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| A Larger View |
| Applying Trans-Religious Values to Current Events |
| Volume XI Edition 5 |
September/October |
2006 |
In this issue:
Young People: Bored Despite Multitasking
Dr. Anna Pou and Her Crew: Some Acts Are Beyond Laws
The Triumph of The Spirit v. its Nemesis: The Lack of Understanding
The Innocence Commission: Setting a Precedent
Young People:
Bored Despite Multitasking
Seventy three percent of 18 to 20 year-olds reported often being bored with the entertainment choices available to them, so says a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, the first in what proposes to be an annual survey of entertainment behavior. The age group immediately prior, those 12 to 17 did not fare much better. Sixty nine percent of girls and 75% of boys reported often being bored. And the age group after that, those 21 to 24, did not improve the numbers. Sixty five percent of young women and 76% of young men said they were often bored. Considering these are young people who, with probably few exceptions, have access to TV, radios, computers, cell phones, iPods, video games and all the accoutrements of the Internet with its instant messaging, YouTube and the like, it's astounding! But more importantly what does it signify?
To the corporations of the entertainment industry who sponsored this study and who are trying to find out what turns on this age group so that they may better sell their present and future products, it means that young people are dissatisfied with present technology. The corporations therefore interpret this as an invitation to find the kind of future technology that will arouse their interest. On a more abstract level, however, it signifies something far more problematic for the future of the generation and of the society. To be bored when so much is available indicates that one's ingenuity, creativity, intelligence, imagination are not being tapped. These are not merely human qualities, they are qualities that link us to our inner divinity, and not using them, not reaching into them, either clogs or impedes the channel that exists between our inner and outer selves. What is equally troubling is that for youngsters to have access to that much technology, their parents must be of a certain income level. Those from lower income groups often are satisfied with video games, or cell phones and instant messaging. Could it be that too much is too much, and that excess clutters the senses as much as the inner channel?
There's another point to ponder. Young people who come from families on the other side of the cultural divide are not likely to be bored. Many are home schooled, and use their time for special projects, for church outings, for meetings with peers. Their TV time is restricted, they may not have a cell phone, they're likely to share a computer with siblings or parents, their time online has different destination. It certainly looks like they are far more likely to use their creativity, their ingenuity, their imagination.
Obviously that much boredom indicates that the present is a status quo young people do not like. For different reasons it is a status quo adults ought not to like either, and hopefully do something about, beside finding whatever new technology will enthrall and excite.
Dr. Anna Pou and Her Crew:
Some Acts Are Beyond Laws
First, a personal note: This writer has a paralyzed sister living in a nursing home in a hurricane prone state other than Louisiana who would have been evacuated during Katrina had the ambulance not gotten stuck in traffic. By the time the ambulance could get through the danger to the area had passed.
Now to Katrina, New Orleans and Dr. Anna Pou. She has been accused of giving a lethal drug combination to nursing home residents who, for all appearances, would have been left there to die. One was a 380-pound paralyzed man who was quite lucid. We have since learned that there was great chaos. Help, it seemed, was not on the way. The facility was surrounded by water and the administrators of the home refused to take responsibility for sedating patients. Dr. Pou, a head and neck cancer specialist with an unblemished record, decided to take the responsibility others would not.
Her arrest-she's now free on bail-caused an uproar among many medical professionals in the area. Some asked, where were those who were to help? Many add that the people who were to be there and weren't, are the ones to be blamed. They hail Dr. Pou as a hero, admiring the courage it took for her to do what she did. They realize that anyone confronting what she has faced a harrowing experience.
Traumatic and confused situations usually have no good outcomes, only the best that can be done under the circumstances. Dr. Pou was working under conditions of duress which have been compared to those of wartime. It may be that the state can find reasons to prosecute her, but we the public, we, the society on behalf of whom these laws are enacted and enforced, must see through the sham they can sometimes create. Let's say Dr. Pou did give this 380-pound man who was lucid a lethal dose. Were we someone who loved him, how would we prefer he die, waiting for help that does not come, drowning or floating in rising water, with hunger and dehydration, and with the fear of being left when he is so helpless? Had it been my sister I would have prayed for the courage of a Dr. Pou, for someone to spare her as much suffering and indignity as possible.
Let's hope the chaos of post Katrina never occurs again. Yet, the state of the world not being what we would like, some variant of it is likely at some point in the future. Let us then accept that allowing those who cannot be rescued to die peacefully and with dignity is a loving, merciful and necessary act.
