In prison yesterday morning, conversation about gravitational waves, perception, our illusory perceptions, the unceasing awareness we must bring to every encounter, each person before us, whatever temporary conclusions we draw as to the relative safety or danger of each assessment made. As well as laughing at our own absurdity and posturing.
Then there's this:
His universe-as-one-giant-computer theory, as described by the author and science writer Robert Wright in The Atlantic Monthly in 1988, is based on the idea that “information is more fundamental than matter and energy.” Professor Fredkin, Mr. Wright said, believed that “atoms, electrons and quarks consist ultimately of bits — binary units of information, like those that are the currency of computation in a personal computer or a pocket calculator.”
As Professor Fredkin was quoted as saying in that article, DNA, the fundamental building block of heredity, is “a good example of digitally encoded information.”
“The information that implies what a creature or a plant is going to be is encoded,” he said.
“It has its representation in the DNA, right? OK, now, there is a process that takes that information and transforms it into the creature.”
Even a creature as ordinary as a mouse, he concluded, “is a big, complicated informational process.”
(--NYTimes, 4july23, Edward Fredkin, 88, Who Saw the Universe as One Big Computer, Dies)
As an 'informational process', a description which, in a different time and head-tilting consideration, Heraclitus (6th C. BC) would probably nod in affirmation, as would A.N.Whitehead (1861-1947), the term 'process' indicating a developing progression moving through the parameters of time and space.
Those in prison would like such consideration. While terms like punishment and rehabilitation are part of the lexicon, and new terms such as restorative justice and prison abolition, parole and community confinement, enter the discourse. In addition, there are other lexical considerations to mull.
Familiar terms such as evolution and mutation, maturation and moral change, existential awareness and personal integrity.
Men in prison, by and large, change. I know many men who've been in prison for 20, 30, 40 years. They are not murderers. Yes, they've committed homicide, the act. But they are not their crime. They do not think, "Man, I can't wait to get out so I can murder again." It was something they did, not something they are. Most would say it was a terrible moment in their lives. A moment that hurt everyone involved. And they understand the reverberations felt affecting the wide circle of consequence and heartbreak.
But they do not need to be kept in that clanging box of static memory. They have, by and large, stepped beyond their terrible moment. So very many are ready to be graced if allowed to demonstrate their newness to the greater society beyond the echo chamber of closed recrimination.
Modern prisons, mostly the good ones (if such can be said), offer courses, trainings, seminars, counseling, conversations, job-skill development, work regimens, and higher education. Maine State Prison and Bolduc Correctional Facility are two places where meetingbrook *conversations are held each week. These are open-ended, drop-in, any-topic, exploratory conversations where poetry, physics, politics, personal exploration, philosophy, the nature of space and the cosmos, psychology, or even the subtleties of language and how words and thinking affect how we perceive the world.
These are joyful gatherings where straight-talk with insight and honesty takes place, and where posturing and bullshit seldom take place.
Kibitzing and laughter are equally at the table. It is my favorite swap for teaching university courses. (I hate grading. And would not want to navigate the quisling offerings of AI chat bots.) I love the open agenda and constant flow in and out of participants with their enthusiastic thoughtful investigatory insights and non-mandated personal writings meant to augment our common inquiries and conversations.
We turn together. They turn within themselves. We turn within ourselves.
Perhaps, soon enough, prison systems and society at large will also take the turn, and allow the vast number of folks in prison who are no future threat to anyone, to have their turn at redemption and creative reconnection with life outside prison.
* conversation (n.)
mid-14c., "place where one lives or dwells," also "general course of actions or habits, manner of conducting oneself in the world," both senses now obsolete; from Old French conversacion "behavior, life, way of life, monastic life," and directly from Latin conversationem (nominative conversatio) "frequent use, frequent abode in a place, intercourse, conversation," noun of action from past-participle stem of conversari "to live, dwell, live with, keep company with," passive voice of conversare "to turn about, turn about with," from assimilated form of com "with, together" (see con-) + versare, frequentative of vertere "to turn" (from PIE root *wer- (2) "to turn, bend").
(--Online Etymological Dictionary)
To turn
about
Turn
about
with
