> 4. Journal The greatest gift I gave to myself while in solitary confinement was the gift of journaling. I poured my heart and soul into my notepads. I wrote about all the experiences, life choices, and traumas that led me to prison. I was lovingly honest with myself. I talked about all the things I had stuffed deep down inside, and it was the most liberating experience I had
There is a Hindu practice that is similar called Vasana Daha Tantra. "Vasana" meaning imprints, "Daha" to burn, and "Tantra" meaning method - i.e. "the method to burn away imprints". The method is the same as the author has outlined above, except that when you're done you "burn the papers in an inauspicious fire".
I have personally found the act of burning the papers very liberating, because much of cathartic writing I would never want anyone else to see - somethings just need to be written without any discrimination or self censoring, and knowing that it will be burned really aids to release it all.
There are more dimensions to this practice however I'm sure even from a secular perspective it would be helpful, as Shaka explains.
Once, I was on a long hike far away from the trailhead. My phone battery died, and there was no one around, so I needed something to occupy my mind for several hours. One thing I came up with was trying to remember as much as I could about the previous years of my life. It's really a great way to entertain oneself with no external input.
The author, Shaka Senghor, is slightly famous and has been involved with e.g. the MIT Media Lab, so for some background on his original trial, imprisonment and release that the linked article doesn’t provide, refer to his Wikipedia article [0].
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
The generic tangent thing is particularly important [1]. The hottest few sensational topics are like black holes that suck in every passing spaceship [2]. This turns every discussion the same, when what we actually want are diffs—diffs are what's interesting [3]. Curiosity withers under repetition [4].
You don't see a difference between the state removing your literal freedom vs not being allowed to be on a committee or a board?
It seems like any reasonable person should understand that, making such arguments deliberately disingenuous.
I would also note that redemption requires real reflection, penance, and so forth. Paying some kind of price. Crying that you're being unfairly persecuted isn't the same thing.
I think the discussion you want to have might belong to different posts than this one.
I think the key difference is the journey of redemption that the murderer went through. What we admire is the person's ability to change who they are, to literally reinvent themselves, not at a superficial / public level but at the deep level of them making substantially different decisions day to day.
Going from "Yeah, I'll kill someone" to "I recognize why I did that wrong thing and have taken effective steps to never do that again" is pretty huge.
Why do numbers always get removed from titles here? I think four years in solitary gives a significantly different vibe than this editorialized version.
It's to remove some linkbaitness of listicles. If you see a case (like this article) where the number is important, you can write to the mods and them sometimes add the number back.
Solitary was better than getting the shit beat out of me when my ex-wife's law partner dropped by the Polk County Iowa jail on 10 March 2020 - dropped my name to a drug dealer - and was viciously attacked hours later.
Read lots of great Sci-Fi, both Niven and Game of Thrones. Lots of category theory - for "security" reasons they banned software engineering books.
How is 4 CONSECUTIVE years of solitary isolation not "cruel and unusual"? I'm not asking rhetorically, or to start some kind of debate or discussion about the state of incarceration in the US. I am literally asking on what legal basis those who have fought such things (I assume that they have) have lost those cases.
You were not confined. At any time you were free to leave what ever constraints you placed on yourself. Moreover, your place of self-isolation was not deliberately stripped of sensory opportunities.
Did you stay in a dark, cramped, windowless room for months? It's pretty insulting to think that lockdown is anywhere near being stuck in a 2m x 2m space for months...
Holy moly. I hope this is some dry jesting. Comparing living freely in a home of some kind. Even a car. Comparing it to solitary confinement is so wrong.
I thought at first you were mocking everyone acting like stay in orders were any thing like solitary confinement. But your last paragraph throws that notion off.
Nah there are definitely people who deserve it. If everyone really wants to get rid of the death penalty at least keep this. People like child rapists, mass shooters, etc all deserve lifetime solitary confinement.
I understand the impulse, some crimes are so horrific it gets your blood up, but for me it's not about them, it's about us. I don't want to live in a vengeful, vindictive or cruel society and I don't want anyone doing those things on my behalf. I'm a pragmatist, some killings are essentially unavoidable, as in war. Violence needs to be an option, but I don't think it should be used unnecessarily or to satisfy base urges. Not in my name anyway. These people should serve the sentence they were given according to due process, and this does not seem to be consistent with the intended penalty.
