How I love

Life Strategies, Writings

When I was asked by someone I care very deeply about possibly moving on to find someone who can live their lifestyle more than I can, (Let’s be honest even its current state RSD limits me in a few ways. Long term my treatment isn’t a cure, it’s a repair to a scarred wound that the right movement will rip it back open. So I know life with me long term is not an easy challenge to face.) I could have had a hard question to answer.

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But in thinking of how I feel about him, about our situation, about his opportunity for happiness. This is all I could say.

I love you. I love my son’s dad. I love several of my ex’s. Love for me is not a matter of ownership. It’s a matter of standing by someone regardless of if they fall in love with someone else. Because real love doesn’t die, just changes into respect for that someone else’s happiness.

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I meant it. Love, life, it’s all gone in a moment if something goes horribly wrong. You can’t force someone to love you. Can’t force them to stay. Nor SHOULD YOU!

It’s like Mommy Fortuna and her home made shop of horrors. (Yes, I really referenced it.) You can trap an immortal, but once it gets lose, it will never forget. And if you try to run, you’ll attract its attention… And wrath.

Don’t force a creature you deem beautiful, to be what you see it to be. That’s why you noticed it in the first place. It was different and beautiful. If it’s love, it will come back. And if not, then you loved it enough to let it be what you loved.

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Feeling Amazing

Life Strategies, Updates, Writings

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Being Amazing

Feeling Amazing
Feeling Amazing

Sometimes the simplest things can bring the greatest joys in life. Doing something for others has always been so rewarding for me. Not because I get some sort of benefit, like with being staff at Quakecon, but because SEEING something amazing happen, for others. Seeing someone gain great memories that they can share with their families, their friends. That is such a life long gift, life long pay back that I did something to make their lives better. THAT helps make me feel amazing.

How Today was Amazing

With that in mind, I did a case study interview tonight, clarifying I know I’m exceptionally lucky. Knowing others who have had it as long as I have, have already been driven to suicide. Knowing I’m still working 5 times longer than most who have it. And it was amazing.

I hope that with my words, with my knowledge the other medical students in her class will learn something so vital for the future pain siblings.

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Political/Social Rant

Life Strategies, Writings

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Flags of Memorial Court

Ranting so this is your warning and chance to ignore me if you don’t see what I’m talking about:

I have come to realize that we live in a country that now cares more about what color you are, what language you speak, and what your faith is to decide your value as a human being.

But I rarely hear anyone calling out to people with these tirades who are calling for seperation to say to STOP AND THINK. Not because it’s the wise thing to do (stop and think) but because UNITED WE, STAND DIVIDED WE FALL! Stop attacking each other, stop being suspicious of each other, stop blaming each other for petty stuff that being an adult will allow you to GROW PAST IT…

Or we will not see the enemy at our doorsteps and we won’t see it until they have already destroyed us from within… Maybe they already are here.

So start standing with your brothers and sisters. Start treating each other as equals. Start excepting people screw up and you need to just live life without them. But don’t fight them, don’t shoot each other, don’t take the law in your own hands.

Stop letting them divide and conquer. The only way our country can stand this test of time, is to not let petty things erode us at the core of who we are.

End of Rant

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Credit – A Curse of all Young Adults

Life Strategies, Writings

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It is possible to overcome credit challenges

When I was little, credit cards were still plastic cards passed over by a carbon copy machine for submittals that took weeks at a time to be processed. Almost as long as writing a check for processing, versus the near instant ramifications of today.

Why I know what I do about credit:

Credit cards can be hard
Credit cards can be hard

It took me years of research and trial and error to not only clean-up 10 days’ worth ($40,000) of medical bills but to final make headway towards a score that would allow me to buy a house.

If you happen to fall on this post, may these tips help you as much as they have me.

