How to Adapt to Prison
medium.com
medium.com
This is very problematic, since many of us also know how unjust the US justice system is, especially with the drug war and all, and without public awareness the strikes will accomplish a lot less than they ought to.
So if it's not already in your news feeds, google "prison strike" or just start with the Intercept piece.
[0]https://theintercept.com/2016/09/16/the-largest-prison-strik...
I feel so sorry for anyone who goes into prison who does not understand this.
But I was obsessed about the possibility for a while, and read a lot of books. The one that made the biggest impression on me was _The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison_. In that book, a lifer named Carl Bowles describes why he doesn't have to worry very much, despite being small (like me). Paraphrasing, it was because he never let there be any doubt in anyone's mind that if they tried to hurt him, he'd respond very violently.
That book described in many different ways the importance of willingness to fight in prison. People due for release in a few months would fight and get time added to their sentences for fear of what would happen if they didn't fight.
After about 30 days in, he was on the phone when a guy come up to him and started poking him in the back, "Come on man, get off the phone." And started to get more aggressive, "Fuck you, fucker, get off the fucking phone", tapping him more insistently, spitting on him, etc. He turned around and realized about 30 people were watching the interaction.
He calmly said, "Don't ever fucking touch me while I'm on the phone" and then proceeded to crack open the guy's head with the phone receiver and break his jaw with it. Got some time added to his sentence, but no one ever fucked with him from that day forward.
He said that he regrets greatly that he had to hurt the guy so bad, but he is 100% convinced that if he let such behavior pass without violent retaliation, his life would have been made a living hell from that day on.
His advice, paraphrased, "No matter what you do there will be a moment where you have to show weakness or strength. If you show weakness, you will be tagged as weak and nothing you do from then out will change that. It will be a terrible moment, but if you show overwhelming force and violence in that moment, the rest of your days will be able to be peaceful."
Prison is terrifying (and unneccesary).
Article could have said something about how to avoid needless fights (prob in the book I assume). For example, being in the yard and some guy is looking to start a fight. "What are you looking at?" of course, the wrong answer is "Nothing" as the reply will be "So I'm nothing goof?". The right answer is "Sun in my eyes, no disrespect". You both walk away as respect is maintained and dude trying to bait you into a fight figures out you aren't an easy mark and goes to harass somebody else.
There is also a saying "Do your own time not somebody elses". This means somebody approaches you and says "Hey, do you know what <insert name> said about you?". This guy is trying to get you to fight somebody for him. Your answer can only be "Let him say that to my face" and leave it at that. In general you never talk about other inmates when they are not around, part of the whole mind your own business mantra of prison.
Never go to the TV area if one exists. Fights always happen here over who gets to watch what, and often set ups happen where one group of inmates will be attacked by a rival group and you don't want to be caught in the middle while it all kicks off.
Finally, do not complain about the food or anything else out loud, or ever tell anybody when you are getting released. Guys who brag how they only have a few months left or are getting out the next week will have some guy who's doing decades or life immediately smash them because they don't want to be reminded of how much time they have. There will also be guys who simply want to mess with your release date and try to cause trouble because they can.
If you want to impress your fellow inmates, screw the system as much as possible like demanding a Kosher meal (often it's better quality food), orchestrating transfers, finding ways to weasel out of bad work detail. Anything you can figure out that gets one over on the system is respected.
tl;dr generally prison is not hollywood unless you're in a gang or owe money to drug dealers. For the most part you will just be doing time and bored stiff so get somebody to mail you TAOCP to do by hand, I wish I had that instead of the dismal prison library. Keep eyes forward, look at people's hands who are approaching you not their eyes.
BOP I was constantly transferred around, for unknown reasons. Sometimes after a week, three weeks, or a few days (same with my friends who did time in federal, who knows why). Everytime, somebody would try the "Do you know what that guy said about you?" trick. Later I find out they had a certain amount of days to fight somebody to squash some beef they had or be kicked off that unit by the other inmates, so tried to get me to fight for them instead, hoping the other guy gets adseg for fighting me. I got so used to this set up that whenever some guy approached me and said "Hey, let's walk together to chow" the morning after I arrived at a new unit and lined up for count, I immediately knew he was going to ask me to fight somebody for him.
