My Department of Peace viewpoint.
As mentioned in my previous post, I'm part of the campaign for a Department of Peace. I threat.. said I might expound upon my viewpoint today, so now I shall.
Why I think we need a Department of Peace
There are so many reasons.. the biggest one, in my opinion, is because children aren't learning enough from their parents anymore. In a society where both parents frequently work 9-5 jobs, and children are encouraged to have after-school activities, family time and family interaction has dwindled to the point where children cannot learn by example - the example isn't there often enough to reinforce the values the parents would like them to learn. The parents expect their children will learn these skills via schooling or via their peers - and the children don't, because there's no infrastructure in place to /teach/ the children those values. They're not taught non-violent conflict resolution - and that can be as simple as, "Hey, if he/she bugs you, why don't you talk to them instead of giving as good as you get?" Part of the problem is that when there is conflict at school, frequently the parents don't learn about it until it's erupted into violence and their child has received injury or punishment. By then, it's too late - the child has learned a violent resolution to their conflict. Parents aren't asking how their child is doing in school socially, and more importantly aren't listening and watching to see the signals of a child who's stressed out from being picked on. In a worst case scenario, they see this and blow it off, figuring it's all a part of growing up and their child will work through it on their own.
"On their own" - how sad is that? These are children. It's the job of every adult around them to teach them, either by instruction or by example, and both of those are sadly lacking. So the children grow up learning how to violently resolve their problems, and even receiving admiration from other children if they're particularly good or imaginitive in their violence, and build on that. Some of them grow out of it, but the number of the ones who don't is increasing every year. They grow up and have children of their own, and in not learning non-violence, have no way to teach it to their children, so the cycle grows.
I'm fairly military about parenting - if you have kids, it is your responsibility to BE A PARENT, and that means a lot more than feeding and clothing the child. One of the biggest problems is that parents don't know how to teach their children, and if the parents are relying on schooling, then the schools should be teaching social skills, coping skills, conflict resolution skills, much more than they are so that children will grow up with the foundations of learning with which to teach /their/ children. To do that, there have to be programs created and tested and put in place - and it all boils down to "the potential teachers need to be taught, first." That's one thing the Department of Peace is looking at doing.
Same topic, different use: non-violent conflict resolution for prisoners. Right now, a person who is jailed does their time, perhaps learns a vocational trade or perhaps gets some education, pays their dues to society and is released. If they were jailed for a violent crime, their return rate is huge - chances are very good that person will end up back in jail due to more violence. There's nothing in place to teach them nonviolence except negative reinforcement - ie, punishment for what they've done. Inmates learn how to not get caught, instead of learning how to avoid the situations that landed them in prison in the first place.
While I'm on the topic of prisoners, jails, etc - I think there should be better solutions for crimes than jail time. I'm all about learning action = consequence, but right now, frankly, the consequences don't fit the crime. There are people in jail for crimes they didn't commit, because the consequences of losing a jury trial were so harsh that they plea-bargained down to something that would get them out of jail soonest. If your car slides on ice, and you hit another car and kill someone - it's vehicular manslaughter, even if it's a total accident, and you go to jail - it's judged by the same means it would be if you were deliberately being an inattentive driver, and the consequence is the same. What purpose does that serve? What good does putting that person in jail do? Comfort the surviving family? Please. I'd rather see better systems in place to handle crimes, instead of straight prison time. In my opinion, straight prison time doesn't do a lot of good and does do far too much harm. It removes people from society and makes reintegration with society so much harder.