  1. Fico score is a mixture of three credit scores and your consistent bills such as your insurance payments
    1. Experian
    2. Equifax
    3. Transunion
  2. You can annually get a copy of all of your credit scores for free.
  3. Identity theft sucks and the process to request a change a social security number involves so many steps it’s wiser to learn how to protect yourself then to gamble someone getting a hold of it.
    1. Shred all offers for pre-approved credit cards. Not something leaving whole in the garbage can that I’d recommend.
    2. Pay attention to your statements and transactions for signs of hijacked information. Some credit card companies will notify you via SMS of any transaction over an amount you set. I recommended $20 it’s not high enough that a quick snack will set it off, but anything more than one tank of gas will flag.
    3. Understand you need to sign your credit card (see id is not legally binding and can null and void your fraud coverage) to ensure you meet liability requirements of a credit card company
    4. Slow credit machines/machines unable to print receipts could be a sign of an infected machine. So if there’s a posted note or the guy before you had problems, be vigilant of your transactions fire a while.

THIS is a critical reason using credit cards over debit is vital. Most credit card companies have fraud detection. With debit cards, once the money is out if your account, recovery is near impossible and if successful takes a while. Don’t use debit unless you have to!

Behaviors that can help make a difference:

  1. For years I’ve tracked my bills on mint.com to ensure I wasn’t behind. But this is only a fraction of the factors involved to create your credit score. A large fraction but a fraction of the formula, none the less.
  2. And let’s face it there is general crap that happens to everyone, divorce, medical, all kinds of this. But there are web sites and service providers that can help you overcome these events and the damage they do to your credit. In October of 2014 I was directed to Quizzle.com to pursue more ideas of how to deal with my issues with getting a mortgage/refinancing (doing a rent to own situation). And it was there that I found creditrepair.com could be employed to contact my creditors on my behalf and address inconsistencies and errors on my credit record. (If you do decide to use this company and they ask who referred you, please give them my name, Flora DeKock. They had a referral program when I started that gave discounts for those who you refer, but I haven’t seen anything lately. If not ok, but if so, that would be kind you.)
  3. Now for example, in 6 months, this company has gotten 37% of the negative items that were apparently significantly weighing down my score, removed. The services aren’t cheap, as enrollment for their services is ~$90 a month. And to ensure you get any form of results, you need to plan for at least 2 months of enrollment as legally businesses have a 45 day window to respond. From the beginning, my rule has been when I stop getting at least 1 removal two months in a row, then I’ll terminate services. That has yet to happen. So I’m about to pay for another month.
  4. Pay attention to website’s you’re doing purchases/tracking money on. Make sure the web address starts with https://, as the “S” means secured. This encrypts the information you’re providing, minimizing the success of hackers stealing your identity/payment information. Without that “S”, almost any 14 year old could between you and the website and get all your information.

Can it really make that much of a difference?

As a side effect, since I’m constantly watching my accounts and paying bills on time, my scores have gone up 10-50 points dependent on the credit bureau. For someone who’s been fighting an uphill battle, this was the reading the mountain top and now things are progressing and ferrying better monthly.

Another huge issue I had to overcome I was always under the wrong impression, as I was told that paying off your credit card is not something credit card companies like. But on the contrary, they love it. Two years ago when I learned this, I paid off ALL my credit cards starting with the highest interest rate first to maximize the money usage. (Higher interest rates mean each month any balance left will be exponentially greater the higher the balance.) Since then, my one credit card with Merrick bank had it’s available balance went from 750 to nearly 4 times that just by paying as much as I can, every month.

How did I do this?

  1. By moving every bill possible to my credit cards. Because with the fact I’m already allotting that money from my budget to pay them, and stagnant credit cards do NOTHING to help your credit, I combined the two. Pay bills with the credit card, and then pay the cards off. It’s a constant winning formula.
    It is possible to overcome credit challenges
    It is possible to overcome credit challenges
    1. Lastly, some providers like Capital one offer daily balances or prompts when you exceed a certain balance you set. Now one of the factors that hurts/helps your credit is exceeding 30% of the funds available to you. So a card with a $300 available should never go over $100. And trust me that I know it is not easy to pay bills with that little amount of money, but to me it’s worth making it happen. So if this option is available set it up to notify you at a point BEFORE you get to the 30% mark so you can make payments. Credit bureaus check your records more than once a month.

