Throughout much of human history and it’s stages of civilization, it is noteworthy how inevitable the evolution comes about of the idea of liberty which has led to the debasement of the idea of authority. As particular authorities have become suspect, so also has the very idea of authority. When deprived of legitimacy, of any presumption of right, authority is reduced to nothing more than the exercise of power or force. This has been observable at nearly every level of authority, from parents to national governments. This is when--as Lord Acton once put it--power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

When authority loses it’s presumption of right, its subjects submit only to the force of authority rather than to the logic of authority. Through this stage of degeneration of a civilization, those in authority constantly clamor to rationalize an ideal to sustain their legitimacy through the rationale of attempting to "impose order on chaos." This is best served through the media of "law and order" platforms acted out by polished professionals and politicians.

When Corrections Departments in criminal Justice systems across our country abandoned the concept of rehabilitation in favor of the concept of punishment and retaliation, it sought to serve only one segment of our society.. .those concerned with revenge masquerading as justice.

I was reading the classic, On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill and was especially impressed with the introduction written by Gertrude Himmelfarb. She states, "...Locke seems, at first sight, to posit a liberty strikingly similar to Mill’s; the

‘perfect freedom’ of all men to ‘order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit,’ on condition only of their obeying the law of nature that ‘no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.’ But that liberty existed, for Locke, only in a state of nature. And it was precisely because that state of nature was inadequate that men entered civil society and consented to limit not only their liberty of action but also of opinion: ‘No opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated by the Magistrate.’ The denial of the existence of God, for example, could not be tolerated, because ‘promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon the atheist (Pg. 9).’"

My life began it’s most pronounced change when I submitted to the influence of the writings in The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran (1938) that I read in 1975. The impressions in new philosophy and new logic in processing life experiences, I was able to re-examine my life’s objects in a light less colored by rationalization, my whole world turned upside down. Especially when I learned that rationalizations were "good reasons" for thinking and behaviors, but not real reasons, the whole foundation on which my life understandings were constructed fell down.

All my happiness and justification had stemmed from the continual pursuit of this end. Now this end failed to charm, or had ceased to charm, and how could the means ever be of interest again? In many respects, it seemed as there wasn’t much left to live for, because a conscience had been awakened in me; my victims had "voices" in my heart. The only sustaining factor which literally kept me alive was the tinge of curiosity which arose out of new truths that were opened to me.

Before this, I hadn’t realized the experience of natural and spontaneous feeling, or any poetic and artistic sensibility. My habit of being over-analytical in my efforts to substantiate rationalizations had kept me limited in my capacity for emotion.

In other words, I found it difficult to continue to justify violence thinking and violent behavior. It became especially difficult to convince myself that I had a right to kill anyone. My most difficult adjustment was to come to terms with the fact in realizing that I couldn’t undo what I had done in the past; I knew I could only attempt to go and sin no more in regard to a violent past. Believe it or not, this is easier said than done. When so many of my life’s coping mechanisms were based on at least a psychological violence, it became extremely difficult to become genuinely kind and gentle. The only way I could behave in such a new manner was to keep the shield of psychopathology around me when in the presence of others who advocated psychopathic interactions in the prison setting.

This, of course, was a result of my having a "fearful" personality. I had thought that meant that the "labeling" psychologist was trying to tell me that I was a frightened in some cowardly fashion. To give a more accurate description of a fearful personality might be one manifest in the following example: If two people were walking down a path in the woods and were startled by the rattling of a rattlesnake, the "normal" person might avoid the rattler and keep on going toward his destination. The other person might avoid the rattler but would go and find a stick and come back and kill the rattler so he wouldn’t have to face the threat again. This person would be the one with a fearful personality.

I had to learn, accept, and internalize concepts which were alien to me at that time beyond an intellectual grasp. I knew about "turning the other cheek," etc., but considered these notions as being a credo of the weak and ineffectual person. When people would say that it took a better man to walk away from a fight, I couldn’t imagine the validity in such thinking except for those people who couldn’t fight or who were afraid to fight. Since I had learned to fight, it didn’t make much sense in "turning the other cheek" to someone who was trying to hurt me. I believed it to be far more appropriate to retaliate against such aggression from another person. My rewards for thinking and behaving in such a manner...