[p2p-research] The criminalization of using the commons

[Nathan Cravens]

Hi Dante,

Thanks for sharing your experiences of Europe. I've had my mind in this
curious place for sometime, without much investigation. Hackerspaces are the
most rampant there; for starters; which probably means it has the most
potential to nurture the seeds...

Hi Paul,

What an excellent subject title. Thanks for sharing your insights and
experiences in such depth. They are a treat. ;)

***

I am now recalling the few occasions where me and lawyer references were
mentioned. A letter I wrote to my mother, read by her husband, who said , as
I recall my mother recounting, ‘He writes like a lawyer’. I’m honored that
you are making such attempts to help me find an area my mind may rest. From
writings of your own, this sounds like the path you might best pursue if you
were my age with the same lack of obligation.

I could tell my intelligence was making the persona nervous… In another
reflection, of ‘myself’ in the moment, we might say was a disturbed young
man, haunted in ‘real time’ with the looming histories his night time
activity attempted to avoid, only here to persist in attempting to divert
the endless despair surfacing and resurfacing with each insistent of the
antagonistic persona--knowing my autonomy, discontinued--combined with a
life experience of intolerance. I look in the mirror and see a young man
that is physically attractive, but so too was Lucifer? To avoid the phantoms
that live this collective nightmare; I was confronted by a legitimized
product of this nightmare. To overcompensate his answer to ‘if I were a
student could I stay here?’, with that answer being a hasty ‘no‘, in
addition to his repetition of acting more antagonistic in framing the
‘lying’ about my position as a ‘student, but not enrolled’ at the
university, this was immediate grounds for the criminal trespass warning
issued. After the instigating officer and sargent had a private discussion,
that decision was made without any negotiation on my part, grounded in the
‘lie‘ I had held. Your trust is all I was asking from my line of reassertion
and questioning; in response you fabricated conditions of distrust for
security sake as a reaction to each of my reassertions and questionings. I
failed to make a personal connection, to relate him to me somehow, for
reasons that will become better understood.  I must become able to make a
compassionate connection with each encounter, but as you say, Paul, my
compassion was fatigued, at first with the sudden outburst in my direction,
perhaps an attempt to render me complety submissive, and this fatigue
continued as he grafted, without much reflective thought, the angle in
framing ‘me’ as invalid. I refused to sign the document; but no matter with
an excited pleasure from the sargent in stating this fact; the position
remains the same. History repeats itself, if but differently.

So too was the decision as swift and unquestioned like a similar occurrence
in 8th grade when three girls claimed I had threatened their lives. The
story of Columbine was the primary social fuel, and my deep quiet depression
was well visible from my daily experiences attempting to avoid my dying
father living in the room across from my own when he had lived up till that
year in nursing homes and half-way houses. So that further ensured I
represent that stereotyped target. To show kindness toward the weak in that
culture was to become the weakness itself; and antagonism follows such
behavior; therefore I became weaker; quieter; baring the time and insult,
including to myself to cope, so I might relieve it with the sensual
distractions that were to await. He was living noticeably less and less each
day---that cough a haunting memory that resurfaces with other coughs I hear
like it---compounded by my mother’s highly sensitive, reductive, fatalistic,
and unpredictably explosive tendencies, and my physical breakdown after too
much sugar; not enough healthy food; and layers upon layers of guilt and
stress the summer before entering my 8th prison term. Experiences from
brilliant teachers for terms 4 and 5 are the exceptions; even if their
approaches too were ‘just-in-case‘. They did the very best they knew how.

This breakdown in my health months before I was interrogated for hours
without my mother’s knowledge by a county detective, came to a climax when
my father was in the same space, as we had just attended his sister’s
daughter’s wedding, my ingrained mother‘s fear of him for reasons it would
seem too melodramatic to mention, preparing for a week in church camp, my
persistent allergies and asthmatic reactions from cat dander and poor air
circulation, that last dr. pepper on an empty stomach, the depressing film
on the television… These fragments accelerated a whole that lead to my
physiological shock. My body was preparing to shut down. That is a fear I
have yet surpassed. Were it not for my mother’s concern, the cold air
conditioning in the car, and my desperate prayers to remain alive, I would
have died that early morning. I have yet to fully recover from that night…
How far I have come, since… Perhaps…

So yes, Paul, I am deeply disturbed by an experience that would have made
other mortals an antagonistic plaything to reinforce such spectral role as
executioner… His reward was sweet; what sick joy I could see in his eyes; a
bum taught a lesson; my seeing the ‘win’ in his eyes furthered such twisted
pleasures. If this group that saw my leave had thought what they were doing
was an act of compassion, there would not have been so many of them to see
my leave. It only remains in my fantasy that such a potential man walking
the campus would have a role more as a councilor than executioner of curious
activity.

