Slaves to Architecture
When prison follows you home
Steel is a material of certainty. If anything built by it is standing today, you can be certain it will be standing tomorrow.
Human beings on the other hand, are composed of uncertain materials — materials with expiration dates, materials prone to unexpected failure. If a human being is standing today, we know nothing guarantees he will be tomorrow.
If you build a structure around him using steel, concrete, or other materials that mimic the certainty of steel, you begin defining his world. Unless you build a way for him to get out, he will never look at the structure with his uncertain body and see it as something he can get through.
This is why you define someone’s world by erecting walls around him that speak for themselves by telling a human being that everything on the other side is inaccessible to him, therefore irrelevant. The world that used to be out there now becomes a figment of his imagination.
If the structure is a prison, the prison makes its way into the person’s mind and reestablishes its borders there.
Technology exists today that allows scientists to use neuroimaging devices to examine a person’s brain in such detail that we can determine what object the person is looking at. With this knowledge, we know we could take men serving time in prison, sit them down to get their brains scanned, and reconstruct entire prisons all from witnessing the way that the world around us imprints itself on our inner biology.
Just to solidify the concept of defining a human being’s world through the use of materials more powerful than him, I’m going to give you another example…
In order to control a city, a government or a police force, etc. knows that they can’t constrict all movement within the city, since the structures within it provide many ways through it like doors, windows, and alleyways. And the city is too big to have to guard every last structure, so the controlling force establishes control by the certainty of bullets. Bullets are extremely certain materials, especially compared to human bodies.
The guns the bullets come from are very certain; the tanks the force rides in on as well. And once again, we may see the erecting of walls to define a person’s new world.
Certainty is the means by which people are controlled. Materials stronger than a human being — and the threat of the use of those materials — is how you set parameters for people.
Just acknowledge the purpose of: the Berlin wall, the US-Mexican border, Gaza strip, the fences surrounding Area 51, the gates around a nuclear reactor, such concepts as the gates of heaven and Hell, a baby’s crib, a dog’s cage.
Envision these things in your mind and consider their symbolism: handcuffs, an AK-47, a SWAT team in riot gear, razor wire, an F16 fighter jet, a nuclear bomb. The symbolic power of these things is so strong their power makes itself known in our minds so that not even one bullet has to be fired in order for the occupying force’s statement to be made. The guns could be empty for all the people know and they would still perceive the message sent, because guns speak the language of symbolism.
If you find yourself in prison, you will find your mind under a barrage of statement-making symbolism.
Besides the point about the impression of the impenetrable structure on your mind, continual messages will be made to you through many different manners.
The sound of combat boots announcing their presence to you every fifteen minutes on the dot sends the message of a force on the other side of your cell door that does not miss a beat.
The aggressive, dominating attitude of the officers, even when you are compliant and obedient, tells you to stay that way, because if you decide to get combative, you will be met with an attitude that is always more combative that you. This sets the parameters for your behavior by establishing in your mind a certainty of struggle for you if you misbehave.
Random cell searches and raids are meant to remind you that no matter how many years you spend there, the place is not your home. You will never be the one in charge.
The randomized element of cell and body searches intend to put you on permanent guard because you never know when you can be caught if you slip up.
Write-ups resulting in sanctioned punishments for accidentally hurting yourself send the message of your current existence as property of the state, meaning they expect you, a fallible human being of uncertainty, to maintain the functioning of a certain assembly line machine.
Intentionally hurting yourself is met with punishment to emphasize this also, as well as that you are not allowed to seek a way out of your circumstances.
But there will be a way out of your circumstances, because one day you will be released out into the world again.
However, so many years of such efficient methodology imprinting itself on your mind causes an effect that doesn’t just let go when you exit the compound. Such extreme conditioning is tenacious.
All the exploitation of your neurological processes by the workings of the system — and the convict culture you had to adapt to enforced by its own power tactics — will leave with you when you go.
You will take your learned behaviors with you.
And so you must recognize that invisible structures have been hardwired into your brain. These structures will control you like a puppet if you let them.
There are many ways that control affects human actions, as we saw, but the last one we will be talking about is the building of architecture within your mind that serves as strongholds for behaviors that will not benefit you in the free world.
They will lead to your downfall.
Obedience is one thing, but learning to accept your current place in life (as an ex-prisoner years behind everyone else), feeling like other people control you, feeling constantly watched, feeling like you have nothing to lose because you don’t own anything including yourself, feeling as though what oppresses you is all-powerful, possessing a blurry concept of what healthy human interaction is, possessing no concept of the gratification of living a sober, responsible life — none of these things will help you out there in the world. Ever.
This is part of why the symbolism of a revolving door is so powerful when one thinks about prison. Because even though many of the control tactics are used to dissuade the behavior of those set on criminal ways, they end up disabling those who set out on trying to create something better for themselves when they get out. And so despite genuine longings to escape the cycle of prison, most find themselves back in again eventually.
Such sayings as, “They’ll leave the light on for you,” and, “It’s a gated community waiting for your return from vacation,” emphasize that your likelihood to return is so high – your return trip is so expected they make jokes about it.
All sorts of reasons will be given for why a person returns, and there are many reasons, but I’m going to tell you one of the main ones people rarely talk about…..
It is your enslavement to subconscious processes instilled in you through the nature of incarceration.
You must recreate yourself in the free world if you want to be a long-term member of it.
A transformation must occur in order for you to shake off the psychological shackles. You have to recognize all the not-so-obvious ways in which your prison experience cripples you and flip that around.
You have to know yourself by seeing the future of the person you are becoming and focus on what is making him into that thing.
Know that you can be one-hundred percent in control of you if you accept that no one else can control you unless you choose to let them. You have to pave your own path by getting off the ones that have been paved for you.
The habits you have adopted that will eventually destroy you, need to be replaced by habits that only lift you up, no matter how hard it is to replace them.
Stop calling yourself a convict.
Stop calling yourself a target.
Because if you do, you have an entirely different problem on your hands.
To be truly emancipated from the prison that hides itself in your head and follows you home, you have to tear it down with the power of your thoughts.
Nothing in this world is truly certain in regards to your success, except that you can live a fulfilling life as a free man if you take control of your mind, learn to love freedom, and stand tall in wake of this new life you can now see for yourself.
