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Sunday, September 27, 2015

Poem - My Lost Love

The hour was long, I knew not when, I’d find my long lost love again.

A loss long past; days fly but die hard and fast; cursed memories too pained,
too condemned to keep, to remain ashamed, strained, aghast.

My love faded and changed, her face beautiful, perfect, unsoiled,
arranged making me feel I had once more won those timeless
days of joy begun when love’s fresh dew and warm rays of sun smiled
on our love new, pure, powerfully felt vividly as one.

Deep kisses giving way to long caresses; holding each other, the unbreakable
grip of two lovers, never wanting anything other, never separated, never alone,
never craving another.

But I knew it an illusion; my primal heart not letting go, not able to see
truth behind false fusion with woe gaining speed, breaking into my mind,
a woe on whose brain it set and and gleefully, savagely, sadistically dined.

I was not foolish but fooled, distracted, blissfully numb in the belief of a gentle
nudge of when that golden, cascading tide when we would hold each other tight
again would come, whether morning, noon or night whenever from, our bonds
too strong, our fear too great to crack or stress or sever what we had, our heightened
sense of the dread of banished loneliness unsaid. We’d die together, our hearts
and souls intertwined forever.

Then I opened my eyes to the broken mirror, a loathsome image I could only despise,
shattered in love’s cold strangle, feelings squeezed then crushed then left to dangle
in the dark light’s shadowy shine of lies; I realized her forever lost and cried.

I knew the twist, the twist fated forever weathered and withered again;
the twist never to mend, without ease, without cease, without peace,
without end; The twist that could only be the cruelest blow to my heart
there ever has been for I knew that my heart, the lost love part, would never
find her again.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Types of justice: No. 2 - Personal justice

Personal justice is what it sounds like. It's what we as individuals hold dear, namely our value systems. Our views of immorality and legality often overlap with our idea of justice but definitely not always. We feel an injustice has been committed when what we value has been offended. The idea of justice is one of finality. It's an "In the end" concept. The final decisions of court trials are what we consider justice, although we do see things that are "wrong" at times with the defense and prosecution along the way such as when a defense attorney accuses a father of sexually abusing his daughter (like in the Casey Anthony case.) We think: "That's wrong. That clearly didn't happen and it's wrong for the defense attorney to have used it as a defense." Court room tactics often annoy our sense of right and wrong. In such moments, we feel that an injustice has been done, though we usually don't use the term "injustice" for smaller things because we view justice with such heavy finality. The idea of justice has weight. It's serious and usually non-subjective. Morality can often be seen subjectively. What is moral for one isn't moral for another. Not so with justice. No one thinks: "The murderer got off without any punishment. In my value system, that's a good thing." Such thoughts are considered detestable by the vast majority of people as are the ones that think it. This is the main difference in what is considered moral and what is considered just. Though the two do often overlap, many traits of morality are subjective (such as certain hedonistic pleasures) while those of justice are usually not. Orthodox religious views are ones that tend to link their ideas of morality with justice. What their bible or prophets say is considered one and the same. It's like the fusion of church and state. To many religious people, church doctrine is all there is. To me, the two are not synonymous. Justice isn't blind. It's usually crystal clear. The term "No justice, no peace" is a very fitting one for society. We're often able to forgive ourselves for certain small "immoralities" and we're much more likely to forgive certain small immoralities committed against us but we will not let go when our sense of justice has been offended. We can forgive the tactics of a defense attorney but we cannot forgive a final unjust verdict because the verdict has that sense of finality. If a killer gets away with it, that's all there is to it. Can't be tried for the same crime twice so justice not only hasn't been done, in all likelihood it will NEVER be done. In such cases, we question ourselves and our system. Certain illegalities can be overlooked (like jaywalking) so long as we get the big things (justice) right. If we don't, we're driven to overhaul certain parts of our legal system. We do that occasionally with matters of immorality that disgust us (like child molestation) but we usually don't see this as being a justice situation. We don't think: "The child molester has been caught. Justice has been done." We think: "The child molester has been caught. The evil person won't hurt children anymore." This is splitting hairs a bit but you get the idea. In matters of murder, the idea is to punish the killer. That is justice. In matters of child molestation, the most important thing is incarcerating the perpetrator so he doesn't do it again. Separation via incarceration is considered the just verdict. Laws are constantly being adapted when it comes to protecting children (as they should be.) In these cases, justice and legality can be considered synonymous, though it's more a case of immorality and legality being synonymous. As a society, we don't execute child molesters. We just lock them up for good. That's immorality fueling legality. Justice is involved though we don't usually see it that way. In cases like child molestation, we usually leave it up to our views of social justice, such as child molesters being beaten or even killed by prisoners in jail. Obviously, this isn't legal justice. It's a sense of social justice overlapping with punishing immorality. The prisoners will accomplish what the legal system might not, namely a possible execution. That is a matter of the enormous concept of social justice, which I'll comment on in my third post on justice.