This reminds me of Marcellin College, the boy's high school I went to for a couple of years in Australia.
While prison likely has a high concentration of pathological personalities, the more serious the company you are in, the more it will have collected people who are attracted by power and prestige - the more probable case that you will be dealing with psychopaths.
The ones I've met aren't actually that smart (handwavy estimate is they seem to top out around IQ120), and usually only have one or two blunt but heavy social tools that make them high functioning manipulators. They are enabled by overly trusting, high IQ but socially unsophisticated engineers who are easily bullied.
With violence largely a non-factor in a psycho's toolkit in the startup world (vs. prison), you can learn to anticipate and manage them.
While it can be fun to have the scariest dog in the park, who's just a sweetie to you at home (because all they understand is power), it raises the question of responsibility. You know it's going to do harm, it's just a matter of time, and the question for a real leader is, at what point do you recognize it for what it is and put it down?
If you have ever been to boarding school, summer camp, or worked in a large institution, the difference to prison seems largely symbolic. Different people and rules, yet still, people and rules.
My IQ was measured at 140 in high school, but having met a variety of people whose IQs I know, there are people with 100 IQ whose opinions I would defer to over my own, and people with 160 IQ whose opinions I would pretty much ignore. IQ just isn't a very important indicator of utility.
Stay aloof and paranoid?
Ah... ever think you've stared too long into the abyss, perhaps?
The military is another good example of this.
For example before going you might want to gain as much weight as possible (who cares about looking attractive). Generally more weight will increase strength regardless if it is fat (although muscle would be better). Or maybe gaining a lot of weight is a bad idea... don't know but I am curious.
I would imagine forearm training would be critical since grappling is so important in self defense. This could be tricky if there are no bars to hang from.
I'm thinking the best training is probably fairly similar to football training... get big, fast, and strong. I'm just not sure gymnastic like training will do that (particularly as you gain weight that sort of training becomes fairly difficult).
Thus from my limited knowledge... I would probably do a ton of power cleans, power presses, and sand bag grabbing. Maybe some farmer walks. Probably no dead lifts while in prison though since that would just sap you and leave you weak for attacks. Maybe deadlifts prior to going in.
If you can do one-arm pressups and pullups - which Wade's training leads up to - you will be stronger than 99% of people who train with weights anyway.
I have no doubt about doing one arm pullups making you strong. I just recently accomplished this myself but I had to loose a ton of weight to do so (from 198 -> 168). When I lost the weight I got a lot weaker and less powerful (albeit I certainly look better). I have feeling my old fat self could take more physical abuse.
Here's some guy in a no weight stack prison, with a contraband phone showing off his exercise routine (and pics of the homemade water weights) https://youtu.be/WLmDkcb6JQE
From guards making a quick buck?
Inmates just made their own weights using a few layers of trash bags filled with water.
Prisons are full of very clever hacks borne by necessity.
It had from DIY tatoo kits to radios and all kinds of stuff done with whatever was available.
(Hmm, could be related to this: http://temporaryservices.org/served/projects-by-name/prisone... ).
A pushup is equivalent to benching roughly 64% of your body weight. So if we say one armed is similar to benching 128% of your bodyweight... That puts a person in the intermediate level of weight training.
http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/BenchStandards.htm...
in which population?
Madoff hired a consultant which is why he's teaching economics classes at a minimum security trustee camp right now instead of letting the system just send him anywhere.
Yeah, but thieves and burglars would just steal it.
It applies to any hierarchical community that you can't easily quit. It could very well apply to say totalitarian regime. But large corporation, while sometimes being comparable in bureaucracy (and bullshit and politicking) to totalitarian states, you can quit easily without much effect on your life.
In fact, I think this is the basic advantage of capitalist over communist regime. You can be critical to a corporation, at least to an extent. You can take more risks. The stakes are much lower.