On a personal note an acquaintance of mine served several years for a sentence for which he was later fully exonerated. It was a thoroughly awful travesty of justice. He also underwent appalling abuses as the alleged crime for which he was convicted was sexual in nature. No system is perfect and there will probably always be mistakes made, so lets at least make sure the consequences of such mistakes don't burden our consciences any more than they need to.
I think enhanced and cruel punishments imposed as a result of institutional failures, that have nothing to do with the crime or proscribed punishment, isn't justice either.
Enormous resources are expended attempting to ensure fair trials and the system still fails regularly and often. Fixing one part of the system shouldn't dependent on fixing an unrelated part, we should I think try to do both.
I asked the other person. If it’s cheaper or same price to keep someone mostly isolated with decent accommodations including proper bed, clothing, fresh air, computer/tablet, radio, computer, [limited] tv and internet usage.
Would you be fine with that?
They still have to be alone. Justice is still being served. No sane person would want that life.
What if it’s cheaper to keep these people safely isolated most of the time, but they have a cozy small place with some [limited] tv, radio, computer/tablet + internet access.
You still achieve what you want. Unless you want to be cruel for the sake of it.
It's not "unusual" if they're doing it to huge numbers of inmates? Sorry, that's a bit cynical. But if somebody can take a serious look at pretty much any aspect of the american criminal justice system and not come away cynical and jaded, I want whatever drugs they're taking.
There is worse. Take a solitary cell meant for one. Then put two people in it. This is normal in many US facilities. Same 24/7 lockdown but at least it isn't "solitary". In truth, it is worse.
> What I learned in the two years to follow was that I was trying to control something I had no control over, and I suffered as a result. In my third year, I began to journal. I discovered that my thoughts and my actions were the only two things I could control. It was a pivotal moment in my life. I went from being a victim of my circumstances to being a master of my destiny.
Almost every book and teaching mostly comes down to this. Whether is Viktor Frankl or good old CBT. I actually read a very good passage about this in a book called Hapiness Trap
- Choose anything you are aware of: a sight, sound, smell, taste, sensation, thought, feeling, movement, body part, material object—literally anything.
- Focus on that thing and observe it as if you were a curious scientist.
- As you’re observing it, notice who’s doing the observing.
- That’s all there is to it.
- In that moment, when you observe the observing, you are the observing self.
- So the moment you realise what is happening—that you’re fusing with stories or believing that you are the documentary—you can instantly step back and observe.
- Then all you need to do is notice that you’re observing and in that moment, there is the real you.
Observing sensations, thoughts and even the observer is a common practice in mindfulness meditation. I've only started doing short daily meditations and find it very difficult to do this successfully, and get easily distracted. I found that I'm only able to focus on a single thought at a time, and if that's a distracting one, then I lose the observation part of it.
- Getting easily distracted is normal. Don't set a goal of never getting distracted: it's unrealistic and counterproductive. I've spent hundreds of hours meditating, and still get distracted (albeit more briefly). Instead, feel good when you notice you're distracted. The goal is to train yourself to notice and return to the sensation sooner, with positive feedback.
- Don't try to block out everything except what you're meditating on. That should be your main focus, but you should let yourself be aware of other things in the background.
When I do deep introspection, I feel much more connected to the kinds of ideas espoused by Jainists (complete non violence, aestheticism, recognition of inherent subjectivity and indeterminacy of the universe) rather than the Buddhist analogs (e.g. 4 novel truths or 8 fold path)
"- As you’re observing it, notice who’s doing the observing.
- That’s all there is to it.
- In that moment, when you observe the observing, you are the observing self."
means nothing. What does this mean? Look in the mirror? Focus on your breath? Repeat the thought you just had? None of this leads to any sort of depth that is often claimed.
It seems you have failed to consider that the meaning of something is subjective and that for you it means nothing and lacks depth, while for others it is profound in its depth. In situations like this, I often find it more productive to examine why it seems like others are getting something out of it while I am not. Perhaps this is an opportunity to grow!
