Ban the Wicked

As I was driving to see Wicked the musical, I passed a car that said, "Ban idiots, not guns." And it got me thinking, I get what the person is probably saying. Except that many people who commit gun crimes in America are actually not idiots necessarily, some of them have very high IQs and are very smart, but angry. Now, he might have been talking about the people who leave their guns accessible to children, who bring them to schools. Things like that that would be idiotic, I would agree, let's ban those people. And yes, people should be more responsible with their guns. But I've been thinking a lot about the root of crime lately. Specifically, that I don't think most criminals are inherently evil; they're not committing crimes just for the sake of doing bad. I believe most criminals are probably acting out of desperation. They have a problem that they can't figure out how to solve the "right way" and the systems that we've created around them make it difficult for them to improve their situation, and so they resort to crime in order to resolve those issues. It doesn't make the crime "right;" I'm not condoning it. And obviously people are complex, and there will be some people who do have Machiavellian tendencies that are maybe lumped under the category of evil. But most people, I suspect, aren't motivated to do wrong because of a pure internal desire to hurt and destroy. 

I recently watched a 2015 documentary called, "Where to Invade Next." It was interesting! Michael Moore was traveling around Europe "taking" best practices and policies that are, honestly, pretty novel, and in some cases, rather shocking to the American mindset. I think of myself as a pretty open minded person and even I struggled with the subversion of the prison system and other concepts. Specifically, in Norway where, the people who are "locked up" for crimes have a key to their homes. It's not a cell. It's more like a neighborhood to play house in and be rehabilitated. They're allowed to have sharp knives in their kitchens to cook fresh meals. They are allowed a lot of freedom to pursue various activities. The country's prison guards treat their prisoners very well and it's more of a rehab and a place to learn, "Hey, here's how to be a good neighbor" rather than treating them like lesser than humans. And the question is, does it work? And in Norway, it does. They have less repeat offenders and they have less crime overall. So somehow the threat of having to go into a more comfortable prison system allows that country to keep their crime rates at bay. They also allow their ex-convicts to vote, which is something that we don't do in America. And that's kind of stripping the human rights, making them lesser humans in some ways. And maybe that reduces the anger for would-be repeat criminals: the culture and the politics which American ex-convicts see, specifically, difficulties in finding a job and not letting them have voting rights, is kind of reinforcing that the only thing that they can do is act out on it and commit crimes to make their voice heard and get what they need. 

Anyways, back to the main crux of my topic today. I wonder if the thought about implementing universal basic income, UBI - lifting people up using automation, using AI - is the path forward, instead of allowing people to have increasingly more menial jobs or no jobs. If we can finally use technology to make our lives happier, healthier, easier, I think there would be less crime. I don't profess that I know the answer; I don't know how to make that happen exactly. But I think what we're doing with the justice system and gun laws and the like may be attacking the wrong problem. We really need to be looking at why these people are involved in crime to begin with. What's the root cause of why they are resorting to a crime?

And I wonder if the Norway prison system would work here. And truthfully I don't think it would. I don't think we could copy it over and we instantly start getting less repeat offenders. Send our criminals to neighborly rehab and we lower crime - I don't think that's going to work in America, not by itself. So then I started thinking about why does it work in Norway and why wouldn't it be able to work here in the US. And I think the answer is, you have to look at the people of Norway or the Nordic culture more broadly. They are content in a very cold environment. The Danish have what they call Hygge which is when it's so cold outside that you just kind of bundle up and have a cozy time inside with your family and friends. Norway has a form of this called koselig. That's a form of being content in a cold climate. Living in, maybe what some might consider a miserable situation, and I don't think Americans do enough of that. I think we are raised to want more. We are raised to expect more. We are raised to challenge the norms. 

And I think that's it's a love / hate kind of thing, right? It's a two-sided sword. We're brilliant in America: Hollywood and pop culture / pop music, inventions, creativity, innovation. We brought the internet to the world. We have all these things, and I think it's because of that audacity, so it's kind of like you have to pick your poison, because the Scandinavians aren't rolling out a ton of innovations everyday. They're contentedness maybe doesn't create the same kind of drive; it doesn't fuel that spark for creativity that comes from the audacity to be discontented. So we have to ask ourselves, is this the America that we want? Though it's the America that's audacious and not satisfied with the status quo that's what's gotten us here. That's the super power of America - it makes us creative and innovative, but unhappy with the cozy mundane. Is that the America that we want in the future? Those criminals aren't necessarily innovators; they're not productively generating GDP for the country or anything like that, but they are being audacious and challenging the norms (/laws) in their own ways, right? 