The Triumph of The Spirit v. its Nemesis:
The Lack of Understanding
Donny Johnson is a twice-convicted murderer: in 1980 for second-degree murder in a drug related case and in 1989 for assaulting a guard and slashing the throat of another. He's now serving a sentence of life without parole in Pelican State Prison in California, one of the toughest in the country. He lives in an eight by twelve feet concrete windowless cell, there 23 hours a day, with meals passed through a slot and no human contact.
Perhaps out of survival, for critics say these prisons can drive inmates mad, perhaps for some other reasons, Johnson, 46, found a way to paint. He used his hair and a piece of foil to fashion a brush. Each week he bought 10 packages of M&M's and let them sit in water a bit in small empty plastic jelly containers. Then he fished out the chocolate, let the water stay and thicken a while and used it to paint vibrant abstract designs on blank postcards. He sent some to a semi-retired psychoanalyst, Stephen Kurtz, with whom he was corresponding. Kurtz, whose wife is an artist, and who lives part of the year in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, organized a showing of Johnson's paintings at a local gallery. Some sold for as much as $500. The money went to a fund to help the children of those in prison. The New York Times discovered the event and wrote a story about the inmate turned artist. The prosecuting attorney happened to notice it, clipped it and sent it to the warden. The warden curtailed Johnson's privileges and ordered a hearing to decide on Johnson's punishment for conducting a business from the prison without the warden's approval. Another version of the story states that Johnson gave Kurtz the painting, who then sold them and gave the money to charity. Either way Charles Carbone, Johnson's attorney, says, "there's a very large question mark over the legality and morality of what the department has done to punish an inmate for trying to better himself and better his community."
Let's hope the warden, prosecuting attorney and others involved in the hearing, manage to understand that the triumph of the human spirit is not a ground for further punishment.
The Innocence Commission:
Setting a Precedent
The number of convicted felons who have turned out to be innocent is quite disturbing, particularly since, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, at least 123 have been freed from death row. That is why what's just happened in North Carolina is so worthy of note. It has become the first state to create an innocence commission. Some other states may have provisions to redress errors in the criminal justice system-California, for example, has recommended that eyewitness identification procedures be changed and that electronic recordings be made of the interrogation of felony suspects held in custody-but none has gone as far as North Carolina.
Following a 3-year study initiated by North Carolina former Supreme Court chief justice I Beverly Lake, Jr. the recommendation was that a system be adopted patterned somewhat on a British one begun in 1997. An eight members panel will be able to review new evidence, subpoena witnesses and records. If five of the eight agree on a claim of innocence, the case is then sent to a panel of three state Superior Court judges. Their ruling must be unanimous for a conviction to be overturned and for an inmate to be declared innocent.
It seems a lot to go through it you're innocent to begin with, but a least a precedent has been set. And who knows other states may not only follow suit but also improve on the system.
Website of Interest: www.enn.com
Knowing About The Environment
Quite recently the David Suzuki Foundation a Canadian non-profit addressing the environment conducted a focus group and discovered that people may know global warming is a problem but do not know what the problem is nor the difference between ozone depletion and global warming-two issues with different causes and different remedies. Do we know? How many of our friends? The website of the Environmental News Network may not be fun, not even be one we will want to visit too often, but it is one we need to know about, one we need to check in every once in a while so as to have an idea of what is going on in a field that affects our survival. There's no artifice, it's just what it says it is, a network about stories on the environment. As this is being written, for example, the site has a story about water shortages being a reality for developed countries unless several steps including conservation are taken now.
To Ponder On
China: From Recipient To Donor
In 2005 China became the third largest food-aid donor, behind the United States and the European Union. That is also the year it stopped receiving assistance from the World Food Program. China began receiving food-aid from the World Food Program in 1979. While poverty remains a problem in China, and the income and living conditions of millions of Chinese living in the countryside are behind those living in coastal cities, the fact remains that as a country China not only went from recipient to donor, it is now able to help others and do so in a substantive way. Most of the food-aid it gave went to North Korea.
Doesn't that mean that it is only a matter of time before other countries such as India and Brazil can also join the former-recipient-now-donor-club?
A Larger View is published by the Inner\Outer Partnership, a tax-exempt educational organization probing how trans-religious spiritual principles can be agents of individual and societal change. We are funded through donations. Please send any - as well as any comments - to P.O.Box 1293, Pac. Pal. CA 90272-1293. Also contact us by email at alargerview@earthlink.net or call 310-836-7710 or visit our web site at www.innerouterpartnership.org
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