social injustice | David M Masters

Social Boxes Fit in One or Else

If you don’t fit into any of the massive numbers of social niches society has carved out for you to align yourself with, you could find yourself headed for prison. That’s what happens if there’s no place for you in our society.

The system we live under today forces us to find tidy thought boxes to fit ourselves into and allows us to freely move from one box to another any time we want. This is supposed to give you the illusion of being able to exercise free will. For the most part, we have accepted this social construct and believe that as long as we are free to choose between the options which have been presented to us, we are free.

But is this true freedom?

Our system is packed full of checks and balances to monitor our progress and to determine if we are being “good little subjects.” So that society can determine whether you have found a place to fit yourself into, if not, they will tighten the reins on your bridle, to steer you into any of the boxes they have carved out for you.

Your family, friends, and teachers will exert a great deal of effort and deep-rooted concern for you in their desperate need to feel comfortable about your station in life. They fear that if you do not find a place to fit in, then you will needlessly suffer, and possibly end up homeless, in prison, or dead. They know that you must choose among the acceptable social boxes and to fit in one, or else, something terrible may happen to you. This fear keeps most of us safely snuggled into our own boxes.

There are so many tools which have been arranged to help you select the box that is a good fit for you, the mainstream media, and even the non-mainstream media, is providing you with ample opportunity to choose between this and that, to decide what is right and what is wrong, and any four choices creates a box. Good for you.

To choose between this and that, to build your own walls of what is right and wrong. This is how your box is defined.

Once you’ve defined your box, your next task to find others that have fit inside a box which is similar to yours. This will be an established group of people who are authorized by society to continue to socialize themselves.

If you are having difficulty finding a box that suits you, no problem. There is an app for that. There are free apps on your cell phone which will help retrain you into adopting a box which you can snuggle yourself into.

But what if I don’t want to follow the status quo? not to worry, there are many authorized boxes that appear to be against the grain or counterculture, but these have also been provided for you to choose between so that there is the illusion of free choice or freedom.

In the event your fear of correction, family, friends, teachers, news media, social media, computer programs, or device apps cannot assist you in your social mission to fit yourself into an acceptable box, there is a pill for that.

Not fitting squarely within a social box may mean that you’ve qualified yourself for a mental health diagnosis, for which there is treatment in the form of medication. This medication will make it easier for you to find a box to fit yourself into.

If you are unresponsive to the treatment or reject it altogether, you may begin to find yourself on the slippery downward slope which your family and friends feared would happen if you were unable to find an acceptable box.

First of all, your ability to support yourself will be cut off. You must have a job or align yourself with societal structure enough to obtain enough support to simply survive. If you cannot do these basic things, how will you live? Where will you live, how will you eat?

Well, you might think it through and convince yourself that, “This is America, land of the free,” and decide to live off the land, like your ancestors. Not socially acceptable. There are so many laws which have been written that all of them are nearly impossible to follow unless you have enough cashflow to obey them properly.

Any broken law can get you fined and/or arrested. Continue to try to live free, outside of compliance, you will receive more fines and arrests. Because you have not found an acceptable station in life to fit in, you do not have the wherewithal to come up with the cash to pay the fines, unless you break more laws to make the payments.

Once you’ve fallen into this cycle, which you found yourself in by trying to stay true to your own individuality, you wake up to find yourself forced into a safe 8×10 box of concrete and steel, where – if you’re lucky – you can finally begin to continue thinking for yourself, but it will cost you.

You won’t be able to choose when or what you eat. You will not be able to choose what media you have access to, except to choose from what options have been authorized and preselected for you to choose from. If you appear to be compliant enough, you will have regular limited access to fresh air, outside your box on a daily basis.

Our prisons are full of people who do not fit in our society. They are not criminals. They just have no other place to fit in.

This is criminal.

Love Hearing People Complain

I absolutely love hearing people complain, followed by what they’re gonna do about it.

When you notice some story of an atrocity which rocks your being piercing your soul to your core, you recoil and understandably upset. What happens next determines whether your opposition to this offensive subject will oppose it, or add power to it.

If you complain about it, great. That makes you feel better about it, because you’ve found a way to release the burden of it and pass it on to someone else.