    And, to ensure your credit card is always reflecting the lowest balance, don’t use any credit card for 10 days AFTER the due date. Ideally, having two cards, due approximately 15 days apart for a sure will allow you to juggle payments and optimize how your credit record looks.

There are probably more things I’m not thinking about at the moment, but these are the key things I’ve learned that come time mind right now.

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Busy bee

Updates, Writings

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Been working in so many projects I haven’t taken much time for this site. But I’m starting to catch a hold of things and am scheduling time to do this as well.

Projects currently on going:
Rcdom.org
Share & Make Aware
Classic performance
My InterX therapy (takes 1.5-2 hours a day.)
My new 40 hour a week IT job
My 30-4 hour a week IT job (setting up lifeline systems)
My 2-10 hour a week sales rep job (for HP)

So one could argue I’m over doing it. But I LOVE working. I’m never bored this way.

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Time Management is Productivity

Life Strategies, Writings

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Naanad
productivity, Google, calendar, time, management
Google Calendar increases my productivity and provides better time management just by helping me organize my days and sleep schedules

I’m a self diagnosed workaholic, so time management and productivity are vital for me. My workaholic attitude comes from years of watching people around me dump themselves into their work, be it helping family after work and on the weekends, or having multiple jobs. It just seems like a natural behavior to get ahead in life.

But I’ve found in having more than one job, one must have the ability to manipulate your time effectively so you can balance home life, bill paying, maintenance of that place you see rarely, feeding and spending time with your family/pets, and getting those hours in without costing yourself sleep and health.

How to Manage Time:

So to do that, I use Google calendars. And I have to stress that I use multiple calendars.  I layer them to give me the ability to do time management in blocks based on what I am doing and what type of work it is.

As my calendar display shows above, I have calendars for just about everything, such as housework (Cleaning Schedule), devoting one day a month/week to tasks/high traffic rooms that need tender care. When using it for example, I marked the every other weekend that my son is home, those Saturday’s are the days all the bed sheets get washed. (Yes I make my teenage son help with the laundry, I’m a mean mom.) Because it’s a routine day that fits the needs of what can be done to share the load, no pun intended, making the schedule more balanced and the work load easier to manage.

Then there’s the “Bill Schedule”. This lists the amount, the name, and if it’s an auto withdrawing item, a multiple day time window of the days preceding when it can no longer be canceled/changed for that months payment. That way I know when it is going to come out ahead of time and can visually plan out when my pay checks are coming in versus what is going out. (Another reason I like Google calendars is the color coding options within the individual calendars is also a nice feature for seeing “red” and “green”.)

Then there is the individual work calendars, where each company gets their own. These are either propagated by their RSS feed of my scheduled tasks, or by my manual addition if the company does not provide that type of service (such as my full-time third shift hours). Having these turned on and displaying overlaps provides me better time management and displays for me when I might have conflicts and allows me to never over book myself and start pushing into other vital things.

Time with friends and primary calendar use:

Which brings me to the most important thing of all, my social and sleep schedules. These stay on the primary calendar as a “Busy” items at all times along with any friend hang outs, doctors appointments, and day-to-day one time activities. And yes, I did just suggest scheduling sleep on your calendar, because lets face it, you can’t have productivity without sleep and a reason to be working so much, or eventually you WILL GET SICK!

Now, as that I am a mom but work third shift during the week (Sun through Thursday) I have opted to flip to first on the weekends so when my son is home at least one day I get to spend with him. People think I’m crazy, but I’ve been perfecting this art since 2005.

For those who might not know, I work third shift volunteer at a convention but for years I would need to be back to first in 36 hours after it was over for work when we got home. What I learned is when flipping between a first and third sleep schedule, always give yourself more sleep rather than less.

So on weekends when my son is home, Friday afternoon I take a good nap of about 3-4 hours, get up and then drive to pick him up. I spend Friday evening with him and then sleep Friday night. Saturday is a first shift day and then again Saturday night I sleep. On Sunday I take a 4-6 hour nap before work in the afternoon and I’m ready to go 10:30 pm back on third shift.

