kind words, if you look I don't think anyone's commented on this piece in at least a year. And although I was raised Episcopalian I'm not mainstream Christian anymore, lots of wisdom in lots of world religions, so although I don't care who Jesus's parents were or if he was even real - I definitely think Yahweh's up there doing whatever he can.
"... the lives of those who will come after you are depending on you to do everything you can to look out for them any way you possibly can."
Your evocative final paragraphs reminded me of my favorite closing sentence of a novel -- George Eliot's _Middlemarch_:
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
Thank you for your insights and perspectives of environmental social complexities of the criminal injustice system. The amount of chronic inflammation caused by lockdowns through the emotional stress, poor-nutrition, and physical deconditioning are well known. It appears that the nation became a large prison with lockdowns, because we saw the injustices and inequalities allowed to the undeserved and lived in fear of retribution for non-compliance. While not as severe as true prison, the mental effects on the children appears to be the same with poor prefrontal cortex development, regardless of race or income level. The kids are in a psychological war zone and are learning to be fascists from the programming.
Yeah school wasn't fun for me and lots of other kids, it was mostly boring I did my learning reading at home, the largest studies have shown being out of school made suicide rates drop, and if something like the pandemic had happened when I was growing up it would've been awesome since I could've been outside playing street hockey all day and hide-and-seek all night with everyone else in the neighborhood.
Now they're all just buried in their phones.
Schools closing wouldn't be an issue with a healthy society, kids would have entire communities supporting them and providing social outlets, those mandates aren't even a small part of America's problems.
Our schools have always been designed to train factory-workers, the entire system has been broken for generations, not being able to go to school wasn't a lockdown, it was an opportunity to go touch grass and make friends and spend time outside. The fact that largely didn't happen was very telling about the state of America.
But yeah the parks and beaches and pools being closed was really freaking stupid, shutting down public places outside was always nuts.
The feducation system is definitely a drag after Jr. High. I favor early home schooling and trade school options to build skilled workers and managers. Higher education is already reshaping to a consumer market with less capital as student loans are stagnating and less credit is available. The key is to have the student value the learning processes to a magnitude of self-directed education. The current education system is addressing this towards sexual idenity and gender, yet not career. Hhmmm?
Yeah I thought after Khan Academy came along there'd be lots of similar content all over the place and education would really take off... but yeah what's happening now is just a slow motion disaster.
So hard to read as a dad, but the beauty of the narrative and deep insights it provides into neurology, prison life, and bureaucracy make me proud.
And on rereading, I have to add that the above should be required reading/study for all Criminal Justice programs.
I believed pretty much all of what you explain after student teaching in the high density mostly black city of Mt Vernon NY, student teaching to become a NYC Social Studies and English teacher, which I did not become. Instead I worked for social services, trying to show "heart" to people who were on their way to or back from or were connected to someone in prison. I also had had the experience of attending elementary school in Harlem in the 1960's as the child of WWII refugees, intellectuals who lived in white Harlem. I remember playdates in which a little friend's mother would be out of it, lying on a couch, probably on heroine. I instinctively connected whatever I heard about the Holocaust, which was not a lot as a child, to what I saw in Harlem in it bad times. When were there not bad times in large U.S. cities?
I continued to try to find answers and solutions completing a History Masters even though it did not serve me in my work as a social services worker. I had an autistic child and a second child and was abandoned by their alcoholic father who came around to support us decades later. I had a glimmer of hope when in older age I learned that Bobby Kennedy was running for the office of the President of the United States. I am still holding my breath although I have exhaled some as we await his nomination to HHS. Praying that Trump is not assassinated. The U.S. has spiraled out of control in recent years from 9/11 to the Great Recession to Covid, as has western Europe, but as I continue to tell my fellow Kennedy supporters in our various WhatsApp groups in and around NYC, the toxicity is all connected to the JFK assassination and CIA doings since then, the millions upon millions U.S. armed forces and politicians have killed and the poor blacks abandoned by all.
The gradual degradation of morality being cried about by religious people claiming that prayer should not have been taken out of the schools, makes sense in ways the believers don't even understand. A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged and so it is that fear of the crime wave keeps me off the NYC subways for the most part since moving back to Mt. Vernon. The criminal justice system is so unfathomably appalling, we are beyond Orwellian in our disease, but I take heart in the writers on Substack who bring out the truth and testify before Congress. The justice seekers in America have been divided between red and blue pills but I believe some good things are about to happen. I stay in prayer. I need to stay connected to church fellowships that have something supernatural going on.