Well, these are some opinions of how justice, legality and immorality can intersect or be separate depending on how we, as human beings, see individual situations. It's based on perceptions, fueled by what we hold dear, of what we see as the correct way to handle things. How we see the situations is how we make decisions we consider just.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

My Near Death Experience

This happened to me in 1996 when I was 23. I've told this story to several people but not for some time. I suppose it's time to blog about it as that's what I'm doing.

As I stated, I was 23 years old in 1996. I had never drank or taken drugs in HS but partied every now and then in college and got drunk when I did. I had familial problems and a lot of anxiety and depression symptoms. After going to several doctors, I took several different anti-depressants and anti-anxiety benzodiazepines. I'm telling you this as it has an influenced on my NDE. I was eventually diagnosed bipolar and I believe I experienced many manic episodes from a reaction to the anti-depressants (Prozac and others) I took before I knew I was bipolar. My grades and social functioning lowered substantially and I was soon dependent on enormous doses of benzodiazepines, morning, noon and night, to get me through the day. At some point, I considered myself an addict and, due to confusion, bad advice, and bad luck, my goal became to get off medications completely. I just wanted to go back to the way I was, a way that I now know I can never be again.

It was the summer of 1996 and I was at the Kentucky State Fair with my mother and sister. We were having a good time. I had been phasing down off of my benzos for several months. I was on 6 mgs of Ativan a day, a maximum dose that left me stoned and hypnotized, a state I had largely been in for years. I had been very careful to phase down properly as I was informed that stopping benzo use abruptly can cause seizures that are potentially deadly. I was down to about .25 mgs every other day. Withdrawal had been agony. I prayed to die several times during the agonizing pain I went through. I was literally a few days away from being phased off completely. I decided that the extra couple days didn't matter so I didn't take the usual, not very small, dose. .25 mgs every other day now? Quitting a few days early wouldn't kill me...I remember feeling free that day. I felt lucid and unencumbered. No drugs, no stoned sensation, no mental cloudiness. My Mom, sister and I were having a great time at the fair. It was late in the day and we were walking in an exhibit of Native American rugs that had been woven by locals. Then it happened...

Suddenly, I felt like my heart had popped like a balloon. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. I thought "Oh, my God..." moments before my body collapsed. I remember reaching my left arm and hand out to break my fall. I was out before I hit the ground. I believe that my system had been so anesthetized for so long that it just blew up. My body exploded. I had been instantly transported to a dark place. My first memory was looking up and to my left. It felt like I was in a giant room. I was confused, like I had been in one place in one reality and now I was in a completely new place in a completely new reality. My vision was blown wide open; it was like everything was infinity. No distractions, no blocks, no handicaps. From here on in, I experienced two things. One was the tunnel. Everything was dark except that the tunnel people so often talk about in NDE's was there. It was like energy, sort of a grayish. pulsating thing and it seemed to rotate. I could clearly make it out even with the rest of my vision dark. The second factor is the beautiful part: The overwhelming love. It was like I was in the middle of an ocean of love. Just imagine the happiest, most joyful thing you've ever experienced. Now make it total. There was love and all there was was love. It was incredible.

I don't know how long I was in that place. I remember waking up and hearing all kinds of activity around me though I didn't open my eyes. Soon, I realized that EMTs were there and they had been reviving me. I felt more exhausted than I had ever been in my life. Honestly, I felt reborn. Everything was new. Old problems felt swept away and I felt like a child again. They ran tests on me that showed I had no brain damage. In the days and weeks following, my physical limitations kicked back in. My bipolar disorder slowly returned as did my anxiety. I wanted to die several times in the following months simply to return to that unconditional love I had felt during my NDE. I just wanted to go back to that wonderful, overpowering love. For awhile, I felt bad about being "alive" again.