This process gives me the time and ability that when I want to schedule something, I turn my calendars all on and there you go, conflicts reflect, I can shift some items around for better time management. And then as you need, you can make sure you get it all done, but remember the most important thing, more sleep is better than less.

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Counting the Days

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It is never easy watching a parent die. And even more difficult watching them suffer a slow and painful death that could take their life tomorrow or take them in another 40 years. And what can make it even worse, knowing that you will likely achieve that same level of agony at some point before you die, because you too have that same medical condition. But hopefully you will know you can choose your death, even if you can’t choose the manner you are delivered to it.

I remember going with my mother to the first pain specialist in 2001. “You have Parkinson’s,” the doctor said. Parkinson’s explained her stuttering and shaking, but it didn’t explain the random pain and the doctor wasn’t sure either. He handed her a prescription for Neurontin 5 mg to be taken once daily. “We’ll see if this helps with it and address it further if this doesn’t resolve the symptoms.”

It was four years, three doctors, one new diagnosis, and many  more medications added later before the pain specialists managing my mother had finally decided that the Neurontin was not the appropriate drug for her medical conditions. But at this point, there was one problem. My mother had been on it so long and was increased so many times that her dosage now sat at 800mg daily.

The doctor who had recently taken over her care stared appalled at her. He was concerned that the previous doctors allowed her to remain on this medication for so long without trying a different one despite the fact it obviously was not effective. He requested she try to use a half dosage of Neurontin and supplement with a potentially more effective new medication. She tried. But after 14 hours the agony from her lack of Neurontin and the side effects from the new medication nearly drove her to suicide. She pleaded I call the doctors because her body hurt so bad from the pain that she feared she would not be coherent enough to express her needs to the staff. I did so and they promptly stopped trying to alter her medicine regiments. It has since become a “treat the pain and sedate the soul” until the time comes. My mother lives out of a little box filled with pain pills and antidepressants to get day in and day out.

Holidays, she will visit the family for maybe an hour and then she is spent, emotionally and physically. She fears the burden of her presence on the family will bring others down. So she returns to her small apartment where she keeps her gun and her medications to keep her from using it. I’ve watched my mother go through tests, experimental procedures, and excruciating pain for the last 8 years. She has given up. And now I have it.

The biggest differences between her and I. She was improperly treated by doctor after doctor; we knew the proper precautions to avoid triggering mine or at least advancing it. She was one of the first people to really be treated with many of the experiments’ now known to make the condition worse; I have had a few years to have results of the tests be published to research online. And lastly, my mother fears being a burden on her family and would sooner be dead to us now while she still lives than feel she is causing us despair seeing her deteriorate. I don’t care if my family feels that way, because those of my family and friends who really care will be there as I will always be there for them. Even if I can’t physically do what I once could have.

I know my mother is going to die. And it might seem odd or maybe uncaring, but I hope it’s soon. The doctors are giving her so many pills, that my mother is barely a human anymore. I can count one of three things each time I try to call my mother; she’ll be pushing herself too hard because the pains subsided for a few hours, she will be exhausted from the pain from fighting the atrophy of her legs trying to use them, or nearly dead from taking a medication at the wrong time one of these times. I just hope that when she goes, it’s not because of the pain and because of the fact her body was done. I count each day as one more my son has gotten to have with her and one more he will have with me.

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There’s Always a Time to Die, Rarely Time to Live

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“I’m dying!?!  Wait, is he sure its brain cancer?  Is there anything else it could be?  I need to see for myself.  OK, time to get on WebMD.  What symptoms should I have?  What symptoms am I displaying?  Heck is there even enough symptoms to be sure I have it and not something else?”  These are all things that I need the answers to before I can count on the doctor telling me anything viably true.  I’m not unfamiliar with the capabilities of doctors making misdiagnoses.  “OK, let’s see, if I have fewer than 50% of the symptoms, it’s time to visit a second opinion.  Heck, even if I only have 50%, I’m going anyway.  Anymore than that; I’ve got to think.”