So I think that's why the Norway prison system wouldn't work here, because the Norway system is built on the foundation of contentedness. So they can say, "You know man, you really messed up. We're going to take away your koselig. We're going to take away your ability to be content at home with family, and we're going to teach you how to be a better, more appreciative person in a different environment." Whereas Americans are not taught to be content to start with or expected to settle for staying indoors when it's too cold to go out. If we tried to implement the Norwegian prison system, the criminals or would-be criminals would say, "Oh yeah, cheating the system man, this is this is golden. I should commit crimes more often!" So our way of punishing instead of lifting criminals up is our reaction to people that stepped too far out of line. They were taught to be audacious but they were TOO audacious - they didn't follow the laws that we set down and that's not okay. And I think that's why we have such a big military, right? We have a huge military industrial complex and a full complement of military services. We're audacious, but you better not be more audacious than us or go against our beliefs, because we got this huge military. It's like we're policing and imprisoning the world, or at least any group that is too audacious and out of line as defined by our standards. We have to have a big military because we believe that we're right and if anybody dares to think otherwise we need to punish them. So US prisons are a microcosm of our military positioning within the world. Really, if you think about it that way, like we don't care if we're committing crimes against nations if we believe they've wronged us is the same as we don't mind locking up criminals. 

So what do we do differently? And again, this is where I do not have all the answers. There's probably research that a lot of thoughts you know that I'm missing on here, but I think we really need to be focusing our attention, not on the punishment of the crime but on the root cause of the desperation. And again, there's going to be a subset of people that are just going to choose to hurt just for the sake of hurting or they're choosing to hurt because it makes them happier. But the vast majority of criminals, I think, are acting out because they're angry. They're desperate. They're not finding their way in life. They're not doing well in life, and so they're acting in a way that they think will get them what they want. If we want to address that, it's not about gun regulation. It's not about stricter punishments or even about our prison system and making it a happier place. I think it's about making our society more aligned with how we can help the people that are at the bottom, or at the most desperate places and I think it's about how we need to align on common goals and values. I know that's tough because we have a freedom of religion and a lot of diverse people that live here in the US and that's part of the goodness in some sense. But on the other hand, we don't have the common value of koselig like the Norwegians and we can't operate from a place of, "Well, I have different values than you so therefore I can choose to break the law." We have to find some way to get behind one set of values and laws, and make the laws align with the values and then enable people to be able to live those ways.

The irony of having these thoughts right now as I'm on my way to see the musical, Wicked, is that Wicked, is at its core, about a "criminal" who was misunderstood. And on that note, "Ahhh AHHH AHHH ahhhhh!"

Death in Texas: Thoughts While Driving to Tyler

Why am I driving in Tyler, Texas today? It's a long story. But it's something I felt like I needed to do today. On my way though, I've seen such an interesting juxtaposition of Texas. As I rounded just the very first clover entrance to the freeway, I noticed two cop cars with their lights on that were parked and I may have rubber necked just a touch trying to figure out what they were there for. I looked down into the middle of the clover and saw that there was an overturned car down there, so I guess now we know. Later, as I was driving past a cemetery, I happened to glimpse a casket in the process of being towed and lowered into a grave. I stopped at a gas station to fuel up and to get a snack, and there were four Las Vegas style slot machine arcade games. A gentleman was sitting at one of the games; he looked like he had kind of given up on life, or maybe was really hopeful that this would change his life. Texas just feels so depressing sometimes. And it makes me wonder what we're even doing on this Earth with our lives. 

One of the billboards I saw repeated a few times was a Christian billboard with children's wooden alphabet blocks showing A-B-C, and it was something like A: admit your sins and B: believe in Christ and C: something else. I don't know, whatever, but it's just so funny to me to think of Christians thinking that that's a good idea. They're so in their own belief system that they don't understand that that doesn't resonate with non-Christians. If you're a believer, you might think that's such a clever idea to spread the message on billboards - brilliant! But if you're not a believer, that simple ABC thing is actually demeaning or just stupid and laughable. It prompted me to later look up if there were statistics on people converting to Christianity as a result of a billboard speaking to them. I found that, of course, there is a low conversation rate, but more interesting or maybe appalling is that the Christians funding it don't actually seek to convert - the messaging is more about reconfirming their own beliefs for their club of believers, presumably providing comfort in moments of need or doubt. So they're literally admitting that not only is the tactic ineffective to actually spreading the message but that they put them up so they can feel good about the echo chamber they create. It's almost like they're buying faith. 

There's so much information overload in the world and I I wonder if that makes us believe whatever we want to believe because we can't believe everything we read. So instead of being discerning readers, skilled in applying the scientific principles, we're merely choosing to read the stuff and believe the stuff that resonates with our own beliefs. Instead of a healthy skepticism, we outright reject anything that doesn't reinforce our chosen beliefs. Road rage largely comes from everybody thinking they're right, and that other driver is an idiot. They've been wronged, regardless of what the other person is trying to do or doing or going through.

I do a lot of traveling out of DFW, and I've noticed the airport's water bottle refill stations are almost always red for the filter needing to be replaced. I tried the water once from a filter in that status and it was terrible. This is not a problem at any other airport I frequent. Isn't it just so Texas to reject the maintenance of water filters to save on plastic bottles? Like, that shouldn't be a political thing but, yet, it somehow makes sense. Republicans don't believe in global warming or environmental sustainability, so therefore water is bad at DFW airport. Water! The stuff of life! Are ya'll okay? (She said ironically, because she refuses to adopt the local contraction in earnest.) 

And so we've come full circle: death, salvation, echo chambers, and the stuff of life, the lack of which is death. Texas!