Nov. 11, 2012

Comment Response

From Prometheus Writes! by Nathaniel Lindell (author's profile)
This post is in reply to comments on:  Reply To Nicki -Australia thumbnail
Reply To Nicki -Australia
(Sept. 26, 2012)

Transcription

Message for Nikki in Australia, written and mailed 10 Oct 2012 from http://betweenthebars.org/blogs/540/nathaniel-lindell/

Dear Nikki: the "dear" is deserved. Just rec'd your letter w/your writings etc, and since it's 4.30am + I'm up listening to my neighbor (J.F. - Mr Poop-fetish etc) "play" crazy, I thought I'd write ya. Bet Benj @ B+B was ecstatic about you studying this site. :) Let him know I recently had about 20 letters sent out to lawyers, legislatures + media orgs referring them to it + I cite my URLs in legal papers I write for others. :)

I like brains, + not just because they taste good. :) Brains are hard to find in prison - I mean either in staff or captives. Your perceptions are astounding for s/o who's not been in prison: 1) the deprivation does magnify everything (e.g. the scent of soap on a female guard can/does seem like perfume, calling someone a name can/does lead to severe retribution; 2) what you say to us has unusually profound impact; 3) B+B does give us a chance to let down our monster mask, a mask that comes in very handy in here. You're studying psych. + criminology? Keep in touch!

Please feel free to print + send to the other convicts you write - e.g. the one in Arizona - any of my posts, I'm thinking mainly of the legal discourses but any. And you can tell Gary Field in FL (you profiled his post for blog week 6 "Genre") that I almost had an asthma attack laughing at that. And Jeremy Pinson @ Florence, Blog Week 7, that Sean Riker was there, now he's here _ to say "hi" to his riders.

Are those rocks around your town sandstone, granite or what? They look sandstoneish. A lot of sandstone bluffs in WI; laughable compared to the more complexly coloured granite of Montana. Yet, except for too many dwellings I love the sight of where you live - ocean, a lagoon, rugged land, bright blue sky - Kansas'd make you cry (it's so flat)!

Love the cleavage! :) Ya got nice skin too! Get me a bigger photo + I'll post your portrait. What colour are your eyes, by the way? You can see my pic on www.prisonpenpals.com/303724.html (Sean says I look like a "brain-eating serial killer", so please give me your assessment - usually I smile for prison photos 'cause they want us to frown).

The one thing I noticed in your writings that I suggest you reconsider is the existence of "one genuine identity". Personalities are one of the topics I heavily ponder + study, how they are produced (nature...nurture...). You might want to reconsider the existence of "one" and "genuine". The Mask of Sanity by Harvey Cleckley, I never read, but a shrink here urged I do; the "genuine" us is a collection of characteristics we've adopted or were born with, modified by our drive to survive, etc. You are genuinely slightly or greatly diff't identities with your kids, your mates, your profs, all genuine, even if genuinely fake. :) Few paper take the time to consider that, as Tuft U Prof Daniel C Dennett (tell him I said "hi") terms it in Conciousness Explained, p410, we're "the centre of [our] narrative gravity"...Look it up. :)

Also, neither "good" nor "evil" actually exist. They're just handy concepts most pretend exist b/c they're handy ways to justify their own interests. I'm not e.g. saying we should not call paedophiles "evil" or crack dealers, but that we'd be better off at understanding the nature of ourselves + the societies we concoct if we didn't believe our own lies, which has led to projecting the "devil" on others (thereby making angels out of the projector) + distracts us from understanding + bettering ourselves.

Thought = a good personality is like an ATV: it'll carry you over all kinds of terrain/obstacles. The motor is our will to survive. The driver, our intelligence.

I'd miss your comments + personality, though, you're right - we're resilient. Since you are an astute psych. student, ya might want to network w/ Prof. Joseph Newman @ U.W. Dept of Psychology, Newman Laboratory, 1202 West Johnson St. Madison WI 53706-1611 - you can probably email him at newman@wisc.edu. He, I'm told, studies cognitively-impaired prisoners. UW. Mad is FYI, BF Skinner's old stomping grounds, excellent psch program there.

Your kids are lucky to have a perceptive + compassionate mom. Don't underestimate your influence on others. We can have a good impact + hardly even try, I hope.

Consider this episode 'cause I like kids, particularly rowdy boys: once while fishing, some 9-10 yr old kid came along, alone, poor, exploring/fishing. When I was his age, I was much the same, except I had much better tackle, mostly stolen. I let him use some of my lures, didn't care when he lost one to a snag (again, stolen) + gave him an 8-9 pound Northern Pike I caught (these fish are shaped much like a barracuda with a mouth full of long, sharp teeth, pale bellies, red + black tinged fins + brownish sides with white oval spots - I like their taste). He invited me home + to meet his mom. I passed, just wanted to gibe a kid like I once was a good memory. That was the genuine me - but I was genuine when I've hurt people too, although, of course, I believed the punishment or worse was "appropriate" (what a cold word!). We don't like being called "offenders". I'm not always "offending" + often find myself offended against by those using that label. Might as well call me "white boy".