Now you and our research and development group--call ‘it’ what you like--can
see here more clearly what fuel--what sinders long to be set free after
wanting to command: I AM JUST!! I refrain from this approach, knowing this
only creates negative reciprocity in kind, however less just it may be: as I
have learned well, to a fault: the flame will only surface more fire until
the original flame is destroyed. My mental medicines are many and not at
all, but we might call some of them the over-corrections represented by this
use of English language; and the fruits of constant musical imagination to
stave the burn that would otherwise lose control, spread, and further
reinforce and legitimize this rigged and built-in and universalized
destruction. What come of these explanations are of the sort that render me
often times immersed in the welcoming depths of fairy tale with each insight
into our living nightmares…

We must do more than type at keys in our silos. We must create a system of
right action and we must live these actions first as we tell of them. We
must demonstrate how much better our offerings are and describe each step as
best we can within our dear platform development group so as to convince the
rest of the world it is a better in practice, a more preferable truth than
before. No matter that many of the assumptions in it are opposed to the ones
we have learned. Many of us have had to learn how to react to a nightmare
with a wide array of distractions and antagonisms and chemical indulgences
that secure any hope of sanity within its predatory assumptions. We must
look clearly at why it is we have distracted ourselves, why we are
antagonistic toward others and ourselves. With such reflections, we can
better work  to solve the most glaring structural problems that create and
reinforce these insanities as ‘global practice‘. It begins, with the
approach or a way of thinking about thinking; and it must not require
thought at all at times, especially under great stresses, so to better think
and act. The result can be stated simply: secure the necessities of life by
the one living it with a system created by the few that care; or placed
another way, help others secure their own livelihoods without want to
destroy others; in other words, present a general approach to share securely
so others may live personally secure. These words must ultimately become
grounded in practice for it to have any hope of improving our lives in some
way.

I know things about this department that are constitutionally unsavory. This
is not to suggest an avenue for revenge, as it might seem, but to outline
this corruption within that which exists to manage the scarcity of its
institution, by its very practice, a creator of scarcity, as Paul, you often
repeat in many ways. Keep restating the argument as the opportunities
surface, never mind how crankish this approach may be, as it can very easily
surface again and again with the critical thought of our sort, in view of
every proprietary activity in practice. So, for that example: here’s some
dirt: when students are in violation of parking protocols, the fines are
taken from student accounts without permission, whether the student has
observed the citation or not. That ain't legal. I only know this because I
had a chat with a highly gifted prelaw student I will send your way. He was
home or unschooled, by the way.  I suggested he join the student government
association, crowd source the message, and pursue with the students to
attenuate the UPD’s corruption. If we might have attenuation of this sort an
underlying amplification must secure the livelihoods of UPD for the better
for this to be an act of compassionate governance. To even consider such
activity, however, would only work to dissolve the image of the state
institution of its black box or unquestionable or proprietary superiority
over the ignorant and therefore sinful child it knows best how it--whatever
that may be--though it is nothing at all in itself--is to best instruct and
for the mass to follow… So this curious prelaw student with his interest in
morality and inventing and innovation would better match Ghandi’s raw gifts.


So what is my role as so many long to have stated for themselves? My
father’s last words as I recall, “Just be somebody… Just be somebody.” This
came from a man who saw his only son plunge from one distraction to another,
from television to computer game. I remember seeing when he knew this would
be the last to see me; he could barely speak then; cancer; the fear in his
eyes repeated the same message… Of course there is a great deal more to be
said from the last look a father gives to his son. I can only imagine what
this must have been like for him; what he might think of me now… He would be
so very proud.  My issue with this pursuit of ‘someone’ is that I enjoy the
autonomy in being indescribable… I can describe ’the world’, 'others', and
’my place in it’, but these are more fuzzy descriptions toward unfulfilling
repetitive pursuits as my madness reminds.

You and I are pieces; our arrangement can form many wholes; my part in
fabricating such views are to ensure descriptions of whatever ‘mostly
unknown’ I might find of interest at the time with whatever it may be… Call
me or it or you and what it is you, do and are, what you want… Doesn’t that
feel better?


Yours,
Nathan


P.S. What but of re-reflection, an adherence to a tone, but as best a craft
of music or poetry?

I wrote this while in a tent in Nacogdoches where I have lived for over a
year now; this my second camp during this duration; as part of a frugal
lifestyle of at least two years…
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