> It seems you have failed to consider that the meaning of something is subjective and that for you it means nothing and lacks depth, while for others it is profound in its depth.
That statement is self-refuting because it is objective. Subjectivism can't get off the ground because its fundamental premise is objective.
There is exactly one truth in the universe, that there are no other truths.
qed.
Epistemological monism easily resolves the "socratic paradox" and it looks like that's how Socrates himself resolves it.
"although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know" - Socrates, in Platos Apology
> There is exactly one truth in the universe, that there are no other truths.
> qed.
This is a contradiction. QED means you just proved something to be true. If there is a single truth (that there is only one truth) then there can be no deductive reasoning, science, etc.
You must have objective truth and reasoning in order to say anything other than "I feel..."
I comment, because I spent way too much time considering these questions. Considered them even more this weekend. All it comes out too "Oh, it's me thinking about me." Not exactly a revelation. My answer is so simplistic because all of this is.
This is one of those questions that can't be usefully answered without reference to the experience it's asking about. I can say from my own experience that what's being described isn't nonsense, but I can't put words around it that make sense as an explanation of how I know. Nor can anyone else, as far as I can tell, and I've seen many try.
The method described here seems fine as far as it goes, but it's kind of like learning to ride a bike, or maybe how to juggle. There are clear steps you can follow, but they only take you up to the point where a moment of novel insight is required to grasp the skill, and only that moment of novel insight will take you any further. Once you've had it, you never forget it, but there's a step in there that no one else can take you through - you have to find it for yourself or not at all.
It's not fair, but that's just how it is as far as I can tell. I wish I could do better, and I'm sorry that I can't.
Generally it means being aware of your physicality in a larger context. For example, maybe you're getting outraged by something you just read online, and it can help put things into perspective when you realize that you're a person sitting in front of a computer tapping on a keyboard.
I can appreciate this perspective but, like others have said, it is probably useful to add a "for me" and "for others" qualifier to these observations and see that there is no universally true statement for all people.
I have considered "meditative" to be a part of my character for nearly my whole life, while it is self-taught/self-discovered and idiosyncratic. I would read some popular accounts of meditation and hear parts which resonated and parts that just didn't seem to translate.
I already am aware of my breathing. I discovered "square breathing" for myself as a child for pain and stress management and got lots of breath-awareness through swimming. I find it odd to imagine being unaware of breathing, but I realize it must be possible from the accounts of others.
I am self-reflective and aware of my thoughts and emotional responses. I had difficult aspects to my childhood and had to learn to modulate my responses and predict the unpredictable to deal with volatile personalities in my surroundings. I find it odd to imagine being unaware of my thoughts or emotions.
In recent years, I've struggled with stress management and found myself stating things very similar to your final line. I hear people telling me to do these beginner-level meditation steps and I simultaneously feel, "I am already doing this," "it is not working," and sometimes "your advice is not actionable!" while feeling very frustrated. I might blurt out any of those statements if I get past feeling it is pointless to continue the interaction. On reflection, I think it may be impossible to know which is more true of the apparent contradictions. Am I not doing it even though I think I am? Is it working even though I don't think so? Is it really meaningless advice or I am just being petulant?
These guides and advice are written for a target audience. They are not really wrong if they do not work for some of us, as we may not be the audience. What is frustrating is that it can feel impossible to find alternative guidance if you have an atypical starting state. What is alternative advice about "being present" for someone who is stuck in hyper-vigilance due to stress/trauma? What is alternative advice about "recognizing your thoughts" for someone who is stuck ruminating and meta-ruminating? Etc.
Have you tried guided meditations? Those were essential for me to get started. I think it's Tara Brach that has some on her website. Maybe 5-10 minutes and having the voice cues helps keep me on track.
Don't beat yourself up if your mind starts wandering. When you realize you're off track, just refocus on your breathing, seeing the things around you. What do you hear, what do you smell, can you feel the pressure where your body meets the floor, the bed, or chair? Your mind will wander off every couple seconds at first, just don't even worry about it and bring your focus back onto the sensations your body is feeling.