While corporations in capitalism are also hierarchical, the risk to ruining your life is much less, because you can always change the corporation and start with a clean slate. Your family is not affected (or only very rarely). Even in hierarchical system of corporation, this gives you freedom that is incomparable to being in prison or under totalitarian government.
It's of course up to you if you choose to exercise that freedom.. It may backfire (with bad bosses), but it may also be worth it (with good bosses) and most importantly, it can be lot more fun.
In the UK in the 1960s and 1970s upsetting a large company could get you investigated by MI5 and you could go on their files.
See: The Black Door: Spies, Secret Intelligence and British Prime Ministers by Richard Aldrich & Rory Cormac
[Mind you I'd rather have the attention of the Security Service than the Stasi - but the behaviour is similar, treating dissent as insurrection].
That's discrimination. Luckily, they solved the problem in a clever way: now we are all in their files.
What makes it a 'communist' regime if it doesn't fit the communist ideology?
> While corporations in capitalism are also hierarchical, the risk to ruining your life is much less, because you can always change the corporation and start with a clean slate.
That must be why there are no jobless, homeless, poor people in America.
> Your family is not affected (or only very rarely).
So how do your children eat if you don't have a job?
> Even in hierarchical system of corporation, this gives you freedom that is incomparable to being in prison or under totalitarian government.
So you're telling working for a corporation isn't the same as being in prison? Wow, much insight.
> What makes it a 'communist' regime if it doesn't fit the communist ideology?
It called itself that way, that's why I used the term, as I explained.
> That must be why there are no jobless, homeless, poor people in America.
The reason why there are such people in the U.S. is not corporations per se, but rather lack of social system (which also comes from your fellow citizens). In Europe, we have corporations too and yet we have less problems like this.
I am not saying corporations are not a problem, but in this case, they are not the primary cause.
> So how do your children eat if you don't have a job?
Unlike communist party, corporation cannot prevent you to have a job. If you have skills which are in demand, you can still work for smaller business or on your own. That's the main difference.
(I don't actually find capitalism strictly more ethically valid, but that's entirely different discussion.)
> So you're telling working for a corporation isn't the same as being in prison? Wow, much insight.
The OP compared it as such. I was just explaining why it isn't.
What offensive tone? There was no offensive tone, but the fact that you presumed there was says a lot.
> It called itself that way, that's why I used the term, as I explained.
Okay, so not related to what it actually is.
> The reason why there are such people in the U.S. is not corporations per se, but rather lack of social system (which also comes from your fellow citizens). In Europe, we have corporations too and yet we have less problems like this.
Europe has the same problems.
> I am not saying corporations are not a problem, but in this case, they are not the primary cause.
So you are ignoring corporate interests and their influence on society and politics? Clearly corporations and the elite have a huge impact on politics, so ignoring that aspect makes no sense.
> Unlike communist party, corporation cannot prevent you to have a job.
Which communist party? Every party that calls itself communist can prevent you from having a job?
> If you have skills which are in demand, you can still work for smaller business or on your own.
Provided there are smaller businesses which are able to exist alongside the corporation, that they can pay you enough, that you are even able to find them, that you didn't sign a document that prevents you from working for a competitor (which is quite common), etc, etc. Also why can't you work for a smaller company/organization if there is a 'communist' party?
Or are we?
I've worked for a BigCo where I would definitely recommend this, and some public government sector offices here in Uruguay are unbelievable - they unfortunately combine decent wages, a special cannot-get-fired provision (you have to do something absurdly bad such as murder) and some extremely pathological behavior from petty leaders.
Lots of people get stuck there, they cannot enter the private sector anymore and they need to "put in time" to be able to retire.
While there is wisdom in this, You can also come across as someone who never shares ideas. Collaboration in business is vital, and it's important to foster an environment where collaboration is open and it's OK to fail and figure out how to do better. If you're a person that hangs on the periphery and never goes out on a limb, it's hard to lead that way or foster an environment of healthy teamwork.