I read today about the California prisoners who've gone without food for 45 days now to protest the practice of keeping people on solitary for a year or more. A judge decided that the prisons can force feed them. This is barbarism. Their rationale is that some of the fasting prisoners have been mislead. I almost expect to hear the Shrubism: "wrongheaded" applied to the prisoners. But it is our practices of incarceration that are wrong.

First of all, it is entirely inhumane to keep any person locked away in solitary for any time at all. We are not designed to be all alone, and left all alone for too long almost any human will loose their mind. A whole year in isolation is enough to make a very sane and functional person completely mad. It is very reasonable for prisoners to protest against this practice with every tool they have.

Second of all, even prisoners should have the right to refuse food if they want to. Everyone should have the right even to end their life if they so choose, especially adults. After all, if a person cannot decide what to do with their life, is it their life at all? This kind of prison practice makes capital punishment look humane.

Welcome to the Age of Overparenting
How I learned to let my kids be kids.
By Katherine Ozment
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/scripts/print/article.php?asset_idx=329920
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People demand freedom of speech
as a compensation for
the freedom of thought
which they seldom use.
-Kirkegaard

The author here point out that the new generation of US college grads are ill-prepared for the world that they are confronted with. And he explains it in generational terms. The theme of the Boomer era was self-discovery, freedom and expression. The theme for this new generation of graduates will be different, but it is not clear that any of their teachers are preparing them for success. The successful young adult is beginning to make sacred commitments — to a spouse, a community and calling — yet mostly hears about freedom and autonomy.

It's Not About You
by David Brooks
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31brooks.html?_r=3

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
--Albert Einstein

Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows:
by being defeated, decisively,
by greater and greater beings.
--Ranier Maria Wilke (1875-1926)