Two years ago, I had the opportunity to be part of an alternate-consequence action, and the resolution has done more to heal an absolutely awful situation than jail time would have. My extended family lives on a private Native American reservation. The roads through the res are private, and barred from commercial traffic. A truck driver who'd been on the road for over 38 hours straight, took a shortcut because he was falling behind on his route from having to stop and rest. He fell asleep at the wheel. His truck barreled into the van my cousin, his wife, and their two infant children were in, completely crushing in the entirety of the passenger side of my cousin's van. The accident ruptured the fuel line, and the sparks from the metal on metal contact ignited the van. By the time the truck driver was out of his cab, the van was entirely ignited and he couldn't get close enough to it to see if anyone was alive inside. There was no chance of any of my family members surviving that accident. Horror is waiting for a coroner's report and praying that your family died in the initial collision and not in the fire.
The truck driver was liable, but since the accident happened on tribal lands, our clan council got to decide what to do about it. We could've put the driver in jail for the rest of his life and probably had the decision cheered and approved by the public. We didn't do that. We sat down and discussed the situation, and my family came to the decision that putting that man in jail wouldn't help - it wouldn't make this awful moment hurt any less, it wouldn't bring my cousin and his family back, it wouldn't prevent things like this happening in the future. We filed a lawsuit against the trucking company, for making their drivers work illegal hours, and settled out of court for an amount large enough to keep the res functional for years to come. The money was nice, but we did it so the incident would go on their record and they'd be watched more closely so they didn't abuse other drivers this way. We asked the driver to voluntarily relinquish his commercial driving license for good, asked him to be part of the state's driver education program, and asked him to set up a trust fund in my cousin's family's name. The driver agreed to everything. This was not a bad or evil man - he was at least as ripped up about the accident as my family, and he still is, years after. IIRC, he did serve a small amount of jail time while his lawyers and ours hashed this out, I think a couple weeks.
That trust fund is allowing two teenagers from the res to go to college this year, an opportunity they wouldn't otherwise have had even through the Native American scholastic benefit. It paid for a spina bifida operation on a newborn for parents who have no insurance and don't qualify for aid of any kind because they live on a res. The truck driver continues to pay into it, and has taken it upon himself to promote the trust fund and get others involved in it as well. Good things are being done, in my cousin's family's name, and that is helping our family cope with the loss. It's helping us heal, it's helping the driver heal, without any lingering anger, bitterness, or malice. The driver is paying his debt to our family in a much more productive way than jail time ever would have served to do.
Does a criminal have a debt to victims, to society? Yes, definitely. I'm personally for finding more productive means for them to pay that debt. All incarceration does is remove someone from society - and in some cases, that's the best possible solution - however, in many cases, all it does is create a schism and disassociate the inmate from society without providing any means for them to reintegrate. I wish I had a solution to this problem, but I don't. I helped form a solution to the problem my family faced, but not every crime is personal, and I am just one person. Also, I am only familiar with the means my family and myself have used, which worked in our situation but may not work in another. I'd rather have a larger, recognised body of government dedicated to the task of finding better solutions.
As a side benefit to the Department of Peace, I firmly believe that in creating a program of non-violence, it will teach tolerance. It will offer people the means to learn less belligerent means of communication. That, while starting out on a personal level, will eventually become a standard for our government because the people who make decisions will have learned a better method of conflict resolution.
Here's where I should say something emphatic like "The time is now!", but I'll spare you. I believe we need a Department of Peace. I believe we've needed one for a very long time, and I'm very thankful that Rep. Kucinich and Marianne Williamson chose to organize and spearhead this effort. I am campaigning for it now, because I believe the effects of the Department of Peace will be extremely far reaching and long term - it will be years before we see substantial, definitive results and the longer we wait to begin this program, the longer it will be before those results are achieved. I want to see results in my lifetime. I want to see results before I have children of my own.
Will the Department of Peace make all the ills of society magically vanish and teach everyone to love their neighbor and turn the other cheek? No, and it isn't meant to do that. It offers hope - and I believe that right now it offers the /best/ hope - for a widespread change in the violence in our society, in our world. I want that hope. I want that change. There's a gangsta phrase popular right now: "Don't start nothing, won't be nothing." - and the phrase suits exactly. I'm glad the Department of Peace initiative has been started.
