Others

What to do with the crazy people? This is one of many questions that all societies have to somehow figure out. For most of human history the answer was simple, keep them away. This still goes on, in high schools at least. You have your varied social cliques, and then, the 'other' people. The strange ones who kinda just get ignored. Whether this applies to people with physiological insanity, nasty diseases, or any number of other differences, we have an innate tendency as humans to exclude the other.

It was only when the 'other' did not respect such exclusion that in times past there was seen a need to intimidate or kill for social security. Madmen were laughable; the butt of jokes. Yet, still there was a provisional respect for the 'freedom of their soul' so long as it did not interfere with the greater social good. A schizophrenic in the middle ages was excluded from society at large, but only treatened or killed when they did harm to another person whom was in on the society.

Micheal Foucault points out that in such times, the social outcast was still left to freedom whereby they could roam the countryside unhindered, and often provided for by social charity as long as the did not interfere with the society which required a 'healthy' distance from them.

Yet, in entering into the modern period, with society increasing in complexity, this freedom grew to be distrusted. As society grew further in its reach and more delicate in its structure, the potential for 'mishaps' caused by those free outcasts came to be more costly and disruptive. Something had to be done.

Thus, social exclusion evolved from locking the 'others' out, to locking them in. The asylum and prison were born. At first there was little differentiation between the two. Both served the purpose of "controlling" those people who did not quite conform to the norms of the dominate social structure. At first psychotic schizophrenics were put in the same prison courtyard as tax evaders . . . often with macabre results to say the least. As time went on differentiation between inmates was deemed necessary.

Now, here is what I find interesting. What we see in the evolution of the penile/mental health system, says a lot about us. Consider, in the middle ages, exclusion was one means of a society defining itself. For people to belong to a society, they need a proper social understanding. In other words, every group/clique requires communal understanding of who they are as a group. One part of how this social definition is accomplished is by exclusion of intolerable behavior. In ancient times this has taken the form of simply locking out those who did not fit, but in modern times we no longer see this as plausible. Somewhere in our social conscious we have found different social values, that have changed the nature of how we deal with otherness.

First, we can see a deep insecurity about the fragility of life, and of the society. The complexity of the modern state is due in large part to the vast quantity of people it is dealing with. We have come a long way from warring tribal clans. Yet, as humans, we cannot really fathom life outside of the social context we have inherited. If America falls, then in some way I cease to exist . . . whether that mean I die physically, or simply that I lose all that has been characteristic of life up to now. In the modern world we live in the prepetual fear of losing our society which gives us life, or of losing our life itself. This fear manifests itself in thousands of safety mechanisms. Seat belts. Smoke detectors. Homeland securtiy. The jail system.

Think about the terror people live in when a criminal escapes prison. Why is this? After all, we did send him to prison to get "reformed" right?? Right? . . . anyone? What is it about the magical dates set by parole boards that make us assume that people have been 'reformed' on any level? And furthermore, what do we really mean by "reformed"? Perhaps just that they are now a docile cog to fill a space in the big social machine.

Docile . . . hmmm. Consider this, in earlier times, should one have escaped prison the town as a whole would probly have banded together with torches, pitchforks, and a few shotguns, and swept through the fields the convict . . . and when they saw him, they likely would have killed him on the spot. There wasn't much tolerance then. But, our society is sedated with tolerance. Here is the other thing I see in our prison system. In former times, when outcasts still served as a means to define what "we" are not, judgement and punishment were public affairs. Now, judgment takes place in private courtrooms away from the public eye. Punishment even more so is removed from the public eye. If the average person on the street were to see what goes on in the average prison, one wonders how long our penile system would stand. Yet, most of us, myself included, are ignorant to the deplorable conditions of prisons, as well as the racial/economic bias within them that casts trenchant doubt on the judicial system that feeds them full of mostly poor and minority inmates.

There are few angry mobs screaming for judgment in our society. When there are, they are not allowed into the immediate courtroom. Judgment is not much of a community affair, nor is punishment. What punishment we are allowed to see is quite sterile. This is in contrast to the ways in which the community at large used to join together punishing those who would compromise its unity, or conformity. We no longer join in together condemning what "we" are not. We merely entrust the offenders to 'the system'. What does this say about us??

I think that our system is designed to pacify not only the inmates, but ourselves as well. It is a sterile emotionless system, that teaches those outside as well as those within, to merely 'trust' that it is working . . . and go back to bed America, it's a long day at work tomorrow. In other words, it is a means by which we teach ourselves that we are 'rational and objective' in our judgments of others. We taught to ignore the demographics as best as possible and just believe that the system is not prejudice . . . because we are not prejudiced people. In the system we see what we want to believe about ourselves as Americans. We want to believe we are ethical in the way we treat those "others" who don't quite measure up, or fit within our society. We want to believe that we are 'reforming' the others, and that the means we have set up to do so are just and honorable. We want to believe in ourselves, but have found blindness and self-deception are the only means by which we can achieve this.

We want to believe.