The Psychology of Crime? Check our my "Sassy Girls" post #37, sent in Dec 2011. Please tell me if you find it funny or stupid. Seriously, consider chronic suicide, which I kind of explain in my forenoted Prisonpenpals ad. My mom was diag'd w/ M.P.D., now called D.I.D, ([?] but worse), and then so was my youngest bro. At the age of 13-16, I acted as a psych. care tech. probably had PTSD already, definitely after/during 13-16, wrongly labelled ADD. Talk about trapped! I hated suicidal stuff, cause of seeing my mom + bros attempts, yet pretended not to know I was killing myself in a less direct way. I think this is more common than people realise. More on this etc. later.

Keep in touch!
My love and respect,
Nate.

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Replies (4) Replies feed

arcadiaego Posted 11 years, 4 months ago. ✓ Mailed 11 years, 4 months ago   Favorite
Hi Nate,

Really interesting letter, I enjoyed transcribing it. :)

Nicki Posted 11 years, 3 months ago. ✓ Mailed 11 years, 3 months ago   Favorite
PART 1
Thank you for this reply Nate. I'm sorry I've taken so long to acknowledge your words, things have just been crazy recently with work & kids & study... & now Christmas... but I thought I'd steal a moment, when I'm supposed to be submitting another job application, to get back to you.

The major rock around the city I live in is described on wiki (where we all know the knowledge of the world is held ha-ha) as an "isolated pink granite monolith". So granite is the answer to your question. It's funny that you think there are too many dwellings because you only have to travel 5 minutes out of any Australian city to find vast nothingness. Our land mass is equivalent to that of the USA yet our population is only 22 million & I believe you have that many people in New York alone, so you don't have to go far here to find solitude, if that's what you're looking for. Our population is concentrated on the east coast also, which I believe is unique by world standards.

I do agree with your perspective of personality too. That 'one genuine identity' was in my paper as we were required to reference the assigned readings in each weekly blog. For that assessment we didn't necessarily have to 'believe' what we were writing, just show we'd read, and could interpret, the material we were given. This is one of the reasons I personally believe formal education is nothing more than a process of jumping through hoops at times. I'm much more of a practical person than an academic and believe we can learn so much more from practical experience or through studying one another. Another reason why Psychology has disappointed me somewhat, in comparison to criminology, is that we're not able to get any practical experience until the completion of 4 years study. A 4 year degree just gives us the opportunity to then go on and obtain practical experience. Thankfully I found my friend in Arizona 3 years ago, and BtB in the last year to at least compliment that academic perspective in the meantime.

Nicki Posted 11 years, 3 months ago. ✓ Mailed 11 years, 3 months ago   Favorite
PART 2
The one thing that we are continuously encouraged to do as students is to 'think'. Think for ourselves, to not necessarily believe what we read or even what we are taught, but to research (obviously) interpret and make up our own minds. When I first heard that I thought it was a silly concept. Of course we think, (or we want to believe we do), but the more I thought about that concept and analyzed my own perceptions of things, the more I realized how very much the mentors in our lives have influenced our thought processes or the rubbish we are fed by the media, or read in newspapers which are all elementary sources of information as we grow up. It wasn't until I began to question 'everything' that I realized how much of a foreign concept it is to simply 'think'. How sad is that!? & when you consider this, it's no wonder ignorant attitudes & poor decisions prosper throughout the world and are able to proliferate.

I think I already acknowledged Sean's perceptions of your rugged exterior previously, and I'm sure I would have said something along the lines of 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' ha-ha. One thing I teach my children is that 'ugly is on the inside' so I don't feel the need to elaborate further. Let me know if that response is not good enough :D

What you say about 'good & evil' aligns with a comment I left for you earlier tonight about self justification. I like your thoughts on this. I'll take some time to ponder them further over the coming days in my quiet moments.

Thank you for your comments & compliments. Thank you too for your comment about how you don't like to be called 'offenders'. That is a very fair point, & of course you're not always offending. It's a term I personally have felt more comfortable with than 'prisoners' because again... you should not necessarily be defined by a word that reflects your environment. What is a more appropriate term white boy? JOKING... I'm joking! ;) (I'm not sure why you find that offensive though really, I call myself a white girl. Mostly because, I am). What is a good, non-offensive collective term I should use in my next assessment..? Or perhaps just using a collective term is always going to be offensive as grouping any number of people together by one single term will always be an ignorant thing to do. But we’re human, and our brains need to group things to make sense of them…

Nicki Posted 11 years, 3 months ago. ✓ Mailed 11 years, 3 months ago   Favorite
PART 3
I will print out your 'sassy girls' post and go through it when I next get a chance and get back to you with any comments. Thank you also for the contacts, I'm not sure if I will bother them at this stage, but when I'm in the mood for networking I'll certainly include them. I'm busy with working and mothering at this stage of my life but I'm looking forward to when they've grown up and I can get busy with more post grad study and immerse myself in all the knowledge the world has to offer.

& I certainly will stay in touch Nate. Thank you for your insight and I apologize again for the delay in my reply.

Take care. Nicki

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