Virtue Signaling

The power of “Virtue Signaling” inside jails or prisons

Social media and the mainstream media has created a very superficial means to address grievances, incidents of concern, fear, shock and even hatred by creating an emotional outburst or display of some value of morality or ethical grounds. What is really a lazy and easy way of creating a message to provoke empathy by others is a dangerous tool to be aware of inside prisons.in society, it is often abused to an extent that it causes conflict on the streets through protesters clashing with each other.

Prisoners are known to be master manipulators and giving them another tool to play against staff is very concerning. Look at what we are dealing with here. What we supervise, manage or control are great pretenders. People who learn quickly of the lessons learned by others and because they are a variety of educated, uneducated and immature individuals, they learn quickly how to use the tools of social media to apply them to their own reasons to protest, find things to be offensive or sometimes downright resist law and institutional order. In other words, its designed to change the mindset of others around them.

What has the term come to mean? A common term or purpose of this kind of behavior is to gain approval of something that they think has a “moral value.” However, the reality is that they are more of a hypocrite with their message because, inside themselves, it is not a reality. They don’t believe it, participate in it or just don’t bother to actually get involved in it. In other words, they are gestures, just mere gestures. Gestures without any commitment. Sounds familiar doesn’t it as you can put a name to the person who does this on your cellblock or unit. Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule and find those individuals who are staunch and strong headed believers.

Don’t get me wrong – there are some who are sincere but few at the best. They may act in the name of religion, traditional charity causes, anti-violence towards women or even speak up for LGBT people. It may be in the name of charity to raise money for cancer or gun control or standing against domestic violence and now, it has grown into a deeper political arena of immigration, saving the Earth and many more. In other words, they pretend to be social warriors but inside our prisons the may become warriors of a different kind. It may benefit them to do this in front of others to make a social statement or position for power or influence but in reality, they are fake.

Virtue signaling is about getting people to come to your side for your own purpose. This is not new, but we never applied a politically correct term to the behaviors. We must recognize that its just another buzzword we need to consider meaningless but in a prison setting, it may not be harmless. It can cause tempers to flare, emotions to create chaos, and most of all unite former enemies together for a common cause. In no certain stretch of the imagination, should you consider it harmless?

It has caused riots in the past with what started as a food strike or protest, unfair discipline or many other grievances that were eventually found baseless in nature. In a matter of minutes, hours, or even days or weeks, a ‘social warrior’ stirred into an emotional stage can turn into a real warrior that wants to fight, destroy property, hold hostages or just run amuck tearing things up and assaulting staff. By no means, this is not just meaningless cliché but if taken lightly, a potentially menacing situation. Virtue signaling is more than making something or someone looks foolish – it has a significant reason to exist and although it may be hypocritical in nature, people who do this outwardly signal their intentions or purposes to incite other people into a cause.

All it does in most social circles is provoke some stares, even glares, which is what prisoners want to claim or accuse staff of disrespect. They want to stand out as the kind of person who defends truth and righteousness in a social climate that allegedly tries to suppress it. Can you see the relevance inside the joint yet? In all reality, it is a great recruitment tool for gangs, religious extremism or just unification of the environment – us versus them.

A good manipulator can project a feeling that they are right and show that others join his or her cause to let the administration or custodial staff they are formed as a group now and that they are “one of them.” In comparing these acts to so-called “virtue-signaling” gestures, it's like changing one’s avatar considering a hate-motivated tragedy, you can see more similarities than differences.

They’re outward displays of one’s [group or gang] moral or ethical values that obviously don’t lead to any substantial change. Their real function is to express that one belongs to the brave underdogs who speak up for what’s right. For some it is “what’s right” and entails care and empathy; in the eyes of others, it’s tradition and truth. They’re all virtues nonetheless and connected to the environment. It can upset the tranquility of a safe and secure prison if ignored. This message was written to build an awareness of its existence.

Young prisoners are rife with “vice signaling.” They have a game going on that is based on the morality of right and wrong. Consider this a tug of war between law and order as well as the institutional rules applied to them. The problem is that their right and wrong can differ immensely with those of others. Vice signaling is more than pranks – its sinful acts inclined to be filled with violence and total disregard to life and being exposed to these vices inside prisons, you can only imagine to what extent this problem exists.

“Virtue signaling” can be a positive tool but in the prisons, the mindset is survival and power and surrounded by the morality of strong versus the weak and cruelty and selfishness. The staff has a responsibility to recognize their simple words and deeds of righteousness and be able to determine whether they can truly be inspiring or destructive in nature - after all, words and deeds of wickedness sure can be.

So, in these times, it is most beneficial to examine motive and behaviors instead of calling someone a mere virtue signaler. As staff responsible for a safe and secure environment we ought to step back and examine what’s really going on. Are they trying to inspire others or motivate destructive or violent behaviors? Are they looking to comply or resist and are they trying to become socially accepted within a group that shares a strong belief or are they just sharing a social viewpoint that others agree with? Keep in mind the opportunity of extremism and radicalization as the root of such practices.