I get excited when I hear someone complaining about something passionately. It instantly attracts my attention as I anticipate what comes next. I listen… if nothing else follows, I am disappointed. Instead of complaining and in a sense, courageously making a stand, by placing themselves in the bullet’s path, this person has just promoted the very thing that made him or her upset.

Instead, I love hearing people complain, followed by what they’re gonna do about it.

Tell me about the thing that upset you, tell me that you researched it to make sure the matter in question is valid (and not simply a false story to distract your attention from the good things in life and to make you fearful), and tell me what you’re doing about it. Even if it’s only donating $5 to an organization that is combating this offense.

If you complain in a venue which is highly public, like social media, then you have exponentially impacted the offending subject, intentionally or unintentionally, either for or against the thing which has upset you.

Do you want to promote this thing that has upset you? Fine, post something offensive in social media, with you acting as it’s PR promoter. Post about how horrible this atrocity is, without offering an opposing solution.

Do you want to be a part of the solution, to quash this thing, to stamp it out forever?

Then, complain. Post to your heart’s content. Put yourself on the line by telling me and the world what you are doing about it, and let your inspired action inspire me and others to join the cause.

Now, I’m excited!

Elizabeth Cady Stanton could have just complained about not having the ability to vote because she was a woman. But she complained and said, “I am drafting a Declaration of Sentiments and Grievances,” which addressed the basic rights which were being denied women at the time.

How crazy it might have seemed, when she, Lucretia Mott and a few friends met in her home to draft her declaration. Anyone looking in from the outside must’ve thought this an impossible task. Really? That one woman would stand against the mightiest political machine ever contrived. Are you kidding me? This dwarfs King David’s youthful account of slaying Goliath by hundreds of times.

She complained, followed by inspired action. She started a movement, complaining, and allowing others to join with her voice to be heard. 72 years later, because Elizabeth Cady Stanton complained and stood in the bullet’s path, the 19th Amendment was passed, granting women the right to vote.

This is only one small example among hundreds of thousands of true stories depicting what people can do to make a difference in a troubled world, and it starts with one.

Will you be the one who adds to the confusion and dysfunction of the world or will you be a part of the solution?

The choice is yours.

Top 30 Minds Silenced

Kids who are different, kids who are “bad,” may be the most special kids of all, the hope for a brilliant future, if we could only let them flourish and grow into the potentially most amazing minds contributing to a wildly better world.

Some of the most amazing minds in history were rebellious or abused children, or kids who would have been labeled with certain “disabilities” in our modern day, medicated into compliance, institutionalized, or potentially never survived long enough to make their contribution.

What is the price humanity is paying for attempting to control the quality of our children, so that they are easier to manage, control, more similar, or “normal?”

We put those unruly little curmudgeons into special classes, and schools to train them to be more controllable, keep them in fear of persecution or prosecution for being “different”, and develop new ways to subsidize their submitting themselves to veritable “invisibility”, or institutionalize them for noncompliance.

Drugging our children to turn them into compliant zombies does lighten the load on teachers and educational administrations, but at what cost?

What if we rolled back the clock and imposed this method or forsaking the uniquely individual child for the ease of managing larger numbers of compliant children en masse?

Then we would have missed out on the benefits we all enjoy due to the new ideas and thoughts that were bestowed upon us by the most amazing minds in our history.

For instance, take a look at these 30 minds, which would have been dumbed-down, drugged-out, or otherwise silenced by today’s standards:

Top 30 Minds Silenced

1. Alexander the Great
2. Hans Christian Andersen
3. Aristotle
4. Beethoven
5. Alexander Graham Bell
6. Andrew Carnegie
7. Lewis Carroll
8. Winston Churchill
9. Leonard Da Vinci
10. Charles Darwin
11. Emily Dickinson
12. Walt Disney
13. Thomas Edison
14. Albert Einstein
15. Henry Ford
16. Galileo
17. Vincent van Gogh
18. George Frederick Handel
19. Thomas Jefferson
20. John F. Kennedy
21. Abraham Lincoln
22. Michelangelo
23. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
24. Sir Isaac Newton
25. Norman Rockwell
26. Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
27. Nikola Tesla
28. George Washington
29. Orville and Wilbur Wright
30. Woodrow Wilson

To live in a world without the influence of just these 30, of some of the greatest minds of our time, would hardly be conceivable. Yet, minds, just like these, are being silenced every day as we medicate and segregate our children by modern methodologies.