I want it to be.
-Peregrine
Why I think we need a Department of Peace
There are so many reasons.. the biggest one, in my opinion, is because children aren't learning enough from their parents anymore. In a society where both parents frequently work 9-5 jobs, and children are encouraged to have after-school activities, family time and family interaction has dwindled to the point where children cannot learn by example - the example isn't there often enough to reinforce the values the parents would like them to learn. The parents expect their children will learn these skills via schooling or via their peers - and the children don't, because there's no infrastructure in place to /teach/ the children those values. They're not taught non-violent conflict resolution - and that can be as simple as, "Hey, if he/she bugs you, why don't you talk to them instead of giving as good as you get?" Part of the problem is that when there is conflict at school, frequently the parents don't learn about it until it's erupted into violence and their child has received injury or punishment. By then, it's too late - the child has learned a violent resolution to their conflict. Parents aren't asking how their child is doing in school socially, and more importantly aren't listening and watching to see the signals of a child who's stressed out from being picked on. In a worst case scenario, they see this and blow it off, figuring it's all a part of growing up and their child will work through it on their own.
"On their own" - how sad is that? These are children. It's the job of every adult around them to teach them, either by instruction or by example, and both of those are sadly lacking. So the children grow up learning how to violently resolve their problems, and even receiving admiration from other children if they're particularly good or imaginitive in their violence, and build on that. Some of them grow out of it, but the number of the ones who don't is increasing every year. They grow up and have children of their own, and in not learning non-violence, have no way to teach it to their children, so the cycle grows.
I'm fairly military about parenting - if you have kids, it is your responsibility to BE A PARENT, and that means a lot more than feeding and clothing the child. One of the biggest problems is that parents don't know how to teach their children, and if the parents are relying on schooling, then the schools should be teaching social skills, coping skills, conflict resolution skills, much more than they are so that children will grow up with the foundations of learning with which to teach /their/ children. To do that, there have to be programs created and tested and put in place - and it all boils down to "the potential teachers need to be taught, first." That's one thing the Department of Peace is looking at doing.
Same topic, different use: non-violent conflict resolution for prisoners. Right now, a person who is jailed does their time, perhaps learns a vocational trade or perhaps gets some education, pays their dues to society and is released. If they were jailed for a violent crime, their return rate is huge - chances are very good that person will end up back in jail due to more violence. There's nothing in place to teach them nonviolence except negative reinforcement - ie, punishment for what they've done. Inmates learn how to not get caught, instead of learning how to avoid the situations that landed them in prison in the first place.
While I'm on the topic of prisoners, jails, etc - I think there should be better solutions for crimes than jail time. I'm all about learning action = consequence, but right now, frankly, the consequences don't fit the crime. There are people in jail for crimes they didn't commit, because the consequences of losing a jury trial were so harsh that they plea-bargained down to something that would get them out of jail soonest. If your car slides on ice, and you hit another car and kill someone - it's vehicular manslaughter, even if it's a total accident, and you go to jail - it's judged by the same means it would be if you were deliberately being an inattentive driver, and the consequence is the same. What purpose does that serve? What good does putting that person in jail do? Comfort the surviving family? Please. I'd rather see better systems in place to handle crimes, instead of straight prison time. In my opinion, straight prison time doesn't do a lot of good and does do far too much harm. It removes people from society and makes reintegration with society so much harder.
Two years ago, I had the opportunity to be part of an alternate-consequence action, and the resolution has done more to heal an absolutely awful situation than jail time would have. My extended family lives on a private Native American reservation. The roads through the res are private, and barred from commercial traffic. A truck driver who'd been on the road for over 38 hours straight, took a shortcut because he was falling behind on his route from having to stop and rest. He fell asleep at the wheel. His truck barreled into the van my cousin, his wife, and their two infant children were in, completely crushing in the entirety of the passenger side of my cousin's van. The accident ruptured the fuel line, and the sparks from the metal on metal contact ignited the van. By the time the truck driver was out of his cab, the van was entirely ignited and he couldn't get close enough to it to see if anyone was alive inside. There was no chance of any of my family members surviving that accident. Horror is waiting for a coroner's report and praying that your family died in the initial collision and not in the fire.
