the stanford experiment.

The Stanford experiment says a lot about the power of context. the context in the case of the experiment was a mock jail. It was an experiment with a frightening outcome. the captors began to exhibit sadistic behaviors. unfortunately this experiment holds true in the real world. It's one of the most disturbing facets of context in Gladwell's book. It's also a fairly common issue...who remembers Abu Gharib that was just a few years ago and a few months ago we heard about black water. there are all kinds of alarming stats on how often incarcerated women are sexually assaulted by guards.When i read about what guards are capable of inflicting on prisoners it makes me wonder about the human psyche. Is it possible that if put under the right level of stress and supplied with relatively unchecked power that we default to sadistic behavior. Or is it possible that prison guards are a sort of self selecting breed that subconsciously or consciously lust after these kinds of situations. We may all have this capability with in us but are conditioned out of it. If i was ever in the position of a guard i would like to think that i wouldn't resort to this kind of behavior. From my experience with being incarcerated I can tell you that i might not necessarily be able to resist. when i was in jail I didn't feel connected to any thing I felt stripped and raw and dehumanized. I think its very possible that the guards may be reacting to their subconscious worries that they are just one misstep away from being in prison themselves. When they treat the prisoners in completely sadistic and dehumanizing manner it creates a difference between the captor and captive. Its a sick way to comfort yourself when you add the context and stress together with the laws of Gladwell's epidemic people can be caused to do some twisted things.

The grayscale

Morality is many things to many people. It's also many things on an individual level. when i was a kid it all seemed pretty simple a life is a life, premarital sex is bad and drugs just say no. Now i'm seventeen and much to my parents dismay I've grown fast. when you deal with these issues of morality you see how many facets there are too life and how it's ridiculous to make judgments for others. I'm no longer pro-life (anti-choice), I believe sexuality is fluid, personal and there's no set time when its okay to become sexually active. I've learned that saying no to drugs isn't my strong point and drug use is a health issue not a law enforcement issue. I'm not the person I envisioned when i was young my morals have done a three sixty. I think I'm better for it i see things in a gray-scale and I'm not worried about what god thinks. the right choice isn't the same in every context. there are no absolutes. society needs to make allowance for that and people should have the right to choose based on the context of their lives.

If yr interested.

I came upon this post on a blog I read discussing a trend piece that appeared in the ny times about the rise of female teen bloggers.

my uncle mike.

I have absolutely no exposure to school shootings. I don't know what to say about them everyone takes a crack at what they think causes it. could it be lax gun laws, violent video games or school bullies. However all these theories are really just bullshit excuses draw attention away from the root cause. we have a mental health crisis in our country. These people snap and do things because they are sick. We cannot not leave the mentally ill in our country w/o care and not run into these tragedy's.
Although i have no expierance with school shootings i have seen what happens to the mentally ill citizens of our nation. My uncle has skitzophernia, I loved him when i was a kid we played all kinds of games together. we watched movies together and took trips to the zoo. He was very patient w/ me i don't remember him ever yelling at me. my family was up front with me and let me know from a very young age that there was a part of his life he couldn't control. As i grew older and matured he deteriorated. His mental illness wore him down and cost him many things in his life. He didn't have anything to live for. He lived off of government benefits and my grandparents he couldn't hold a job he stayed at his home my grandparents bought him and used his social security check to drink all day. Eventually some events unfolded and he ended up in a nursing home in his late fortys. He has no memory and can barely walk because of oxygen deprivation that damaged his brain. Noone in my family calls it a suicide attempt though, just like no one talks about how when he was in his twentys he tried to burn down the house my mother and grandparents live(d) in. i guess my parents and grandparents chose to ignore these things because all kinds of treatments didn't fix anything he was still sick. they took a path of quite resignation trying to reduce harm along the way. my grandparents became happier people when he was put into a nursing home because now he cant hurt himself or others and he well have people to take care of him. If my family can't take care of him or find him the help he needed i don't want to think whats happening to the mentally ill that are born into working class and impoverished families. The sad truth is these unfortunate and mentally ill individuals are ending up on the streets and in prison because there is no where for them to go. We are running a for profit health care system and very few are getting the care they need. These are the same faction of society that are shooting up schools. you want to feel safe in school then step up speak out and make sure there is universal care available to every American.

In our society we aren't addressing the root issues and we tend to try and punish others first instead of helping them. We really need to implement a new approach to our health care system and devote our resources to helping those w/ mental illnesses. we can pay now in tax dollars or later in the loss of human life, pain, anguish and the cost of keeping mentally ill inmates incarcerated. I say we spend now and intervene and hopefully we can cut down on the human turmoil and violence stemming from mental illness.