The world we live in, today, is vastly different than the world we lived in, in the past. In many ways, this strange new world has presented us with unimaginable possibilities, especially when compared to the world where these 30 minds lived their lives.

While it is different and more advanced, what have we sacrificed for the benefit of those social engineers tasked with the management of the human race?

Do you feel like you are a more independent thinker?

And if you to think that you are an independent thinker, do you think that someone “out there” may have convinced you of those thoughts which you think are your own?

May those thoughts have been carefully placed there to more easily manage you?

Are we all just mice racing through a craftily constructed maze?

Might we be perpetuating this madness by imposing behavioral restrictions and segmentation of our children?

Are our rebellious children, or the ones who don’t fit in with their peers, potential geniuses?

I believe that even the most awkward of our children, the ones that face the greatest challenges, those who are diagnosed as, “disabled,” hold within their hearts and minds the keys to a greater world. A world so great, that there are others who may be afraid of its unfurling before us.

I live in this world, and in many ways, I play along… but I know that something grander lies just over the horizon, and a new day is dawning.

Just for Kids

If you’re a kid, and someone is trying to make you be something you know in your heart of hearts that you know you are not. Think about finding someone to talk to, who might be able to help you. Do not let anyone tell you that you are anything less than perfection, because the truth is: God doesn’t make junk.

You were made to be different, not just another face in the crowd. If you don’t fit in, great! That means you’re on the right path. You are special.

You are perfect, just the way you are. Maybe not perfect for the situation you are in, right now, but you, yourself are the perfect you. The most perfect that you could be at every moment of every day.

Will you make mistakes? Yes. Will you face challenges that sometimes feel like it’s just too much for you to handle? Yes. We all do. And we just keep on going. Just do the best you can with what you have. It’s all anyone of us can do.

Every step you take makes you better, stronger, and more prepared for your bright future.

Don’t lose sight of who you really are. One day, when the time is right, your light will shine.

You are amazing. We are so blessed that you are here, and we can’t wait for all the great things you have (or will have) to share with us.

We love you, no matter what.

Kill Them All

When a megalomaniac doesn’t like the idea of other groups of people possessing opposing views, he or she might insist the dissidents be silenced with little regard to innocent casualties. “Kill them all!” was a swift and effective command of the Catholic Church during the Crusades for cleansing a geographic area of heretics. Trying to ascertain who might be Catholic or not in a targeted area was simply too time consuming and inefficient, so when the Pope was questioned about whether fellow Catholics might be killed in the attacks, he added, some form of, “God knows who are his,” to the command to kill them all.

Later, the phrase and similar basic idea was adopted by United States military special forces as, “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”

Similarly, the royal charge to silence dissidence, “Off with his head,” represents the most effective way to silence someone who is resistant to compliance, especially if the dissident has anything to say about it. This phrase was adopted by popular culture and is demanded by the Queen of Hearts in Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland.

Ever since Cain and Abel, when the human ego feels as though it has been slighted, disrespected, or has suffered an injustice, a swift killing is the most effective method of making things right.

Instantaneous death is admittedly the most effective way to silence someone who doesn’t think or believe like you do.

Your ego (my ego, all of our egos) wants others to think, believe, and feel the way it does, and the unrestrained ego expects and demands compliance. In fact, the unrestricted ego believes sudden death is suitable punishment for anyone (or anything) that gets in its way.

How early in life does this appear in life? Hang out and listen to an active playfield in at any grade school in the USA and you will hear at least one child whose ego has been the victim of an assault utter, “I will kill you,” or alternatively, “I hope you die,” or wishing sudden death visits one or more of his/her classmate(s).

While this may appear to be barbarian and you might like to think that we are too civilized these days to adopt such philosophies, assuming we are far more likely to suggest something more civil, like, “Lock him up and throw away the key,” because that is a far more enlightened response than suggesting someone lop his head off.

Yet, all the assertions of, “I am right,” and, “You are wrong,” and holding onto the expectation that anyone could truly align with someone else’s way of thinking is simply too far from logic to be conceived of. To kill, imprison, brainwash, or otherwise punish someone into compliance is not sustainable.

For instance, we, as a society, are imprisoning Americans at an increasing rate every year. In fact, if things don’t change and we keep incarcerating people at current increasing rates, in the next forty years, you will either be in prison or working for a prison. Unsustainable.