If you start to feel restless, think about what sensations you are feeling. Don't try to calm down. Focus on regular breathing, feel that your heart rate is elevated, feel out where the tension is located in your body. Is it in your neck, your chest? See if you can gentle relax those muscles.
Theres no right way to meditate and there's no wrong way. If you're worried that you're not doing it right, bring your attention back to the physical sensations and your 5 senses.
Sorry if it's not helpful. I think you were the one looking for a more concrete guide and this is what works for me.
I don’t know if I do what is being described here, but if I were to try to create a computing analogy it would be spinning up a low priority thread that is just sampling what is going on in my mind and how I’m processing the observations that I make and the sensory inputs that I’m experiencing. These samples are just stored away somewhere that I’m able to somewhat recall later.
It’s kind of similar to that state of mind you have when you’re boiling water, you get involved with some other activity but there’s somehow an increased sensitivity to the rather subtle sound of a bubbling pot.
If you try to think too much about the observations real-time, you interrupt the primary thought process that you were trying to observe. So it’s kind of a passive process that you can then reason about later.
I think it’s just something you have to try to do until you start to get results, it’s so subtle and personal that I think it’s going to be difficult for anyone to truly give prescriptive instruction that results in success.
It's meditation; detachment from being completely possesed by your train of thoughts. There is plenty of scientific evidence that shows meditation can have psychological and physiological benefits for many people
Small tip regarding Medium, click the padlock in the URL bar, click cookies and remove all that contain medium.com in their name. No more article count limit.
Thank you for that tip. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to clear cookies for a site and done it the roundabout way: go into settings, search for "cookies", remember which of the four matches under "privacy and security" is the one that works (and not the seemingly obvious "clear browsing data"), type in the domain, and go from there.
Your trick of clicking the padlock (which I assume also works on the warning icon for non-HTTPS sites) is so much easier!
Unless they've changed this, Medium is one of those sites that asks you to sign in with Facebook or Google, and then after you give them your email and profile picture (why?) they come back and say you still can't read it. I hate that. I don't have a good feeling about Medium because of this. It's trickery.
For anyone seeing this, I tried to help Medium solve this coming from the other direction, which is to make it an over the top good value for HN readers to not only log in but also pay for the $5 subscription.
That's really what Medium aspires to be--a place worthy of a five dollar subscription.
Many people here probably end up on Medium repeatedly via Google search and yeah, the results are mixed. But also, it's worth noting that a lot of those results wouldn't exist at all without Medium paying and encouraging writers and editors.
What I hoped would start to take Medium over the top though was the addition of all of The Pragmatic Programmer books. That was paid for by other tech people who had already subscribed. (And I played a role in bringing them on board).
There's more coming. But overall, this is 100% Medium's direction and belief that a soft paywall is a better business and a bigger win for all parties than free & ad supported. So this paywall isn't going away, and it's really on them to do more to justify it.
> That's really what Medium aspires to be--a place worthy of a five dollar subscription.
That's not going to happen simply because Medium is not responsible for the content. There's really nothing positive associated to the Medium brand in terms of content.
Users want valuable content for their money and won't pay a subscription to a hosting provider.
Sure, but why pay a subscription (to Medium of all companies) when I can just buy the book I specifically want to read?
Edit:
btw the point I was making earlier is not if there is actually some value in Medium or not. I'm sure there are interesting and valuable pieces already there.
But you need more than that to convince people to pay a subscription.
FWIW, the subscription is paid to the authors & publishers. You subscribe to Medium, but then that subscription money gets parceled out to the authors you end up reading.
First, medium must take a chunk of that, otherwise how is it going to survive?
And second, Medium is known for being an unethical company. Look for example how they harassed publications like Free Code Camp:
> “But over the past year Medium had become more aggressive toward us,” Larson said. “They have pressured us to put our articles behind their paywalls. We refused. So they tried to buy us. (Which makes no sense. We’re a public charity.) We refused. Then they started threatening us with a lawyer.”
Yeah, I followed that story pretty closely, including talking to a lot of the authors who were in that publication. It was all very suspect in that it seemed like FCC was trying to create controversy to obscure their own bad, probably illegal, act.