In any of these cases, beware of others taking advantage of new democratized platforms to share values – it has become a strong team building tool for various groups or causes. While token expressions might not directly change anything in this world, they can have an indelible impact on the minds of other prisoners and cause dissent or chaos – a designed process created by provocation and hate. If just one person is inspired, a threat could be building if the resolution is destructive or assaultive behaviors.

7 Holes in my Soul

7 Holes in my Soul

When I turned 18, I felt a vibration come over me. It wasn’t a physical change but rather, it was a deep psychological bone-shattering experience that I had never experienced before. I had always thought I was one of the fortunate ones. A lucky guy with a guardian angel on my shoulders. Little did I realize that this change that came over me would ravage my soul forever.

My heart was restless, and my soul was deeply in love with my high school sweetheart. I married out of fear of losing her and was almost instantly cursed with negative feelings and emotions. Inside my head, I knew I was a complicated man. Not only was my heart restless but it was also broken. It felt like there was a hole in my soul.

My feelings were aching, my emotions turned stone cold and my funny bone had disappeared. No sense of humor, my sarcasm ruled my daily use of words that sometimes resembled hate or disgust of the world around me. I felt that I didn’t have a choice in the matter of controlling my emotions. I felt like self-control had left me and that my destiny was now controlled by my anger inside me.

The fear was real. I knew that I would be separated from those whom I loved merely by the fact that we were at war and that all young men, poor and uneducated were prime beef for the Army. I saw my friends enlist to avoid being drafted but none were rich enough to go to college and get a deferment. It was more than fear, it was a horror show that was real and every day I lived in the shadow of death, I grew more and more towards the dark side of life. I lost all faith in love, religion and the ways to walk on the narrow path of righteousness.

My mind was racing, it could not find a place to stop and reset itself to return my head to some state of normalcy. There was a hole in my soul and I couldn’t control it. I felt like I was in a state of vertigo, spiraling out of control and sure to hit bottom any time of the day now. I fed this sensation of paranoia pills and booze. I hit the bottle harder and more often to ease the pain but to no avail, I couldn’t regain control as the fear of death and misery wouldn’t go away. In the end, my head was swarmed with spider webs and dark clouds as I kept feeding it pills and booze in a frenzy that would have killed an ordinary man who was sober.

Yes, it was true that alcohol and drugs eroded my soul to the point of no return. From the moment I was drafted into the Army, I was forced to choose between life and death. At 19, I went to war as a medic and taught how to kill and heal people. An incongruity if I ever experienced one but I did my duty without complaining and found myself wedged between a rock and a hard place much more than I want to mention. Inside my head, I refused to accept the possibility that a higher power could help me. I was doomed to die an early death.

Aware of it or not, the conscience and conscious mind kept the battle raging. No matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t heal. There were always room for more rage and pain. It wouldn’t go away. Even now, although its been years ago, it still happens and I don’t understand why as I am now an old man who has aged almost a quarter of a century.

Aware of it or not, most people suffer from a condition best described as a spiritual disease. But inside my heart I knew it was more than a disease or disorder, I knew it had grown to be a part of me forever. Although I have gotten rid of the pills and alcohol, there is still the mass presence of anxiety and depression. I may appear to be physically fit but inside I was a mess.

Seven times time in my life I experienced the side effects of this condition. Some people like to sweep their own misery under the carpet and move on with the baggage still there but deeply hidden. Seven times did I experience sorrow and the agony of defeat in trying to find total bliss and happiness. In the process, I have experienced rage, pain, and sorrow related to losing faith in myself and confidence that I was on the right path to correct this feeling.

There was a time where I would do anything to make others happy. I would collect the emotional blackmail and coerce myself into relationships that were based on trying to make things work when in fact, it was never to be. In the process, I became a workaholic, alcoholic, food junkie and a druggie. I tried everything to dull the pain but still, I would trip over my own two feet and it was just a matter of time before I would fall again and hurt myself or others.

In this case of my life, I spent more than 30 years living with a broken soul that kept the light out and with certainty beyond doubt, sealed the darkness inside of me. I was a borderline wreck. It was a scary and lonely place to be and joy and happiness escaped me at every turn of my life. Without a doubt, it was the fear, the silent desperation and the deliberate detachment from others that kept me in human chains in finding the bliss I believed I deserved. I was in fact, my own worst enemy.

I realized I created this disconnection by the emotions I harbored inside of me. It caused me to be mean-spirited, divorced from those I loved and shortened my life that could have been filled with joy rather than despondency. In doing so, I knowingly caused a ripple effect. A causation that harmed many around me and passed on stress, hate, anger, and tension with those who I loved or met. It was enough to deprive others to get to know the real me and vice versa – I lost a chance to know those who loved me.

The Fear of Death - a personal essay of vulnerabilities

The Fear of Death

It is also referred to as thanatophobia (fear of death), and is distinguished from necrophobia, which is a specific fear of death or dying persons and/or things (i.e. others who are dead or dying, not one's own death or dying). To this date, nobody in their right mind would tag me to be an obsessive-compulsive disorder person or OCD as it is commonly called. On the other hand, people who know me well can see that there have been times where I dwelled on the fears of death or experienced a death related anxiety in my life. 