The courts maintain (much like the Pope during the Crusades) spending too much time, money, and effort to sort out the details is far more ineffective than making more rules and erring on the side of punishing innocents. In effect, “Jailing them all,” and let God figure it out.

This more civilized method of keeping our streets clean, and removing the free-thinking, non-compliant, poor, mentally-challenged, or undesirables from society seems to be a solution we all can live with. Or can we?

As the current human evolution continues, the more evolved or enlightened individuals realize that punishing people for not thinking the way we do is not the answer.

What is the answer?

Innocent Prisoner Released After 18 Years

149 innocent prisoners who had served an average of 15 years behind prison walls were released last year

Unfortunately, this happens too often to believe it’s an anomaly; innocent men or women are convicted of crimes they did not commit, their lives are ruined as they are plucked from their families and society and imprisoned to rot away… Why? Because someone thought they were an undesirable, someone needed a scapegoat and the accused innocent did not have enough money to adequately defend themselves in court.

Thankfully it doesn’t happen every day, but it happens enough to make you wonder

How many innocent people are serving time in prison?

There is a lot of motivation to convict someone of a crime. Local law enforcement wants the community to feel safe and feel like they are effectively keeping their promise to serve and protect us. The more convictions the prosecution gets, the safer the community, and the more likely a prosecutor can promote.

We are part of the problem, too. If a crime has been committed that leaves us crying out for justice to be done, this adds pressure on law enforcement to find someone to offer up as the perpetrator of the crime. If not, how can any of us feel safe, knowing there is someone “out there” who could perpetrate a similar crime against us?

So, they ‘round up the usual suspects and seek out someone who meets certain criteria that will result in a likely conviction. The candidate usually has limited financial resources (will have to rely on a public defender), could have limited intelligence and/or social skills, has had some legal issues in the past (even if minor), and might be considered by peers (perspective jury) as an undesirable. Making for a perfect conviction cocktail.

Even if wrongly accused, we are satisfied and feel safer knowing that someone is behind bars who “committed” this crime, as we light our torches and shout out, “kill the monster,” as if we were characters in the climax of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Then there are the other types of crimes that are committed, even harder to prove, because the details are vague, evidence is lacking, there are few witnesses, but still the crime is grisly enough that we want to see someone incarcerated for the crime; even if the crime did not actually take place.

Local Police Catch and Release

Catch and release is a policy demonstrated by local police departments whereby they respond to a call or question a pedestrian and can be compelled to find a reason to detain the individual, especially if the person appears to have a low income or mental health status. The individual is booked and released as soon as an audience with a judge has been arranged. The individual's just happy to be out and not convicted of something they didn't do.

But they are now in the system, just in case their character comes into question when associated with some other crime in the future.

Poor Man’s Revenge

This is how the dregs of society use (or abuse) the system to execute revenge on someone else within arm’s reach of their position in society at no cost. Simply accuse the person of some wrongdoing of a criminal act, have a compelling story to tell that will enrage the community, be capable and willing to lie on the stand under oath and you could get your free revenge served up by our legal system with a smile.

We’re likely to convict someone we don’t particularly care for. If nothing else, our communities look better with those who make little contribution to society behind bars. We feel safer and it bolsters our faith in the system charged with our safety and security. Plus, who doesn’t like a good story, where someone is wronged and the perpetrator pays the price the evil deed (whether they did it, or not)? And we don’t mind expending tax dollars in this manner. Besides, “I always knew there was something not right about that guy,” or gal.

We’re likely to think our community is better off without this individual on our streets anyway. And speaking of a jury of peers… Really? In most cases, where the wrongly accused is of a low economic (and/or mental health) stature, the members of the jury are likely not. (Although adequately selecting authentic peers would make for an entertaining reality TV show.)

In recent years, organizations have sprung up to help those wrongly accused and committed, but their resources are minimal, the demand is high and they hand-pick their cases that usually involve life sentences. There aren’t many resources available for imprisoned innocents serving less than a sentence of life in prison.

Is our system broken? Yes.

Can we fix it? Not likely any day soon.

Too much of our economy relies on our clunky legal system. While those who run the system attempt to make it look as good as possible, continue to enjoy their lucrative incomes, regular promotions and benefits.

That’s all well and good, unless it’s you who has been wrongly accused, stood trial, were found guilty and sent to prison for something you didn’t do.