For one, the pressure was just that Medium went from not having a business model to choosing subscriptions as their business model and that had a lot of ripple effects in terms of incentives. I guess that creates "pressure" but it's hard to fault a company for having a business if the alternative is going out of business. Anyone saying this is a vanity project for Medium's CEO and thus doesn't need to be a business is way off base. He made his money in publishing platforms (Blogger, Twitter) and Medium is just more of the same.
But what that subscription pivot led to was some publications feeling like they should leave. Only problem is that they don't have a license to any of the articles in their publications. So leaving, legally speaking, would mean starting with zero traffic.
I'm 99.5% certain that what is called here "threatening us with a lawyer" was simply explaining the Medium Terms of Service which leave the copyright with the authors and ask for minimal license for use throughout the Medium network. It's definitely not the case that publications gain any right to license an author's work more broadly.
That didn't stop FCC though. They copied thousands of author's work and moved it to a new site. Medium had no standing though--they don't own the copyright and so can't enforce it. And so that left a lot of authors in a weird position where they needed to decide whether it was worth figuring out their rights and fighting for it or what. I'm sure some were fine with the move, but I also talked to many that were upset. In any case, it definitely wasn't legal on FCCs part.
While I disagree with solitary confinement I also disagree with a murderer reinventing himself as some sort of guru and getting a diversity department job at MIT
This man talks about the stigma of being a felon as being unfair when he took someone's life
I would equate his confinement with torture. However I don't think we should reward him for suffering through a punishment he granted himself.
When a person like this gets ted talks and photoshoots I think we've gone too far. The man has used his crime to turn himself into a brand
The guy ran from an abusive home when he was 14. He couldn't find shelter and landed on the streets. He turned to drug trade as a way to feed himself. Then, at some point, he was shot 4 times. Someone called 911, but the ambulance never arrived. His acquaintance drove him to hospital, where he was treated for two days, then shoved back on the streets. With one bullet still in his body. Then, he decided to get a gun for himself. Then he actually used that gun on someone like him, and the other guy unfortunately died. This could have been manslaughter, but there were drugs involved, and you gotta be tough on drug crimes, so he got 19 years, even though people in your country, in similar cases, routinely leave prison after 5-6 years.
Your society failed him on so many levels, and so many times, that it would be a miracle if he didn't land in prison sooner or later.
Fast forward to today, he served his sentence in full and when he got out, he couldn't rent an apartament or find a job. The punishment was supposed to have ended, but it didn't: he has "criminal record", which makes him - in your society - somehow less than a human being.
He somehow lived through this, got a job, wrote a book, started advocating for better prison conditions, started helping inmates in prisons around him.
And now, there's a robdachshund who wants to deny all the good the guy did, want to have him carry a stigma for the rest of his life, and want to take his livelihood from him.
America - I won't ever understand you. I wouldn't want to be a part of a society of such robdachshunds ever, there's not enough money on the whole planet to convince me otherwise.
Society doesn't owe people anything besides freedom, which that guy had, and used it to commit a crime, and paid for it.
> America - I won't ever understand you. I wouldn't want to be a part of a society of such robdachshunds ever, there's not enough money on the whole planet to convince me otherwise.
Guess what, I wouldn't want to be part of a society of self righteous people like you either.
> Society doesn't owe people anything besides freedom
That's one opinion, and it's far from universal even in your country, though it seems to be popular. From the outside perspective, the fact that it seems to be shared by a portion of population this large is deeply mistifying. Edit: I mean, if that's all, then that's a pretty bad deal - a society can tell you to go die in a war, hang you, starve you, make you work to pay for an ever-growing army of officials, and you get out of it just "freedom"?
> and paid for it.
Yes. That's what I said. The OP, though, wants to make him keep paying for it forever. Which is another seemingly popular, yet incredibly disturbing opinion that I can't identify with.
> That's one opinion, and it's far from universal even in your country
Not american, so not my country even if I live in the US.
> the fact that it seems to be shared by a portion of population this large is deeply mistifying
That portion is shrinking, because we are being infected more and more by the european virus of equality rather than freedom unfortunately.
