You're almost there and you don't see it
Continuing jail mode this year.....

There's a special kind of frustration when people are ALMOST doing the right thing but fail to see WHY they've almost got it right. I don't think there's a word or saying for this. 'Close but no cigar' doesn't include the fail-to-see part.

Here's a beautiful example. An experiment with women in prison, trying to bring back a tiny microfraction of a system that was formerly universal. The old system WORKED, but these researchers don't see WHY it worked.

Both the study's idea and its outcomes were straightforward: Organize a short houseplant-potting workshop for incarcerated women and see if it improved their moods.

The answer was yes. ... But what is more nuanced, the study's lead author says, are the lessons we can extrapolate from what otherwise may seem like a simple, one-off event.

To the women who participated, the one-hour activity was a respite, a little slice of nature they got to bring back to their cells. And the results of that experience, said Barb Toews ... suggest value in expanding such activities, replicating the research and, above all, demonstrating how interaction with nature can help achieve therapeutic and rehabilitative goals.

When one hour of an activity has noticeable benefits, you're justified in expanding the activity. Got it right. Do more.

But the key wasn't the "little slice of nature". This treats the women as passive mechanisms, not active living things with an innate sense of duty. Planting a seed and helping it grow is the female version of MAKING THINGS. Whether the seed is a hyacinth seed or a human seed, this is what women do. Genes and culture agree.

Leaving aside the small number of incurably bad people, most women end up breaking laws because their duty is frustrated. In a fucked and broken culture there's no support structure for nest-making and child-raising. We expect lower class women to work outside the home for near-zero pay, and we expect them to pay professionals to raise their kids mechanistically. The setup is all pain and no gain. Crime pays much better.

Other research on a variety of populations, not just those in prison, has shown that exposure to nature improves mental health and well-being. Long-term, nature-oriented programs for incarcerated people have been evaluated for their benefits: Horticulture classes, for example, have been associated with vocational and social skill-building, while interior design and programmatic enhancements to prisons, like windows and the availability of nature videos, have been linked to lower aggression.

True for both men and women, true for criminals in prison and inmates of insane asylums and inmates of retarded schools.

Before the Sorosian "human" "rights" monsters took over in the '70s, all three types of institutions had FARMS and WORKSHOPS. The farms provided food for the institution and the workshops provided furniture and clothing, which saved a lot of expense. VASTLY MORE IMPORTANT, the farms and workshops gave the inmates a chance to MAKE USEFUL THINGS. The results were dramatically clear, especially in the insane asylums. People recovered and returned to outside life FAST.

"Availability of nature videos" won't get ANYWHERE NEAR the desired result. The only way to get the old result is to restore the old system.

Labels: From rights to duties, Make or break, skill-estate

  ¶ 4:16 AM