Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall...

I drove my good friend Tom to jail this afternoon. He'll be spending at least the next thirty days in a branch of the Sacramento County jail for damaging the property of a family member after learning that, according to him, she had taken full control of his deceased mom's finances and appropriated for herself the inheritance he says he was promised. He was frustrated and angry, as any of us would be, and he took action that many of us might (or might not) have.

This action resulted in protracted legal proceedings that recently culminated in his being sentenced to a couple of months in jail, three years of probation, and orders to make thousands of dollars in restitution to his relative and the court.

I don't know how he's going to make restitution. He's been homeless for over a year and jobless while waiting for his legal case to drag its way to resolution. He has no savings, no income, and when he gets out of jail, he'll be an ex-felon. He has a hard road ahead of him.

I don't know exactly how Tom ended up homeless after his mother died. I don't know exactly why he went to his relative's house and smashed her windows with a crowbar instead of taking legal measures to retrieve his part of the inheritance he claims he was due, short of the fact that he didn't have any money to retain a lawyer. But I DO know that, despite his actions before and on that fateful day, Tom's a good person at heart, a good friend, and, ordinarily, a gentle-man.

I will do what I can to help him and be here for him in whatever ways I can be. That's what real friends do.

Reflections on the Madoff Sentence

Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison today for perpetrating an elaborate Ponzi scheme that swindled untold numbers of people out of a reputed tens of billions of dollars over a period of over twenty years.

I feel ambivalent about his sentence. On the one hand, Madoff ruined the lives of so many people that I believe he should spend the rest of his life in prison. Indeed, if we're going to have a death penalty, and the death penalty is reserved for those who commit the most destructive crimes, I believe that Madoff should receive the death penalty, even if that might be less punitive than enduring years if not decades in prison with no hope of getting out.

On the other hand, I'm a psychological determinist. That is, I believe that everything we do is the inevitable result of psychological causes that we did not cause. I don't know what caused Madoff to do what he did, but I believe that, given the interplay of his genetics, his brain structure and functioning, his environment, his life experience, and who knows what else, Bernie Madoff had to do what he did.

Yet, if that's true, how fair or just is it to punish Madoff with a life sentence for doing what he couldn't help but do? I wrestle with this question not only with respect to Bernie Madoff but also with respect to everyone convicted of any crime. I haven't arrived at any clear answers. But so far as Madoff is concerned, I believe that had he known before he began defrauding people that he could receive a life sentence for it, he might well never have done it, and others will almost certainly be deterred by his sentence from doing something similar. I also believe that "we the people" have a sense that justice has been served in the Madoff case and that this is better for our country than if we had the sense that guys like Madoff always get off relatively easy while the rest of us would have the proverbial book thrown at us for far less impactful crimes.

As I read what I've just written, I guess I'm making a utilitarian argument for Madoff's sentence. I'm arguing that its effects on potential white collar criminals and society as a whole is likely to be more good than bad. But still, to a psychological determinist like me, it hardly seems fair or just.

What's more, it would be interesting to ponder what I would think of Madoff's sentence if I could somehow know that it was unlikely to deter others from committing similar crimes or was unlikely to have a net positive effect on society. I suppose the vengeful part of me would still rejoice in Madoff's sentence. But another and presumably wiser part of me would probably feel profound misgivings.

But what I would like to see now is an effective investigation into just how Madoff was able to perpetrate fraud on such an incredible scale for such an amazingly long time despite ample cause for suspicion and even credible warnings that he was up to no good. Who wasn't on the ball, or worse, and what should our justice system do with THEM?

Quote for the Day

In the end, sometimes our reactions were divorced from reason and rationale, and had nothing to do with how we felt about him. They were reactions born of the raw emotion that comes when a seam in the fabric of our culture unravels, when someone as undeniably monumental as Michael Jackson dies.
--Monica Hesse, Washington Post

Quote of the Day

A new president -- even one as talented and well-motivated as Obama -- can't get a thing done in Washington unless the public is actively behind him. As FDR said in the reelection campaign of 1936 when a lady insisted that if she were to vote for him he must commit to a long list of objectives, "Maam, I want to do those things, but you must make me."
--Robert Reich

RIP King of Pop

"I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours' and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out."
--Andrew Sullivan

I was never a fan of Michael Jackson. I never even owned a copy of "Thriller" or tried to moonwalk. But I am riveted to the news of his shocking death, and I feel very moved and very sad. He was the ostensive definition of "superstar" even decades after the music and videos that made him one. I guess that made him a permanent fixture of my life from the days of the Jackson 5 on.

He was prodigiously talented, he was a shrewd self-promoter, and he worked extremely hard. He was also a bizarre and tragic figure who had himself surgically mutilated to unbelievable depths of grotesqueness and was so out of place in our world that he fashioned one of his own. To paraphrase a commentator on CNN: as a child, he seemed like an adult, and as an adult, he seemed like a child.

Maybe the world would be better off without its superstars and idol worship. And maybe Michael Jackson's death is no more important than anyone else's, including Farrah Fawcett's. But it sure doesn't feel that way.

Moving to My New Blog

I just created my new blog and posted my first entry to it. It's titled Reinventing Myself. That means I won't be posting here anymore. Or maybe not. My new blog is about how I'm seeking to transform myself in a positive way through positive ways of thinking, acting, and seeing the world. So, its scope may not be broad enough to embrace everything I want to write about, and I may still post things here that I can't post there. But I'll be concentrating on my new blog and on the effort to transform myself that that blog represents. So I hope you'll join me over there, and feel free to bring your friends with you.

My New Job

After I lost my job as a medical records clerk, I wrote that I wouldn't post to this blog again until I found a new job. Well, I've found one. No, not THAT kind of job. My new job doesn't pay a salary. But it has the potential to pay enormous benefits. I call it the job of reinventing myself. I adapted this job title from a book I've started reading: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Reinventing Yourself. I intend to do what the book suggests and by the ways it counsels.

One of those ways is to break with the past. Do new things, or do old things in new ways. So, this is my penultimate post to this blog. My final post will simply announce my new blog. I expect to unveil my new blog this weekend. Its purpose will be to chronicle my efforts to reinvent myself using what I call the power of realistically positive thinking and acting. If this blog was about or started out being about nakedly reflecting whatever interested or concerned me at the moment, my new blog will be about what I'm thinking and doing to transform myself into the person I want to be. Everything I write there will have the positive purpose of facilitating that transformation.

And you'll be able to follow my progress and, perhaps, take inspiration from it to reinvent or transform yourself into more of the person you want to be. For I suspect that most of us want to be the best we can be but haven't gotten there yet.

Gone Fishing For A New Job

I'll be out of a job come the end of this month. So, I've decided to stop blogging until I find a new one. Not only will this motivate me to find a new job sooner, but it will also clear away at least one major distraction to my doing everything necessary to succeed.

I've heard that if one wants to get really good at something, he needs to do it virtually every day. That may be true, and I would like to get better at writing and blogging. But I need to earn the money to pay my bills first. I may never be able to do this by writing or blogging, so I need to focus all of my resources right now on finding a decent job.

I look forward to my next post, because it will mean that I've found one and that I'm again able to do what I love doing most.

Being Like Jeff

I long to speak and write the way Jeff Beck plays guitar. At his best, his whole being is in every note. At my best, my whole being is in every word.

Inside each of us, there is ugliness as well as beauty. Yet, when we mindfully and continuously bring what is inside out into the light of awareness, are we not transformed and transforming? Do we not shine with the radiant beauty of Jeff Beck playing Somewhere Over The Rainbow?