Tragic Taxonomies
Taxonomy generally refers to the practice and study of classification of things or concepts. For instance, terms like “over the counter,” “prescription” or “illegal” can refer to drugs. Currently, in America, the voters and elected officials are struggling over the “taxonomy” or definition of marijuana: is it medicinal or criminal?
The consequences of being classified as a dealer in illegal substances or perpetrator of criminal acts is obvious for those who get caught up in the so-called “justice” or penal system, a bureaucracy that serves, allegedly, society but also serves a segment of society dependent for their income on those, who violate the taxonomies or definitions of socially and customarily accepted behavior.
Build a jail and they will come.
Society uses taxonomic terms like misdemeanor and felony to refer to crimes. Violence can be emotional or physical, civil or criminal in nature, a question of fraud via the pen or robbery via the gun. Due to taxonomic errors, society has very often-defined health problems—addiction—as a criminal act. Due to the social contract, society must protect its members from aberrant individuals just as they must protect individuals from harming themselves but do we need to create more criminals by definition alone?
Recent news reports say veterans of multiple military tours in Iraq—Afghanistan are being discharged for anti-social behavior due to the effects of psychological damage incurred in combat. Typically, the military and the VA want to evade their duties and the costs of medical treatment by redefining behavior due to PTSD as criminal. Civil society, similarly, criminalizes behavior—especially due to drugs and drink.
On the local level, about 80 to 90 young men are locked up the Taos County Detention Center for having violated laws governing the use of motor vehicles or property crimes or acts of violence. What 99% of these alleged crimes have in common, generally, is chemical dependency or the excessive use of toxic substances, which reduces social inhibitions and creates circumstances ripe for so-called criminal behavior.
Questions of guilt or innocence are based on the moral imagination and reason, the ability to choose. The courts assume that the individual in the dock makes choices and understands consequences. If your ability to choose, however, is impaired by chemical alteration, your critical thinking skills are diminished and you are not a full-fledged moral being anymore than is a child. According to news reports and family members, two recent murders occurred during “party time.” Two young men died and two more young men will spend precious years behind bars.
Families, like the families of so many victims and the accused, suffer and the suffering will be passed on to younger family members even as older members are racked with guilt. When family members pass on a physical disposition to diabetes or allergies or weight-gain and obesity, society is generally compassionate. But when so-called crime creates ripples throughout a community, where friends and relatives live together in intimate intensity, the attitude is less compassionate and more judgmental toward issues of mental health. Just as the individual must take responsibility for his or her acts, so must society.
If we members of society want to help resolve issues of toxic chemicals that induce violent behavior, then we must be realistic in our analysis of social and individual problems. Society at large promotes drink and drugs through advertising, volume discounts, or via prescribed chemical antidotes for depression and perceived physical ills. Escapism and entertainment rule. Few want to confront reality–even if they can find it.
Moral imagination and reason—access to critical thinking skills–require training, education, and literacy. But social values or lifelong organizing principles have changed dramatically during the last fifty years. The emphasis on empiricism, materialism, and various forms of electronic entertainment and communication suggest social beings are living in a world of immediate gratification, sacrificing long-term goals for short-term sensory effects.
At the Taos County Jail we have created a class of social scapegoats. Our current community institutions—despite the contributions of nonprofits and enlightened individuals—emphasize incarceration and crude behavioral conditioning or slogans as antidote to drink, drugs, and materialism. Just saying “no” isn’t enough for individuals, who possess little in the way of internal or spiritual resources. We’ve got to give them more than a piss test and a mantra.
Here we, some of us, know each other. We know the families of victims and violators, the families, who have struggled with their kids and the “how”—how to prevent children from dying or following in the footsteps–not of their gang-banger buddies–but in the footsteps of their friends. Peer pressure and the street is god awful powerful. Every parent fears the day his or her son or daughter gets in a car with friends or begins hanging out with so and so.
Ultimately, a society is judged by the way it treats its animals, its children, and its most unfortunate members. For decades now the community has suffered from an epidemic of mental and physical health problems. Though any number of nonprofits and governmental programs struggle to help individuals and families, still institutions fail and individuals get lost. We must redouble our efforts in terms our own tragic awareness, while we extend our empathy–sympathy and imagination–to friends and neighbors, who struggle to raise their children in the villages and towns of Taos.