After spending the rest of the afternoon reading, understanding the causes, the treatments, and the likely side effects of treatment or no treatment, I decide on comfort care.  I’ve never liked pain, at least not inflicted by outside forces.  I have always had an amazing pain tolerance to my own bodies pain, just not to needles or treatments delivered by doctors unless I’m put under.  The treatments the doctors are offering are going to just be too much for me.  I mean a chance for survival is a nice thought.  But even if I recovered from this, the pain I would go through would likely still leave me debilitated because of the RSD.  Not to mention what it would put my children through, my loved ones.  I just don’t feel that the chance of recovery from this outweighs what I’m likely going to have to relive daily if the cancer doesn’t get me.

I spend the next few hours thinking, “How am I going to tell Joe?”  I get to thinking of how he has dealt with others deaths.  At first he did so well, and the depths to which he feels the sorrow of their being gone.  Heck, we have spent hours we discussing death, and what happens, and even my own death.  I choose to go somewhere special, somewhere we some great times and give him a way to try and enjoy this.  When I was pregnant I used to go to the park where his dad takes him now regularly in his home town, but unfortunately I can’t handle the drive anymore because of the pain.  So I decide to go to the park here in Cedar Falls on Franklin.  He loved the one just north of Main and First Streets, but the floods of 2008 really did it in.  For Joe’s sake, I ask his dad to come down to help Joe through this with me, because with me gone, Joe is going to depend on him a lot more now.

I break it to Joe gently asking him if he remembers swinging with me and I tell him about what I did that fall before he was born.  I talk about how we all are born and remind him that we all die.  That is when I let him know that the doctors feel that I am going to be leaving him soon and that I want to spend extra time with him doing things he enjoys, like when I went swinging with him all those years go before he was even born.  Dave’s trying to soak it in.  He has known that with my RSD so much has happened to stop my ability from doing things, but it really hasn’t him that soon Joe will be in his care for the rest of his adolescent and teen life.  My being able to be alive was the last thing he thought RSD would stop me from doing.

I express to Joe that as I get sicker, dependant on how his dad feels, any schooling he needs to do might be best done at his dads.  I want to see him every waking hour I can but he knows that we all have to make our mark in history and life, and it’s much easier to do that if we are educated.  But I make it very clear that if he wants to stay with me, he must promise me to do his homework and not try to take care of me all the time because there will be people to help with that.

I also take this time to explain that my body won’t always look like I do now.  I will get tired more often, my skin’s color will most likely change, and I will still hurt, maybe even more so.  But no matter what I am still myself inside, even if my body limits me.

Many times Joe and I have discussed that life only ends when we let it, and that as long as he loves me, then I will live forever.  In the past, I have known some very vivacious elderly and some very dead youth.  Our family and our friends keep us alive as long as they remember what we taught them and gave them throughout the time they spend with us.  It would be now that I would finally become more honest about what I believe, because what do I have to worry about, someone killing me for being too outspoken?

Personally, what little faith I have has led me on a path to learn about belief and religions in general, to try and find answers according to whatever omnipotent being there might be and to live life that way.  One of those things I have come to believe that the way we are, we act, we think is bound to the soul/spirit.  And one of my greatest fears is of being trapped, my spirit bound to my body in which I could no longer do the one thing I live for.  I desire to bring a genuine smile to someone’s face every day.  Being in a place where I could not interact with others; that would be worse than any torture hell could devise.

After telling Joe, I break the news to my father and mother; they try handle it as best they can, but I can tell it hurts them deeply, especially my mother.  I let them choose to break news to the rest my family, I let my brother and close friends know.  It is these people whom have been there through the rough times, standing by me through the pain of the RSD, that I owe them the information in person.  So I ask them to come over for dinner to discuss the philosophy of life for an opening break it to them.  For those at a distance, I attempt to at least do it over the phone so I could comfort them in some small way.

