elainesplace

As souls, we know it all

Proffering ourselves up

For each others' entertainment

Prison rape is nothing to laugh about. From an article featured in The Week by Ezra Klein writing for Los Angeles Times.

In our society, there's only one form of sexual assault that people find hilarious, say Ezra Klein - and that's prison rape. A new movie, Let's Go to Prison, is rife with gags about anal penetration, and features a bar of dropped soap in it's marketing material. In a similar vein, when Enron's Ken Lay was jailed, California's attorney general saw fit to remark that he couldn't wait until Lay was banged up in a tiny cell with a "tattooed dude who says, 'Hi, my name is Spike, honey'". It's as if we've come to think of rape as part of the punishment. But the reality of prison rape is not a joke, it's horrific. As prisoners have testified at justice department hearings, it's not uncommon for inmates to be pinned down, beaten and raped by as many as seven men in quick succession. Some prisoners enter into coerced "relationships" with dominant inmates, to avoid these habitual assaults; and those who don't do this live in constant fear. Our tacit approval of this situation is grotesque; it is also misguided. Predictably, research has shown that the humiliation engendered by repeated sexual assaults hardens prisoners and fills them with rage, making them likely to return to society more alienated and violent than when they went in. And "there's nothing funny about that".

So here's my dilemma.

I follow a faith in 'no harm'. I can forgive all things through understanding and a deep love, yet somewhere within me a satisfaction is felt when it seems someone who has physically brutalised another may come to experience it themselves. Is this revenge, or some kind of hope that through this they may come to understand what they have done, feel remorse, compassion for their victim? This though is countered with the thought 'if they could hurt some-one in the first place, their own suffering is unlikely to make them more considerate toward others.' In fact, as pointed out, it is more likely to make them worse.

So I can wave my flag of 'no harm', justified by the knowledge that violence precipitates violence, kid myself of my own piety, but in truth, I do not feel sympathy if a brutal person is brutalised, and much as I try, the thought remains 'if you're prepared to use violence, be prepared to go to prison, and turn the other cheek'.

An orb turning in space
Turning, spinning around itself
Around a star
In a galaxy moving through a Universe
Marked by existence

Crusts forming and breaking, colliding
Moving creation on still
Sharp ridges, vast mountains and valleys,
volcanoes and spattered foothills
Mark of movement

Seas swelling, trees forming, life moving
Water cascading from high
Life welcomed by song every morning
Gently kissed by still hush every night
Mark of time

Now mankind enjoys toys of all sorts
And flavours to savour at will
Fine items to dress up existence
Excess like a pick-me-up pill
Man marks time

And boils heave with hubris from cities
Choking on laden air
Scorched, scarred and pitted because mankind
Uses power and toys without care
The beauty of being is here for us
To explore whilst we're living on Earth
But we must review our excesses
To make mankinds' mark worthy of birth

------- “ -------

When I was younger
I could gaze
Into a sea of blue
Above my head
Eternity
Again life shone anew
Now later years
Our Sun obscured
Colours aren't quite as bright
For now above a web of puff
For our foreign delights

As the Moon draws on
The tide rising high
A home has been built
On a marsh now run dry
If rising water
Is part of the game
Will it be Moon or mankind
We'll call on to blame?

The fire we need to fuel our lives
Of flick on light and power that drives
Costs the Earth
It's costing lives
So raise a hand
Don't just stand by

The air we breathe
Imprint of man
Poisons purchased in a can

Ah yes water, the stuff of life
Without clean water theirs' is strife
There they suffer for want of rain
Here clean water is food for drains

Earth's awesome surface
Amazing creatures
Beautiful plants
Breathtaking features
In danger now
Raped, pillaged and poisoned
Will we carry on
Till our blame is proven?

Life is as it is by all that came before
the future is according to now

Being, Time, Being within Time
The awesomeness of matter, the Universe,
Creation, the Whole Scheme
The intricacy behind and within Everything
Being
Existence
Beauty

Perfect the Temporal so it may support the Spiritual Reality
Bringing it through to live the Full Reality
That being Spiritual and Temporal as One
The All moving through Us as we move through the All
Matter is sacred, existence holy

We exist in many different states at many different times
but in whatever state we are, we still are, and with that
that we are, we choose, in a synchronously interconnected
multi-dimensional reality with which we interact
Question thoughts, motives and behaviour

Form order and harmony in the Universe
Order, delays, timing, indicators
Unsure, proceed unless interrupted
Reality is at least as we believe it to be

Follow interruptions through
One right way
Love, the guide for reason
Do with good reason, reason before doing

Peaceful way
Action creates energy, create good energy
Trust in the rightness of the unfolding of life
Have faith in goodness

emotion, thought, spirit, reality
all with all
planes interplaying in transparency
as one forming
the manifest

Seek with yearning the higher good
the opportunity for ultimate being

Believe in something, be living it, for it to become manifest
Following a belief is good for the soul, the act of, reality

I consider myself on average a reasonable sort of person. I get it wrong sometimes but generally I try to get it right.
The problem I have these days however is without having full and accurate information I find it difficult to have faith in any considerations I have concerning, for instance, current affairs at home and abroad, let alone feeling able to form a solid opinion or argument on anything.
As things are at present, I feel I can understand why each does whatever to each. I though want comfort, freedom and happiness for all, and furthermore, believe most peoples of this world do too, really.
It seems to me the development and support from governments of a worldwide agency supporting and ensuring freedom of choice within and for all groups whilst offering aid to develop in an ecologically responsible way is something most people would support and accept from their own governments.
Am I right, or am I not the reasonable person I thought I was? Will a government ever exist in which I can believe in wholeheartedly? Isn't it time we did things differently? Does anyone care? Hmmmm...I'll ponder on.

A 21st Century dilemma? Life immitating art?