воскресенье, 16 марта 2014
PhotoRapper has added a photo to the pool:
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
John Milton
I saw an account of a man who was a patient at the Kings Park Psychiatric Center and was housed in the very building seen above. He spoke of how he was tormented during his stay; tied in a straight jacket, suspended by a rope and, at times, sexually molested.
In an epic forward to a book about institutions such as Kings Park, the neurologist Oliver Sachs wrote of the paradox of such places. While for many the state hospitals were indeed the "snake pits" they were depicted as in popular culture, for others they were sanctuary from a world they were not equipped to operate in.
For Sachs, the answer was not in closing these broken behemoths, but, rather, in fixing them; "dealing with the overcrowding, the understaffing, the negligences and brutalities." Instead, state governments wholesale walked away from these facilities. Leaving expensive complexes such as King Park to be preyed upon by scavengers and vandals, while patients were discharged with little more than instructions to take their medications.
Sachs noted that medications were not the panacea hoped for. Many of those so discharged years back were readmitted only a short time later. Today, with no such large scale place as a state hospital to go to, many of these same people now end up in jail. When the patient population decreased as these institutions closed, the prison population grew. Now, the jail system is the largest provider of mental health services in New York State.
The above should always be kept in mind whenever our governments and elected politicians embark on some trendy crusade or populist project. Decisions such as closing massive undertakings such as a hospital system are extremely difficult to undo. As a chief justice recently said, "elections have consequences," and the effects of legislation are difficult, sometimes impossible, to reverse.
In a eulogy for a friend, a priest recently remarked that "life is suffering." He went on. We all suffer, we all endure loss. I've encountered expressions of this in the experiences shared by those in this online community. Each of us have endured struggle. Illness. Loss of family and fields. Brothers and sisters. Husbands. Wives . . .
We all know what suffering is. As this priest went on to say, our lives are determined by what we elect to do with what we experience. In the quote above, Milton wrote of a cauldron of struggle fueled by a furnace that emits no light. The priest, paradoxically spoke of the fire of adversity being a kiln from which my friend, an artist, molded and shaped something beautiful. Simply put, he did not ignore suffering and struggle. He took the fires of life and transformed them into art, family and community.
For me, places such as what Kings Park have become are emblematic of suffering. It is better to turn it out, ignore it and push it out of our consciousness. When it becomes fashionable, place a memorial stone, plant a garden and give a few speeches. But the suffering continues, beneath the surface; in the jails we don't see, the veterans with PTSD we don't listen to, the broken homes and ruined lives.
Elections do have consequences. So do decisions to shut down railroads, outsource industry, not maintain infrastructure, abandon and defund visionary projects, and to start wars. Each is often under the guise of a social improvement, or under the banner of liberating and enabling. Most, in my recent memory, have exponentially contributed to the problem, when the next group of "experts" will come in offering solutions, to start the same vicious cycle all over again.
It was embedded in the character that founded this country to be suspicious of power, and to be vigilant against its abuse. This mistrust of institutional government permeates the conceptual history of my nation. This is what resulted in an elaborate system of checks and balances and, most importantly, in the understanding of the importance of a literate and informed citizenry. It was government that neglected its constituents by allowing the abuse and torture the man described above endured at Kings Park. It was also government who declared it's "mission accomplished" when the institutions were closed and the patients put out onto the streets, many of whom were then put into jail and labelled as criminals.
When the process of abdicating our ethical responsibility by pulling voting levers and leaving the rest up to elected officials is complete (many of whom I've come to call "dancing fools"
, the United States will not simply be "transformed," it will, in principle, cease to exist. The symptoms will be found in empty storefronts, shuttered factories, fallow farmland, a burgeoning criminal system, packed national cemeteries and a continuation of suffering.
To my friends in this community who look to chronicle some of this through their work, keep the pictures coming. Perhaps, through them, we'll help to increase awareness of the insidious truth that lies beneath the facade of a crumbling structure, and we can truly do justice to the divine light that gave birth to the image in the first place.
"Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights."
Thomas Jefferson
воскресенье, 09 марта 2014
среда, 05 марта 2014
