Just added to You Tube two days ago:

Human Rights Abuses at the Judge Rotenburg Center:

I seem to recall a comment somewhere on this site in which a person apologized for having “argued” with you in another forum. (S)he was obviously motivated by some schmaltzy form of guilt, most likely brought on by you citing and shattering some illusion someone had about you; this person may have maintained the same illusion and felt bad for doing so, and therefore forfeited whatever (quite possibly valid) argument (s)he had with you for the sake of being “nice”.

Your response was somewhere along the lines of “If you had a valid argument with me, no apology necessary.” Fight the power, my dear.

I should have been more careful about how that read. Sorry. Didn’t untangle my thoughts far enough.

Oh well how does it go “questions are a burden unto others, ansers a prison for oneself”

With the number of cameras about these days we can never be sure when we are being watched or not, never mind that eerie police helicopter that flies over the estate from time to time.

You bring up something very interesting that tangentially relates to this: the inevitability factor. I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about this on my group for autistic Christians. We’ve been talking about the subject of war and how the Bible speaks of war as inevitable (wars, rumors of war) and yet how Christians are called to lay down the sword. Sometimes Christians use the Bible to justify Christian *participation in* war, whereas I have been trying to show that saying something is going to happen inevitably is not the same as being given the green light to participate in it. Likewise, being an onlooker and saying that one party has the right (or not) to defend itself in a war is not the same thing as saying that you are “pro war.” But I digress…I think.

I thought about what I meant by the idea that “institution” is a state of mind. It kind of reminds me of that British series The Prisoner. He thinks he has finally escaped, only the joke’s on him because even in the “outside world” beyond that island where his room is bugged and so forth, he is still “inside” and he can never escape.

The horrors of institutional facilities that warehouse people can be felt to lesser but varying degrees in the “outside word” where people are presumed to be “free.”

This has nothing to do with (and I’m not saying you were saying that, but frankly I’m not sure) excusing what goes on inside those buildings called institutions. What I’m saying is that control, coersion, manipulation, social isolation, and other things that go on where there is no accountability occur in daily life where there is *also* no or little accountability.

Unless society as a whole changes drastically in its view toward people who are different, the institutional state of mind will remain in society and people will not truly be free. People wouldn’t need to be “activists” anymore.

I think that’s true. That doesn’t make it untrue that ‘institution is a state of mind’, however (perhaps I should borrow that phrase next time I try to explain about brickless/ invisible institutions). And whether or not it can be eradicated, that state of mind should be countered wherever it’s found – starting inside oneself, but not neglecting the world.

No-one claims that murder’s all right just because it’s patently ineradicable; yet we’re asked to believe that *convenient* wrongs are all right. ‘But we can’t do without institutions’ does not equate to ‘institutions are good things’ – especially since it’s the most vulnerable whom we propose to make *more vulnerable by putting them in institutions.

What’s up
4 Non Blondes

25 years of my life and still
I’m trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this
Brotherhood of man
For whatever that means
So I cry sometimes when I’m lying in bed
To get it all out what’s in my head
Then I start feeling a little peculiar
So I wake in the morning and I step outside
I take deep breath then I get real high
Then I scream from the top of my lungs
What’s goin’ on
And I say hey…
And I say hey what’s goin’ on
And I say hey…
I said hey what’s goin’ on
And I try, oh my God do I try
I try all the time
In this institution
And I pray, oh my God do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution
So I cry sometimes when I’m lying in my bed
To get it all out what’s in my head
Then I start feeling a little peculiar
So I wake in the morning and I step outside
I take a deep breath then I get real high
Then I scream from the top of my lungs
What’s goin’ on
And I say hey…
And I say hey what’s goin’ on
And I say hey…
I said hey what’s goin’ on
And I say hey…
And I say hey what’s goin’ on
And I say hey…
I said hey what’s goin’ on
25 years of my life and still
I’m trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination