Law in Contemporary Society

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A Story About Fear

-- By VanWheel - 16 Feb 2012

VanWheelFirstPaper 4 - 13 Aug 2012 - Main.EbenMoglen
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A Story About Fear

-- By VanWheel - 16 Feb 2012
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 When John Brown said that he’d acted because he sympathized with the man in bondage, because he could not complacently be free while others were in chains, I think he acknowledged an instinct we all have, whether we bury it deep or embrace it. For all our questioning of his motives in class, I admire him, because if nothing else, there is a man, as far as I know, who had the courage and insight never to split. I’m guessing that brings a peace of mind few of us will ever truly feel. I, for one, often find myself thinking that everything I’m so concerned about now—the money, the debt, the status—will mean very little to me when I’m old and on death’s door.

A friend said to me recently that she always thought it funny when people started a sentence with, “If I die,” because, honestly, where’s the “if”? We are all going to die one day, there are no “ifs” about it, and the only real question is how we are going to feel about ourselves in the moments before we do. \ No newline at end of file

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Yes, this is what I had in mind when I suggested a draft from another self-state. I'm interested, and you possibly may be too, why the part of you that criticizes splitting and sees courage as integrity is also concerned with the meaning of life at the moment of death. The woman in the car is one image of the injustice we mobilize our courage to confront, but the specific nature of the image in relation to the idea of death as the moment we give meaning to life would bear some further thought.

The goal, as I'm sure you understood, is to find a way to stand in the space between these two states, to see them both as real and enduring, important, capable parts of you, not needing to be resolved into a winner and a loser, or a right one and a wrong one, but as collaborators in the making of your life. A lawyer's life. Not the life of an office worker with a law license gathering dust on someone else's shelf.

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VanWheelFirstPaper 3 - 16 May 2012 - Main.VanWheel
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The Death of the Inner World

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A Story About Fear

 -- By VanWheel - 16 Feb 2012
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“Law School is an imagination test. Almost everybody fails. Most people who fail don’t show up for the exam.”--Moglen
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The Story

I was walking home one night when I heard screaming.

It was dark, probably later than I should have been out, but I’d never heard someone scream like that before. So I ran toward the sound, the screaming louder and louder until I rounded a corner and there, parked against the street, was a car. The interior lights were dim but illuminated well the struggling figures of a man and the woman he was trying to strangle in his passenger seat. A crowd was forming as I jogged up, and I watched, stunned, as four other men, mostly valets from nearby businesses, opened the door of the car and tried to pull the man out.

They managed, with difficulty, to drag him into the street, holding him as he lunged repeatedly toward the open car door. He was clearly intoxicated, his face red and spluttering, while the woman in the car, his wife I presumed, sobbed and shrieked curses at him. After a while, he seemed to calm down, breathing hard and nodding his head as the men spoke to him. When he seemed back in control, three of them left to return to work.

The moment they were out of sight, he shoved past the last man and dove back into the car, attacking his wife. She wailed as he hit her again and again in the face. He was yelling at her, pulling back and swinging repeatedly, pausing only to throw off the woman’s one remaining protector. The man kept trying to grab the husband’s arm, shouting at deaf ears, before he stepped back, as if realizing he couldn’t do it alone. He took off to go find help.

For a moment I simply watched.

 
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The Transformation

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I wanted to go forward, to say something, but from the back of my mind came a thought: would it be ok if I stepped in? I was in a foreign country, one whose cultural standards were different from ours, and I felt the briefest fear that any actions I could take to help her would be unacceptable.
 
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As a very small child, the world consisted only of me, my imagination, and objects and people in the singular moments I interacted with them. I didn’t care if my clothes didn’t match, or if my hair was out of place, or if my opinions would draw laughter from other people, because I didn’t care what other people thought. It didn't matter. I was always asking questions--why do the leaves fall off trees? Why can't dogs talk to us? Why can't I wear PJ's to school?--but I never asked questions I already thought I knew the answer to. What would be the point? What would I gain? I, like most very young children, lived mostly in an inner world, one that revolved around me, my wants, and my questions.
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But then I looked at her face; even from a dozen feet away I could see that she was bleeding, and she’d stopped screaming.
 
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At some point that changed. My clothes started to match; my hair was smoothed back by scrunchies and hair spray, and I hesitated to share my opinions, waiting first to measure the temperature of a room. I stopped asking questions to which I did not know the answer and began asking only the ones to which I thought I did. My inner world--the one that fosters not only the egocentricity of children, but also their curiosity, brazenness, and growth--began to crumble as the outer world came into place at the center of my attention. I could no longer imagine my own world, my focus drawn to what others thought of me and how we compared.
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I stared around at all the people on the sidewalk, dozens of people, watching silently as he beat her, and a hard ball lodged in my throat. I would later recognize it as shame.
 
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The Need to be "Right"

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It was at that moment that I ran in, screaming for him to stop.
 
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Having undergone this transformation, I found myself skeptically raising an eyebrow when we were told, on the first day of class, that the course was meant to be about the process, not about the result--that we were not meant to try to prove thinkers or ideas right or wrong, but rather see where those thinkers and ideas took us in our own thoughts. It was an intriguing concept, especially when the first semester of law school had seemed so focused on the adversarial process, on the idea of turning arguments and facts to prove the correctness of your theory over someone else's. Yet, as intriguing as the thought was, I doubted it would take root. It is too tempting to be "right," particularly in front of your peers and rivals and particularly when it means that you get to show someone else to be "wrong."
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Afterward

 
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To me, much of this need to be "right" and have others be "wrong" seems to stem from the transformation in perspective from inwardly to outwardly-looking. Once we begin to really care what other people think, people seem to stop acquiring knowledge, personality, identity for their own sakes and begin shaping and sharing these factors in terms of how other people will view them. Perhaps as very young children we actually have some subconscious desire to be extraordinary or different or unique, but as we grow older it seems to develop into a desire to appear extraordinary, different, unique, without necessarily being so. The over-achievers of society tend to do a little bit of everything--sports, clubs, politics, academics--but do very little to the best of their abilities. We mold political identities--republican, democrat, independent--that many of us are almost rabid about when pushed; yet very few could actually have objective, fact-heavy debates on all the political issues behind the philosophies. Students, particularly the best and the brightest, almost never ask questions that are born of genuine curiosity or ignorance; rather, at best we ask questions meant to lead to something else we are thinking of and at worst we ask questions we presume to already know the answer to in the hope of looking brilliant or making someone else look foolish.
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My roommates who heard the story the next day insisted that it was a story about courage. To be sure, there was a fair measure of that: the courage of the men who tried to stop him initially, the courage of the woman who fought back and survived, and even my own eventual courage in running in the middle to try to save her. But this isn’t really a story about courage; it’s a story about fear. It’s a story about the shame and pain that comes from splitting.
 
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As small children, being "right" was not particularly important because most of us didn't care whether other people shared our beliefs; we simply had them and they could change from day to day. As adults, however, being "right," in the sense that others acknowledge that we're "right," that we're intelligent, seems to be the focus of many academic careers. I get the impression that it is typically those who are the best at this skill, at appearing extraordinary and right, who tend make it to the top law schools and into the legal profession. The problem I see with this is that this mentality does not seem to be particularly compatible with developing an inner world, one that does encourage introspection, doubt, and human growth.
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In that moment before I moved to help her, when I gazed around at all the silent onlookers and realized I was one of them, I became suddenly aware of my own split, of being both the scared little girl who wouldn’t step out of line and the woman being beaten in front of a crowd, and I hated myself. I hated the part of me that cared more about whether what I was doing was acceptable than whether it was right, and I feel that no risk of injury or public condemnation could ever have been worse than having to face that part of myself in the mirror every day.
 
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Every time I think of that moment, where I considered whether a woman’s life was worth my reputation and comfort, I feel helplessly torn. On the one hand, that moment said something absolutely horrendous about me; on the other hand, my reaction to it told me that deep down there was genuine courage, if I could only hold onto it long enough to make it mean something.
 

Conclusion

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It seems to me that the most brilliant and extraordinary people in the world are those who have a highly developed inner world. Albert Einstein, for instance, clearly spent much of his time in his own head, dreaming up theories that others had not thought of, that science had not touched. He wasn't a man afraid to ask questions he didn't know the answer to, likely because he recognized that doing so was not so much a mark of stupidity as of intelligence. Even in the fictional legal community, Robinson seemed impressive to his fellow law students in many ways because he knew who he was. He clearly couldn't care much how his official superiors or society saw him, given the way he responded to others pointing out his vulgarity. It appears to be thinking apart that sets people apart, but I feel the legal world is most likely to be filled with people, including myself, who are more interested in the appearance of thought than in its actuality, whose inner worlds are in ruins because we are taught time and time again that it is more important to develop the shell that goes around it.
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When John Brown said that he’d acted because he sympathized with the man in bondage, because he could not complacently be free while others were in chains, I think he acknowledged an instinct we all have, whether we bury it deep or embrace it. For all our questioning of his motives in class, I admire him, because if nothing else, there is a man, as far as I know, who had the courage and insight never to split. I’m guessing that brings a peace of mind few of us will ever truly feel. I, for one, often find myself thinking that everything I’m so concerned about now—the money, the debt, the status—will mean very little to me when I’m old and on death’s door.
 
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This is a very clear and poignant self report from a personality state. Its way of experiencing the world is one of the ways you experience the world. But not everything that has ever happened to you is represented in its memories. You've learned to do as you say, presenting a self to the world of whose inauthenticity you are perilously near-aware. This self holds your self-blame for that condition, and—as you see—prefers to blame you for having been "taught" this way of being than to become aware of the rest of you, which would have a different way of being.

Your inner life has not been eliminated, but its creative benefits are held by other parts of your personality, which are not writing here, and which are not acknowledged by your other-directed external self.

Why don't you try to write a draft from the other perspective, and we'll see what happens?

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A friend said to me recently that she always thought it funny when people started a sentence with, “If I die,” because, honestly, where’s the “if”? We are all going to die one day, there are no “ifs” about it, and the only real question is how we are going to feel about ourselves in the moments before we do.
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VanWheelFirstPaper 2 - 21 Apr 2012 - Main.EbenMoglen
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The Death of the Inner World

-- By VanWheel - 16 Feb 2012

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 It seems to me that the most brilliant and extraordinary people in the world are those who have a highly developed inner world. Albert Einstein, for instance, clearly spent much of his time in his own head, dreaming up theories that others had not thought of, that science had not touched. He wasn't a man afraid to ask questions he didn't know the answer to, likely because he recognized that doing so was not so much a mark of stupidity as of intelligence. Even in the fictional legal community, Robinson seemed impressive to his fellow law students in many ways because he knew who he was. He clearly couldn't care much how his official superiors or society saw him, given the way he responded to others pointing out his vulgarity. It appears to be thinking apart that sets people apart, but I feel the legal world is most likely to be filled with people, including myself, who are more interested in the appearance of thought than in its actuality, whose inner worlds are in ruins because we are taught time and time again that it is more important to develop the shell that goes around it.
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:

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>
>
This is a very clear and poignant self report from a personality state. Its way of experiencing the world is one of the ways you experience the world. But not everything that has ever happened to you is represented in its memories. You've learned to do as you say, presenting a self to the world of whose inauthenticity you are perilously near-aware. This self holds your self-blame for that condition, and—as you see—prefers to blame you for having been "taught" this way of being than to become aware of the rest of you, which would have a different way of being.

Your inner life has not been eliminated, but its creative benefits are held by other parts of your personality, which are not writing here, and which are not acknowledged by your other-directed external self.

Why don't you try to write a draft from the other perspective, and we'll see what happens?

 \ No newline at end of file

VanWheelFirstPaper 1 - 16 Feb 2012 - Main.VanWheel
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META TOPICPARENT name="FirstPaper"

The Death of the Inner World

-- By VanWheel - 16 Feb 2012

“Law School is an imagination test. Almost everybody fails. Most people who fail don’t show up for the exam.”--Moglen

The Transformation

As a very small child, the world consisted only of me, my imagination, and objects and people in the singular moments I interacted with them. I didn’t care if my clothes didn’t match, or if my hair was out of place, or if my opinions would draw laughter from other people, because I didn’t care what other people thought. It didn't matter. I was always asking questions--why do the leaves fall off trees? Why can't dogs talk to us? Why can't I wear PJ's to school?--but I never asked questions I already thought I knew the answer to. What would be the point? What would I gain? I, like most very young children, lived mostly in an inner world, one that revolved around me, my wants, and my questions.

At some point that changed. My clothes started to match; my hair was smoothed back by scrunchies and hair spray, and I hesitated to share my opinions, waiting first to measure the temperature of a room. I stopped asking questions to which I did not know the answer and began asking only the ones to which I thought I did. My inner world--the one that fosters not only the egocentricity of children, but also their curiosity, brazenness, and growth--began to crumble as the outer world came into place at the center of my attention. I could no longer imagine my own world, my focus drawn to what others thought of me and how we compared.

The Need to be "Right"

Having undergone this transformation, I found myself skeptically raising an eyebrow when we were told, on the first day of class, that the course was meant to be about the process, not about the result--that we were not meant to try to prove thinkers or ideas right or wrong, but rather see where those thinkers and ideas took us in our own thoughts. It was an intriguing concept, especially when the first semester of law school had seemed so focused on the adversarial process, on the idea of turning arguments and facts to prove the correctness of your theory over someone else's. Yet, as intriguing as the thought was, I doubted it would take root. It is too tempting to be "right," particularly in front of your peers and rivals and particularly when it means that you get to show someone else to be "wrong."

To me, much of this need to be "right" and have others be "wrong" seems to stem from the transformation in perspective from inwardly to outwardly-looking. Once we begin to really care what other people think, people seem to stop acquiring knowledge, personality, identity for their own sakes and begin shaping and sharing these factors in terms of how other people will view them. Perhaps as very young children we actually have some subconscious desire to be extraordinary or different or unique, but as we grow older it seems to develop into a desire to appear extraordinary, different, unique, without necessarily being so. The over-achievers of society tend to do a little bit of everything--sports, clubs, politics, academics--but do very little to the best of their abilities. We mold political identities--republican, democrat, independent--that many of us are almost rabid about when pushed; yet very few could actually have objective, fact-heavy debates on all the political issues behind the philosophies. Students, particularly the best and the brightest, almost never ask questions that are born of genuine curiosity or ignorance; rather, at best we ask questions meant to lead to something else we are thinking of and at worst we ask questions we presume to already know the answer to in the hope of looking brilliant or making someone else look foolish.

As small children, being "right" was not particularly important because most of us didn't care whether other people shared our beliefs; we simply had them and they could change from day to day. As adults, however, being "right," in the sense that others acknowledge that we're "right," that we're intelligent, seems to be the focus of many academic careers. I get the impression that it is typically those who are the best at this skill, at appearing extraordinary and right, who tend make it to the top law schools and into the legal profession. The problem I see with this is that this mentality does not seem to be particularly compatible with developing an inner world, one that does encourage introspection, doubt, and human growth.

Conclusion

It seems to me that the most brilliant and extraordinary people in the world are those who have a highly developed inner world. Albert Einstein, for instance, clearly spent much of his time in his own head, dreaming up theories that others had not thought of, that science had not touched. He wasn't a man afraid to ask questions he didn't know the answer to, likely because he recognized that doing so was not so much a mark of stupidity as of intelligence. Even in the fictional legal community, Robinson seemed impressive to his fellow law students in many ways because he knew who he was. He clearly couldn't care much how his official superiors or society saw him, given the way he responded to others pointing out his vulgarity. It appears to be thinking apart that sets people apart, but I feel the legal world is most likely to be filled with people, including myself, who are more interested in the appearance of thought than in its actuality, whose inner worlds are in ruins because we are taught time and time again that it is more important to develop the shell that goes around it.


You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:

Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list.


Revision 5r5 - 22 Jan 2013 - 20:10:55 - IanSullivan
Revision 4r4 - 13 Aug 2012 - 13:58:59 - EbenMoglen
Revision 3r3 - 16 May 2012 - 02:35:25 - VanWheel
Revision 2r2 - 21 Apr 2012 - 22:34:16 - EbenMoglen
Revision 1r1 - 16 Feb 2012 - 10:20:34 - VanWheel
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