Time moves along and I start to become weary of life, the pain would steepen, amplified by the RSD.  At points I feel life is worth living and again consider suicide again or even assisted suicide.  As I have so many times before, considered them both for present and future means, I remember that even if we don’t enjoy my life, we are going to die, so why rush fate.  Even now I still believe everything has a reason it happens, even if it doesn’t make any sense now, those events have a place in history, unknown to future generations or not.

I try to keep a diary from the day of diagnosis till my death of the love, the joys, the pains, and the tears.  I want my family to know the depths I love them and this book gives that to them.  I have already “died” once, the second time around isn’t so scary.

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The Philosophy of Others

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Now I know Simone said that she was a student of Sartre’s philosophy, but I think she was in fact his mentor, and he was the student who only half listened to the teachings. Simone not only produced the initial work that Sartre then expanded on for his Being and Nothingness, but also he used many examples from her book to emphasize his perspective. Often times Sartre did no expanding his arguments beyond that particular example.

Her writings in Ethics of Ambiguity definitely highlight the depths of her differences from Sartre while carefully hiding her thoughts in obscure contrasts and word choices. In uses of the words tragic, joy, and nature she highlights things that would otherwise be passed over by others as typical adjectives and words in common sentences.

How do these words accentuate her concepts any differently than if another were to write the same words. Well, being that “nature” is part of the in-itself it really can not be a stand alone being so there for bringing it into the foreground to Sartre would be giving up your own freedom and be giving it to “nature.” Also joy is an emotion which Sartre seems to have a large problem with. Tragic implies fate, which for Sartre would be detrimental to his concepts in Being and Nothingness which depend on freedom from everything.

These concepts not only does she use in her text but she also is very passionate about her discussions on them. She argues that ethics and actions on the individual level are still conscious regardless of the aspect of God being in place or not.  She also discusses the paradoxical concept that once man considers himself free, he gives up the capability to wish.

Simone also discusses the concept of human spontaneity and the fact that despite it’s capability of being free, normally there is an intended direction that that being is striving for. That this intention to be free still hinders our freedom in the fact that any project we take up limits us on what projects we might have else taken up in its stead.

Sartre defines being as taking up projects and taking up projects to make yourself free despite any situation should in turn allow you to be free when that project is completed. But if this were the case, the next project taken up could define our being and again cause a lack of freedom.

Simone also argues disclosure is the path to finding freedom not simply defining what the obstacle is not. To list everything that something is not to determine its being just creates it, but does not give it the status of for-itself. You have to disclose it to the world to give it its being.

Sartre had a hard time arguing much of his concepts between the differences between the for-itself and the in-itself due to the conflict he perceived in having more than one for-itself in existence. He did not argue there was not the capability of being more than one, but he asserts that in order for two entities to be in one room, one must give way to being an in-itself for the for-itself to emerge.

This is also a topic that Simone discusses in Ethics of Ambiguity that expresses a conflict with Sartre’s book. She discusses fairly frankly in the fact that in order to become an in-itself the person who opts to do so, does willingly, and that it does not require shame to occur. This is a concept that Sartre depended on in his arguments to define the concept of for-itself and in-itself. To choose to give up your self at your own will, is a freedom and that in acting the right to do so is one of several things that not only did Sartre not discuss, but Simone seems to have a conflict with him not doing so.

Simone also touches on topics that Sartre does not that are very commonly seen themes in her book She Came to Stay. She points out the personalities and interactions with people and the 5 general stages of being and how they inter-relate. Subhuman, serious, nihilist, adventurer, and the passionate, express different aspects of being that Sartre vaguely touched upon.

Passionate is very closely related to the masochistic concept in the aspects of how they relate to each other, but Sartre leaves it as masochistic and sadistic as it’s opposite. He doesn’t discuss the concept that there is a concept of thought that can lead to or it can become after it has been satiated, which Simone calls the “serious” person.

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Torturing the Torturer  

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Victims and those who commit the crimes against them are directly related. You cannot have one without the other and are dependant on each other to be. Sartre’s discussion on the concepts of freedom, oppression, and human nature will help explain and supplement much of this concept, but the tortured and torturer will give them a new light.