> The OP, though, wants to make him keep paying for it forever.
If you have killed someone maybe you shouldn't try to become famous and make money out of it, that's what I understood from OP's comment and I agree with that. If nothing else, for your victim and his family/friend.
> Thank you, I'll take it as a compliment.
From your profile I gather you are from Poland, a country that, if I'm not mistaken, has benefited from that american impulse towards freedom in the past. So, what happened here, was freedom ok when it was against communism but not ok anymore now that the USSR is gone? Real question, not trying to be a prick here.
> Not american, so not my country even if I live in the US.
That pretty much explains everything, thank you for your time.
> but not ok anymore
I never said it's not ok, I said it isn't the only thing that a society owes to the people. You failed to explain why do you think "freedom" should be the only such thing.
> Real question, not trying to be a prick here.
If you feel that such a disclaimer is necessary, it would be better to phrase the question differently in the first place.
Freedom is not up to society to give or take, it's a natural right that we had before society even existed unlike healthcare, education or security for example. So, since those are provided by society, society can take them away, but not freedom.
Now of course, I'm talking in principle here, individual freedom is limited by other things, private property for example, or justice, like in this case with this guy in solitary confinement, but it's because we live in society with other people and we all need to get along, but the principle still remains, freedom is a natural right that precedes society itself.
Ok, but I don't understand what does any of that have to do with a case where the society failed to provide care for an (effectively) orphan, failed to provide security, failed to provide healthcare, and insisted on cruel and unusal punishment for 7 out of 19 years. You say that "society can take them away", and I agree, and I call it a failure of that society when it happens. What does "freedom as a natural right preceding society" have to do with any of this?
Could you explain how being put in jail for transgressions and being free are interrelated? Freedom means you are in control of your life, but in your scenario, you are no longer in control of your life because you transgressed. Who or what determines what is a severe enough transgression to lose your freedom?
This is such an unfair comment. You're basically saying that once people are out of prison, they should commit to a life of poverty and continued suffering. The whole point of prison is to rehabilitate and make a net-positive contributor to society, which clearly this person has. The man did his time, what else can they do? Also, saying, "getting a diversity department job at MIT" is such a racist thing to say overall.
Prison is about what the majority of an electorate think it's about...
The sad thing is, _you_ and lots of other compassionate people _think_ prison is about rehabilitation while
The majority of the American electorate think it's about punishment.
I hear what you're saying. I'm not super fond of anyone "turning themselves in to a brand", but maybe that's just because I've never been able to do it. But I would like to imagine there's room in this world for people to make mistakes and to redeem themselves.
If this man can never make himself in to more than a criminal, maybe it would be better to just end their life immediately after the crime? A life for a life? If they can bring good out of their evil, should there be a limit to how much good they can bring?
I'm not asking these questions with a specific point in mind, other than to present some additional context.
I don't have to believe he's a guru or think about his job at MIT to recognize that he's had an experience, and a series of reactions to that experience, that are valuable when related through writing.
Does anyone happen to know the context and background on the murder? It doesn't seem to have much info on the Wikipedia page. I'd imagine that's pretty important for making a judgement call.
Yes you are right. I put it anyways because votes matter, being angry on the Internet does not. And the tough on crime mentality that lead to this is pushed harder by Republicans than Democrats.
His stay in solitary began in Florida in 1992. The governor of Florida at the time was a democrat. Maybe you weren't around then, but the democrats of the 90s (Clinton, Biden, etc.) were "tough on crime" types.
There is a Hindu practice that is similar called Vasana Daha Tantra. "Vasana" meaning imprints, "Daha" to burn, and "Tantra" meaning method - i.e. "the method to burn away imprints". The method is the same as the author has outlined above, except that when you're done you "burn the papers in an inauspicious fire".
I have personally found the act of burning the papers very liberating, because much of cathartic writing I would never want anyone else to see - somethings just need to be written without any discrimination or self censoring, and knowing that it will be burned really aids to release it all.
There are more dimensions to this practice however I'm sure even from a secular perspective it would be helpful, as Shaka explains.