Darx-
No not all my clients are innocent, very few of them are. In some sense they are victims. Victims of losing the genetic lottery, victims of a system that has forgotten and used them. Used them in the sense that they are a metaphorical stick for the rest of society. I think victims of crimes are made doubly so by the system. The studies on restorative justice out there are really eye opening. Instead of just throwing people in jail\prison, which requires little responsibility be taken by the criminal, they require that person to talk with the victims of their actions, to work toward making that person whole. It creates understanding about the consequences of their actions etc. If you want I can put together a few things to pass along, but it may take some time, might be quicker to do a google search. I don't think that society is the cause of all of our problems. I just think that the society\culture that we are creating is the wrong exit ramp in human development. That society as it is now is more hinderance, then helpful in most senses. The more anarchistic qualities and values a society possesses the more free those societies are.
I do not speak highly of law enforcement solely because I disagree with the position they hold in society. The whole thin blue line idea. Whenever you take a group of people and set them apart as enforcers it will create an air of superiority, of entitlement. I see this everyday when speaking with officers. I have a fairly decent relationship with most officers that I deal with, but they still hold positions of authority and hierarchy which as an anarchist I don't agree with.
I to believe that people need to take more responsibility for their actions. Everyone, from the President of this country all the way down to the bum on the street, but if you think that everyone is where they are is the result of only their doing is flawed also. I don't think you think this judging from the entirety of our conversion. This is the whole nature v. nurture debate that has been going on for centuries. I think nature definitely has a major factor in the development of a person. I think that that nature is becoming more intrusive and more destructive as human society develops. It may not be a conscious decision or it may not, but we are constantly bombarded with image to consume to perpetuate the economic system. Like I have said production and consumption solely for their own sake is not a good thing. We need to take responsibility about the fact that our actions on this planet do have consequences, that dumping chemicals into the rivers and streams of this world are not good things. That CO2 in the atmosphere is at its highest it have ever been in the long history of this planet is not a good thing. That all the things we throw away just don't disappear. We need to take responsibility for the fact that we are selling our futures for the convenience of today. The whole save the planet campaign is misguided to some extent. It should be save the humans, the planet will be fine, it has been fine for 100,000's of years, and will continue for billions of years more, unless cleared for an intergalactic superspace highway or blown up.
A lot of the problems we face are interconnected, but people refuse to connect the dots in most instances. They will connect one or two, but the whole picture is rarely viewed. The whole can't see the forest for the trees mentality. Society has evolved to help and keep people from connecting to many dots. Whether that is by conscious effort or simply by dumb luck is up to your own beliefs. Read Guy Debord's The Society of Spectacle.
Skar-
I will IM you with my questions about your service once I piece them together. Take your time, when you get to them you get to them.
Thank you for seeing through my ramblings to the core of what I am saying. I too battled long and hard with that lack of faith. Humanity as a whole being to primitive, human nature being to violent etc. Looking at it not as a movement but an evolution of humanity as a whole of the course of this existence on the planet helps a little. Realizing that I will likely never see the world I believe in also helped. I must just work to bring humanity closer to that ideal, one begrudging step at a time. I think human nature is not as horrid as the picture of the world at this time suggests. Again looking at it with a longer eye, humanity has constantly moved toward a freer society and i think that is the biggest part of human nature. We live under very coercive elements that can warp the view of human nature. Again it comes down to changing paradigms, and the only way that is going to happen, other than some tragic man-made event that offs a great majority of human kind, is through education and as Kropotkin said propaganda of deed.
I think that capitalism is one of the great evils of the world. It is a system of great exploitation. I think that capitalism and democracy are not synonymous and that with capitalism you can not have democracy. I can go on ad nausem about it, but this is long enough, and I will just say we can agree to disagree on this point right now, and save that debate for a later day.
Yea, I know MASH was about Vietnam even though set in Korea
As for experience, yes experience is the greatest eye-opening, mind expanding thing at work in the world. My point, however bad I butchered it, is that Experiences color perception, it can work to narrow views. Experience can cause prejudice. The key is to strike a balance. The realization that your experiences may cause your perception to be skewed, I believe leads to greater understanding and more mind expansion. Does that make sense? I hate navel gazing, but yet i watch far too much t.v. and get the same feeling.