Whether there is a correlation between these two disorders is anyone’s guess but I am sharing mine with you to demonstrate that death does play a significant part in my life as well as your life, whether we like to admit that or not. Death is a reality we rarely prepare for properly and without careful planning or assessments. Some have said that ‘death is the worm at the core’ of every human being using the apple as a metaphor. 

As we are born, we are literally taught to die. Either through cultural means or religious practices, we are taught to prepare for death in many ways depending on your social upbringings as well as your life experiences. These lessons taught to us come in many forms; art, literature, scriptures, etc. thus it can be said that death anxiety is really a positive experience or coping mechanism to prepare yourself for the end days. So when we are born, we are arguably preparing to die.
My life experiences include many facets of death. As a teenager, I experienced death by the unfortunate and dreadful hanging of a good friend in his dad’s garage because he was gay and couldn’t cope with the ridicule and bullying at school. An unforgettable event, it lingered with me forever. Seeing his lifeless body hanging from the rafters was an experience that I could have never prepared myself for thus it was most shocking to me. 

Drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War, I was trained to be a medic and earned my combat medic badge within months of arrival in that country. Seeing men wounded, sometimes fatally and sometimes slightly caused me to think about death even more. The longer I remained in that combat zone, the more death played a part of surviving the chaos and ordeals around me. You could say that it was the fear of death that allowed me to survive. 

Spending more than twenty-five years as a correctional employee, working positions from the basic ground floor of a correctional officer to the top echelon position as a prison administrator, death became a partner for me on a regular basis. Death inside a prison came in three venues, natural death, homicides and suicides. In my experience, death inside a prison was no anomaly and as often as it occurred, I never really got used to it. Faceless, nameless and sometimes, just a forgotten moment, it always came up at the worst moments in a flashback of the experience. 

So to reiterate my position or experience a little, the fear of death is tangible. Although it may not consume all your conscious time on this earth, it does play on your mind at times when you are reminded of the loss of a family member, friend or foe, that death is imminent and a really large or significant part of your life whether you admit that or not. The fear of death is real. Historically, cultures have recorded vast religious or social practices to address the awareness of our own mortality, either consciously or unconsciously. So we experience the form of death either in a tangible or intangible manner throughout our lives. As we grow, our knowledge about death grows. That’s a natural progression we cannot stop or interfere with regardless how hard you try. 

Does death bother me so much I suffer insomnia about the worry of dying? Not hardly but for many, the fear of death lies at the heart of many sleep disorders for someone who has experienced a life changing event e.g. heart attack, cancer, wounded in a war or in a domestic relationship. The list is endless as even normal routines can bring about the worries or fears of death. That is a normal and acceptable fact. 

Do we take extra precautions or security routines to minimize the fear of death? Not really but we do socially or physically adjust and adapt our life’s routines to avoid the heavier risks of death by changing our life styles, social events and hangouts in unfamiliar places. I am certain that the worry of death or the potential to reinforce the fear of death as a cause for mental disorders. 

On the other hand, some people dare the fear of death by doing just the opposite and expose themselves to the risks of death at a higher degree of risk or exposure. Citing daredevil stunts of heights, speed, and or challenging the elements such as altitude and water, gives them a rush of adrenaline that brings them the satisfaction sought in their lives. 

The one fear of death that bothers me the most is the separation anxiety disorder that may develop if I were to lose someone close to me. Without a doubt, the loss of my spouse would tear me apart. No doubt this connection is special to me and isn’t really about the mortality but rather the intimacy and personal relationship that person holds to me. Even without social disorders, or any other anxiety disorders, the thought of separation through the loss of a loved one will definitely drive up my fear of death, not just for myself but for her as well. This is one intrusion of death I cannot control, no matter how hard I try. 

Strangely, it is the fear of death that rules some rituals in our society that actually cause deaths rather than prevent them. It appears that some people can’t handle the obsession of death and become sufferers themselves in behavioral manifestations that can lead to aggressive obsessions fear that they may inadvertently, in an altered state of their mental awareness, take their own life or the life of a loved one. It appears that during this time, the art of self-preservation is lost and one’s demise or the death of another is certain.

In my case, the thoughts of death trigger my defense mechanisms. Tactics that include the suppression of thoughts of death and focusing on life. Death related thoughts can bring a certain degree of vulnerability to oneself and impact levels of self-esteem or other mitigated fears. This kind of self-control is vital to survival.
At this point in my life, death has not paralyzed me but rather, motivated me to be better prepared to die when the time comes. Although I have experienced many ways to avoid death, I can only dodge the inevitable for a limited amount of time as it will either greet me awake or asleep. 

My concluding comments include the fact that death is imminent and likely to happen sooner than later. Despite all the factors involved in dealing with death, there are no significant levels of anxiety or anticipated obsession levels in my train of thoughts about my death but I can’t say that about the death of others.
Specifically, my spouse’s death would devastate me to the point of unreal pain and anxiety. I suppose that that is the fear I am dealing with the most - despite no increase in fear or apparent perception of threat life as we know it to exist goes on until the end of days on our merciless earth.