Most people (if not all) have some level of claustrophobia. Let’s put that in perspective.
Universe: Seemingly unlimited space. You should be comfortable here.
Galaxy: Takes us 250 billion years just to circle it once. Again, no sense of confinement.
Solar System: That trip to photograph Pluto took nine years.
Inner planets: Our closest neighbors are about 30 million miles away at a minimum.
Earth: Close to 200 million square miles of surface.
Continent: Depends; North America covers about 9.5 million square miles.
Country: Try driving from Key West to Seattle.
State: Rhode Island is the size of Rhode Island.
County: Neighboring towns are separated enough to have football rivalries.
City: Jacksonville, FL covers almost 900 square miles.
Street: Have you met the neighbors down the block?
House: Multiple rooms, some of duplicate purpose.
Room: Big enough for a bed at least.
Shower stall: You can still move around, but you’ll probably step out to dry.
When we see where we are with respect to something larger, we get a perspective about our place. Shower, dress, and leave the house to see a cloudless night sky open to infinity. Openness. The vastness of place with no knowable boundaries. No edge to be reached, no wall, no visible endpoint.
Now narrow down to something confining: A prison cell. Would you choose that? Some people do. In fact, some people repeatedly choose a cell as their primary place of existence.
As Dr. Christian Conte says in his 2015 TEDX talk to prisoners and staff of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a85YUfqSMJ4&feature=youtu.be), confinement in prison is a matter of choice by an individual, but it is a matter of societal concern that someone made the choice of self-confinement. It is also a matter of concern that across the nation about 70% of released prisoners commit another crime, making recidivism a major societal problem. Seventy percent of American prisoners apparently choose to return to a place they openly say they abhor, a place of limiting, claustrophobic confinement.
So, what if we thought of crime as a matter of choosing a place of extreme confinement? What if we learned from youth a definition that equated crime and claustrophobic confinement? What various motives drive people to shrinking the radii of their personal spaces? Why do their paths go out of and into a confinement? What can we do about changing the cycle of crime-arrest-conviction-imrisonment-release-crime-arrest-conviction-imprisonment? Obviously, at this time prison isn’t changing the attitudes of 70% of prisoners.
Applied to seemingly incorrigible prisoners in a maximum-security section of a state prison, Dr. Conte’s Yield Theory reduced violence in “the Hole” by a considerable amount in just six months. Yes, prisoners actually changed their behavior. That has to be good news. Some people who had chosen a life of confinement actually chose to expand their attitudes. If people that are considered to be the “worst” offenders can make a change even when confined to a claustrophobic place, think what might happen if parents, teachers, and neighbors applied Yield Theory in their interactions.
One of the analogs of Yield Theory is an onramp of a freeway, where drivers cooperate by yielding and merging. Psychologically, one practicing Yield Theory merges seamlessly with another already on a life path. Even if that path is headed toward crime or violence, the merger requires riding along without confrontation. It’s a subtle, persuasive technique that recognizes the commonness in humanity and the effectiveness of meeting people where they are on the road of life. A perpendicular onramp to a freeway would make a place of abrupt interruptions to the flow of traffic and increase the potential for collisions that destroy the vehicles of life.
The place where we meet each other can be a mutual path to openness and to expansive space and purpose. Most of us live our lives as travelers that go freely from one place to another in a universe that has a size of our choosing. Some, however, choose by their actions a limiting, stationary confinement. To merge with another traveler enables one to guide someone toward a place that can be less, not more, physically or mentally confining. (For more, see www.drchristianconte.com).
Universe: Seemingly unlimited space. You should be comfortable here.
Galaxy: Takes us 250 billion years just to circle it once. Again, no sense of confinement.
Solar System: That trip to photograph Pluto took nine years.
Inner planets: Our closest neighbors are about 30 million miles away at a minimum.
Earth: Close to 200 million square miles of surface.
Continent: Depends; North America covers about 9.5 million square miles.
Country: Try driving from Key West to Seattle.
State: Rhode Island is the size of Rhode Island.
County: Neighboring towns are separated enough to have football rivalries.
City: Jacksonville, FL covers almost 900 square miles.
Street: Have you met the neighbors down the block?
House: Multiple rooms, some of duplicate purpose.
Room: Big enough for a bed at least.
Shower stall: You can still move around, but you’ll probably step out to dry.
When we see where we are with respect to something larger, we get a perspective about our place. Shower, dress, and leave the house to see a cloudless night sky open to infinity. Openness. The vastness of place with no knowable boundaries. No edge to be reached, no wall, no visible endpoint.
Now narrow down to something confining: A prison cell. Would you choose that? Some people do. In fact, some people repeatedly choose a cell as their primary place of existence.
As Dr. Christian Conte says in his 2015 TEDX talk to prisoners and staff of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a85YUfqSMJ4&feature=youtu.be), confinement in prison is a matter of choice by an individual, but it is a matter of societal concern that someone made the choice of self-confinement. It is also a matter of concern that across the nation about 70% of released prisoners commit another crime, making recidivism a major societal problem. Seventy percent of American prisoners apparently choose to return to a place they openly say they abhor, a place of limiting, claustrophobic confinement.
So, what if we thought of crime as a matter of choosing a place of extreme confinement? What if we learned from youth a definition that equated crime and claustrophobic confinement? What various motives drive people to shrinking the radii of their personal spaces? Why do their paths go out of and into a confinement? What can we do about changing the cycle of crime-arrest-conviction-imrisonment-release-crime-arrest-conviction-imprisonment? Obviously, at this time prison isn’t changing the attitudes of 70% of prisoners.
Applied to seemingly incorrigible prisoners in a maximum-security section of a state prison, Dr. Conte’s Yield Theory reduced violence in “the Hole” by a considerable amount in just six months. Yes, prisoners actually changed their behavior. That has to be good news. Some people who had chosen a life of confinement actually chose to expand their attitudes. If people that are considered to be the “worst” offenders can make a change even when confined to a claustrophobic place, think what might happen if parents, teachers, and neighbors applied Yield Theory in their interactions.
One of the analogs of Yield Theory is an onramp of a freeway, where drivers cooperate by yielding and merging. Psychologically, one practicing Yield Theory merges seamlessly with another already on a life path. Even if that path is headed toward crime or violence, the merger requires riding along without confrontation. It’s a subtle, persuasive technique that recognizes the commonness in humanity and the effectiveness of meeting people where they are on the road of life. A perpendicular onramp to a freeway would make a place of abrupt interruptions to the flow of traffic and increase the potential for collisions that destroy the vehicles of life.
The place where we meet each other can be a mutual path to openness and to expansive space and purpose. Most of us live our lives as travelers that go freely from one place to another in a universe that has a size of our choosing. Some, however, choose by their actions a limiting, stationary confinement. To merge with another traveler enables one to guide someone toward a place that can be less, not more, physically or mentally confining. (For more, see www.drchristianconte.com).
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