Anyone who has ever been tortured would argue that the gruesome acts done to them restrained them that would not allow them to be free. The physical state of being is definitely potentially a state of freedom that might have been subdued, but Sartre would argue that every being has the capability to recognize their freedom in all situations. “Therefore this suffering can not be in itself a motive for his acts. Quite the contrary, it is after he has formed the project of changing the situation that it will appear intolerable to him.” (B&N pg 562) This freedom is always present regardless of your physical state of being. The torturer can not invade the mind of the tortured unless the tortured chooses. Separation of the mind from the body is something that Sartre utilizes in justification that freedom is something that each person must possess in order to retain the for-itself.

Those who have been tortured would also disagree that they created the torturer. This perspective can definitely be understood as they had no direct relationship with the person. On the contrary, Sartre would argue this creation of the torturer occurs long before and escalates up to the point that the torture occurs. “Exploitation makes the exploiter dependent on the exploited… this dependence is at the heart of racism.” (Victory pg 75) Without some sort of conflict between the two to initiate the situation, neither the torturer nor the tortured could become who they do.

This leads us to the how the torturer becomes this vile creation. It is often said by the torturers that they do not know why they did what they did. Often times the torturers are declared by those who know them as acting completely out of their normal range of self when these incidents occur. But this is not to say they did not do these acts or to excuse their actions. This Sartre would explain as being part of an attempt to exert freedom. “The perpetrators… would like to convince themselves and their victims of their total dominance: at times they are super-humans who have people at their mercy, and at times they are strict and strong men who have been give in the task of taming the most obscene, the most ferocious, the most cowardly of animals: the human animal.” (Victory pg 67) The mind set of what occurs with those who are acting as torturers is that they are compelled to do such violent acts out of doing what is best for those whom the tortured are a threat to.

Torturers are often victims of older torture against themselves that these events now offer an outlet to exert their freedom; or offers a feeling that allows them a chance to regain their lost freedom and  they make a project to do so. “The sadist discovers that it was that freedom which he wished to enslave, and realizes the futility of his efforts.”(B & N pg 527)  This freedom is sought after and is the object which everyone desires to regain when they loose it. In the end the torturer feels no satisfaction in the torture because he realizes he can not enslave someone else’s freedom in order to regain his own.

This is not to say the tortured themselves are the threat but the class of people they are a member of, be it religious, racial or social standing based. Those who have been tortured often feel that the victimization has unjustly occurred. These events are not disputed as that the topic of torture is wrong but the events that lead up to the situation that occurred were just as immoral.

The two suffer torment together, be it the physical gruesome that the tortured often goes through or the mental anguish of the acts being done to someone by the hands of the torturer. The torturer has been convinced in his mind that there are secrets in this person and there sole objective has become to save others by extracting these secrets. “Useless violence: whether the victim talks or dies beneath the blows, the vast secret is elsewhere, always elsewhere, out of reach.” (Victory pg 73) The violence done by the torturer and taken by the tortured is futile, but at the time seems needed by the torturer based on the violence around them.

Opponents of the incidents of the torture that has occurred might argue that something has to be done and that those who did such things should be punished harshly. But those who find themselves in the position as torturers are often in a situation they are not prepared for. They have become members of a troop they did not enlist for and often really do not want to be a part of. “We would be fortunate if these crimes were acts of a handful of violent individuals: in truth, torture creates torturers… soldiers did not join an elite corps in order to torture the defeated enemy.” (Victory pg 70)

The events that occur between a tortured and the torturer are unpleasant for all involved, but Sartre sums it up well. “What is the use of troubling the conscience of the torturers? If one of them faltered, his superiors would replace him: there are plenty more where they came from.” (Victory 77) So despite the fact you always have you freedom, if it is used to extract a morality of those who are around you, you can not guarantee your project will be successful.
Works Cited

 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. New York: Washington Square Press, 1956.

—. “A Victory.” Colonialism and Neocolonialism. 2001: 65-77.

 

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