The truck driver was liable, but since the accident happened on tribal lands, our clan council got to decide what to do about it. We could've put the driver in jail for the rest of his life and probably had the decision cheered and approved by the public. We didn't do that. We sat down and discussed the situation, and my family came to the decision that putting that man in jail wouldn't help - it wouldn't make this awful moment hurt any less, it wouldn't bring my cousin and his family back, it wouldn't prevent things like this happening in the future. We filed a lawsuit against the trucking company, for making their drivers work illegal hours, and settled out of court for an amount large enough to keep the res functional for years to come. The money was nice, but we did it so the incident would go on their record and they'd be watched more closely so they didn't abuse other drivers this way. We asked the driver to voluntarily relinquish his commercial driving license for good, asked him to be part of the state's driver education program, and asked him to set up a trust fund in my cousin's family's name. The driver agreed to everything. This was not a bad or evil man - he was at least as ripped up about the accident as my family, and he still is, years after. IIRC, he did serve a small amount of jail time while his lawyers and ours hashed this out, I think a couple weeks.
That trust fund is allowing two teenagers from the res to go to college this year, an opportunity they wouldn't otherwise have had even through the Native American scholastic benefit. It paid for a spina bifida operation on a newborn for parents who have no insurance and don't qualify for aid of any kind because they live on a res. The truck driver continues to pay into it, and has taken it upon himself to promote the trust fund and get others involved in it as well. Good things are being done, in my cousin's family's name, and that is helping our family cope with the loss. It's helping us heal, it's helping the driver heal, without any lingering anger, bitterness, or malice. The driver is paying his debt to our family in a much more productive way than jail time ever would have served to do.
Does a criminal have a debt to victims, to society? Yes, definitely. I'm personally for finding more productive means for them to pay that debt. All incarceration does is remove someone from society - and in some cases, that's the best possible solution - however, in many cases, all it does is create a schism and disassociate the inmate from society without providing any means for them to reintegrate. I wish I had a solution to this problem, but I don't. I helped form a solution to the problem my family faced, but not every crime is personal, and I am just one person. Also, I am only familiar with the means my family and myself have used, which worked in our situation but may not work in another. I'd rather have a larger, recognised body of government dedicated to the task of finding better solutions.
As a side benefit to the Department of Peace, I firmly believe that in creating a program of non-violence, it will teach tolerance. It will offer people the means to learn less belligerent means of communication. That, while starting out on a personal level, will eventually become a standard for our government because the people who make decisions will have learned a better method of conflict resolution.
Here's where I should say something emphatic like "The time is now!", but I'll spare you. I believe we need a Department of Peace. I believe we've needed one for a very long time, and I'm very thankful that Rep. Kucinich and Marianne Williamson chose to organize and spearhead this effort. I am campaigning for it now, because I believe the effects of the Department of Peace will be extremely far reaching and long term - it will be years before we see substantial, definitive results and the longer we wait to begin this program, the longer it will be before those results are achieved. I want to see results in my lifetime. I want to see results before I have children of my own.
Will the Department of Peace make all the ills of society magically vanish and teach everyone to love their neighbor and turn the other cheek? No, and it isn't meant to do that. It offers hope - and I believe that right now it offers the /best/ hope - for a widespread change in the violence in our society, in our world. I want that hope. I want that change. There's a gangsta phrase popular right now: "Don't start nothing, won't be nothing." - and the phrase suits exactly. I'm glad the Department of Peace initiative has been started.
I want it to be.
-Peregrine
posted by Peregrine at 9:38 PM
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