Trantor

Is it me, or is it getting weird out?

Our culture seems to be changing its mind about this, but I think prison once was about:

a. Holding a person accountable.

b. Setting an example of judging a member of a society and to determine what the “truth” is… (what happened and who did what).

c. Dealing with the individual’s own sense of punishment, so that they are forced to acknowledge society’s penalty and accept it as a judgement of who they are.

d. Relieving the stress on those close to the persons wronged, so they are able to see justice done, and may feel vindicated, in at least the truth of the matter.  It also serves as a social method of “relieving pressure” on a society.

e. Weighing in the possible positive benefits the individual may have for society. Is there training, etc. that can be done.

Is the system just for everyone (including those convicted wrongly)?

I don’t have the answers.   I have a lot of questions.

All in all… the entire society we have seems about to collapse, or shift into something else, and I can’t help but think it is getting weird.

The diseases are pretty freaky, and they are putting a lot of economic and social pressures on the world. 

This thing with ISIL is nuts.

The Russians are taking nearby countries, and all they will about is: “hey folks… Everyone be cool.  It’s all ok.   These guys want to join us and we want to help them out because, by golly, they are Russians.  Legally.  We take the country, they Russia.  If they are not Russia, then they wouldn’t want us, and we would be there…”

The water is running out in the MidWest and it can’t be replaced, because it was all placed there in the Missoula floods 14,000 years ago.  (It might happen again, but it won’t be showing up soon enough to help us out.)

There’s are a few countries out there that are pretty nuts.  And that would be OK if they weren’t sitting in the corner saying nasty little ugly things while they play with biologic or nuclear toys and noxious, anti-social things.

The killing the planet thing is a little disconcerting.  You know, all that pumping this or that into the air and water, or out of the dirt and how it probably isn’t hurting anyone or anything.  There are some weird things happening in the rivers and oceans, but there's a lot of ocean out there anyway...  Even the land species are finding it a little tricky to co-exist with weird Uncle Smart Primate.

Religiously things have gotten pretty weird too.  There's the Quron folks pretty upset that no one believes them that Abraham tried to kill Ishmael, while those who favor the Tora or the Bible people are pretty insistent it was the other brother, Isaac.  There’s the "in the Church stuff" about family issues and life style issues and how that ties into issues about political parties, and programs or the military or freeways or something and various parties get all charged up on one thing or the other.  They seem to find it easy to quit doing their jobs because they want to lead me somewhere they think is going to be better (for someone, I think they said me.)

And I guess it has something to do with taxes. And what they want to spend it on (though they don’t seem too interested in my view of what they should spend it on).

At any rate… things seem to be going a little sideways, lately, and I’m not talking about an early cold storm, or even a freak tsunami, or the emptying of a giant lake or a volcano or earthquake  a nuclear power plant going sideways so some folks are finding it isn't a good idea to fish where the fish glow.

I’m just saying is the whole thing gives me the creeps, like everything local, or global, or even within the solar system some where…is just sort of waiting to see who tears things apart first.

It sort of feels like it could be a Seldon Crisis sort of thing.