I feel as I've said below very sorry for what you have suffered but it's stupendous that you have survived and put truth in writing for all to see. You should have a greater readership. The great length of your writings here may deter some but clearly you need to spill a lot of beans. Someone you might like to engage with is David A. Hughes in London or thereabouts whose Substack is his name. He, like Dr. Mike Yeadon, sees the vaccine development as having been designed to maim, kill and to reduce human fertility (Yeadon's words). The general public that's thrashing about to gain moral bearings again, many of whom latched on to one Presidential candidate or another, are going to need to sort out what the INTENTION was in developing bioweapons. That fine line between Bill Gates really wanting to reduce global population and the CIA and Biden White House wanting to develop bioweapons has to be drawn. However much morality is relative to various factors, people in the global north, in the west, need clarity by those in authority. I am hoping that the new Administration will help carry the day.
As for the inner city where poor black children are deprived of needful nourishment, I see how much sustenance they receive from their churches but we all need to get on the same page to change our politics. The black conservatives in politics in NYC are some of the most trustworthy people I know and I am supporting them in any way I can.
Hoping for a better future and for you to find healing. I find the meditations on the Deepak Chopra app, especially his, to be invaluable. Makes sense as they are based on 5000 year old practices.
It's awesome that you're still trying to reach out to the communities who need it... I thought I kinda understood poverty and the black experience in America from coaching for several years and giving kids rides and helping with meals and homework, and I got a hint - but nothing like what the guys in prison had gone through.
Way before prison and right after I finished writing "Tremble the Devil," I wrote this article: https://www.harvard2thebighouse.com/p/because-we-destroyed-ourselves-3e2
Which captures the more academic side of what I eventually saw inside, and just yeah I don't think anyone is admitting that our minority communities have had their family system gutted for generations by the War on Drugs and prisons as a whole.
Thanks again so much for all the kind words, if you look I don't think anyone's commented on this piece in at least a year. And although I was raised Episcopalian I'm not mainstream Christian anymore, lots of wisdom in lots of world religions, so although I don't care who Jesus's parents were or if he was even real - I definitely think Yahweh's up there doing whatever he can.
But yeah you might like these pieces:
https://www.harvard2thebighouse.com/p/azraels-inoculation-against-a-hardened
https://www.harvard2thebighouse.com/p/angels-demons-and-at-home-pandemic
"... the lives of those who will come after you are depending on you to do everything you can to look out for them any way you possibly can."
Your evocative final paragraphs reminded me of my favorite closing sentence of a novel -- George Eliot's _Middlemarch_:
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
Oh goodness that's a lovely closing quote, thanks!! And glad you liked the essay!
Thank you for your insights and perspectives of environmental social complexities of the criminal injustice system. The amount of chronic inflammation caused by lockdowns through the emotional stress, poor-nutrition, and physical deconditioning are well known. It appears that the nation became a large prison with lockdowns, because we saw the injustices and inequalities allowed to the undeserved and lived in fear of retribution for non-compliance. While not as severe as true prison, the mental effects on the children appears to be the same with poor prefrontal cortex development, regardless of race or income level. The kids are in a psychological war zone and are learning to be fascists from the programming.
Yeah school wasn't fun for me and lots of other kids, it was mostly boring I did my learning reading at home, the largest studies have shown being out of school made suicide rates drop, and if something like the pandemic had happened when I was growing up it would've been awesome since I could've been outside playing street hockey all day and hide-and-seek all night with everyone else in the neighborhood.
Now they're all just buried in their phones.
Schools closing wouldn't be an issue with a healthy society, kids would have entire communities supporting them and providing social outlets, those mandates aren't even a small part of America's problems.
Our schools have always been designed to train factory-workers, the entire system has been broken for generations, not being able to go to school wasn't a lockdown, it was an opportunity to go touch grass and make friends and spend time outside. The fact that largely didn't happen was very telling about the state of America.
But yeah the parks and beaches and pools being closed was really freaking stupid, shutting down public places outside was always nuts.
The feducation system is definitely a drag after Jr. High. I favor early home schooling and trade school options to build skilled workers and managers. Higher education is already reshaping to a consumer market with less capital as student loans are stagnating and less credit is available. The key is to have the student value the learning processes to a magnitude of self-directed education. The current education system is addressing this towards sexual idenity and gender, yet not career. Hhmmm?
Yeah I thought after Khan Academy came along there'd be lots of similar content all over the place and education would really take off... but yeah what's happening now is just a slow motion disaster.