I mentioned my mental illness and drug use earlier for some context. I have had hallucinations and delusions many times in my life. I read that, when a person has been taking drugs, a NDE can be visually dark. I think that's why I didn't see anything (other than the energy tunnel which I could make out quite clearly.) Like I said, I have had all kinds of the worst symptoms of mental illness. My NDE was not a symptom. It was an experience. My consciousness was there. "I" was there. Not my physical body. My mind, my consciousness was there. As I'm an amateur psychologist, I'm the first to question what happened to me. If anyone else had said it, I would say that the person was hallucinating. I've had dozens of terrible hallucinations, from thinking I was Jesus Christ reincarnated to thinking I was Pontius Pilate reincarnated, destined to burn and suffer in hell for eternity because I condemned the "King of Kings." I was not deluded or hallucinating in my NDE. I was sharp, focused, myself. I was who I am and it taught me to separate my brain and any illness from my true essence because I now knew what my true essence was. I'm not a brain or a body. I'm me.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Types of justice - No. 1 Legal justice

Justice is a huge issue with me so I'm going to make three or four posts on types of justice. These are my views as I see them. Today, I'll cover legal justice. Later posts will involve ideas of personal justice, the enormous topic of social justice and possibly others. Firstly, we'll talk about the most obvious and simple kind of justice: Legal justice.

No form of justice is simple but legal justice is probably the simplest kind. Legal justice is what is on the books, what has been passed by state and federal legislatures. As I'm an American, I'll speak from my country's example. We are a republic, not a direct democracy. Citizens of a republic elect their officials to handle legal matters. Citizens in a direct democracy are all directly involved in the legal process. Direct democracy is unrealistic in nations as big as the United States. We have things to do so we elect representatives to handle socio-political matters for us. Our laws are thus written by these representatives. Federal judges are then chosen by Congress and/or the President to make rulings about federal laws that have been created. State judges can be appointed or elected depending on the area of legality. As I'm not a lawyer or legal expert, that's as far as I'll go on the X's and O's.

Like the mind/body problem in philosophy, there is a legality/justice problem. Spinoza believed that mind and body are the same thing. Certain proponents of matters of justice believe that codified law and justice are one and the same. This is the kind of view of true believers in the legal system, more orthodox black and white thinkers. If it's legal, it's justice. There are no shades of gray or variations. The two are one and the same and that's it because a civilized society wouldn't pass unjust laws. This is a hard line kind of reasoning which is understandable but, the more we know of individual court cases, the more an absolutist view of justice can be disproven. Humans make mistakes, even in important societal issues like justice. Therefore, even a well meaning, advanced civilization creates occasional injustice unintentionally. As justice is vitally important to the well being of humanity, this understandably causes a lot of fear in society. We all know of cases where people are unjustly convicted and even executed. All we can hope for is that it doesn't happen to us. Those that have the hard line view of the synonymous fusion of justice and legality are opposed by the anarchist view that law and justice are completely different. As society has passed many, many just laws in human history, the idea that justice and legality are separate can only anarchic. In this view, if legality and justice are different, then justice cannot be bound by laws. A lawless society is an anarchic one.

The nuances of legal justice come in its evolution. Laws such as "Stand Your Ground" have been on the books and, as we've seen from examples, are often not effective in our moral sense of righteousness. In the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case, it seems clear that Zimmerman stereotyped and essentially stalked Martin, becoming involved in a confrontation that led to the black teen's death. As Zimmerman initiated the affair, it seems wrong to put him in the "just" category. However, for whatever reason, the Stand Your Ground law protected him and he was acquitted. This sparked outrage in many quarters as it seemed clear that an injustice had been created. In that sense, legality and justice were not synonymous. (There are differing opinions, of course, as to whether an injustice was perpetrated in that high profile case.) The law was brought to the attention of the nation and efforts have been made to change it. That's the evolution of the legal system. We're always trying to get it right in our views of what is right. Justice and our views of morality are synonymous. What we consider righteous is what we consider just.

In my view, justice and legality have to be synonymous. If they are not, then injustice is created. Again, sadly, we are not perfect. We can only do the best we can and hope we get it right the first time. If not, then we need to change a law until it is just.

Thank you for reading. Sorry if I ramble a bit as I don't often proofread my commentary for aesthetic quality. My next post will probably be on ideas of personal justice.