Author: Greenberg, Norman C.

Publication Year: 1981

Media Type: Report

Summary:

All of us are in a prison without realizing it. The criminal knows that the walls of the prison limit association with the outside world. While on the inside one must conform to the system to survive. Only in one's mind through fantasy, imagination and recall can escape through the walls be possible. On a few brief occasions, one can engage in speculation about what a personal concept of freedom may be.

Abstract:

All of us are in a prison without realizing it. The criminal knows that the walls of the prison limit association with the outside world. While on the inside one must conform to the system to survive. Only in one's mind through fantasy, imagination and recall can escape through the walls be possible. On a few brief occasions, one can engage in speculation about what a personal concept of freedom may be.

Many of those outside the walls of confinement are prisoners of their own circumstantial limitations. Through constant squeezing, pushing and pulling, the primary pressure groups - frequently referred to as reference groups - attempt to infuse into individuals their particular frame of reference. The free person is slowly and unwittingly molded into the image of conformity lauded by the family, community, church and government. Individual walls then become the abstractions of the mind, encased in the forms approved by the sociocultural milieu, but because the physical being is outside the walls, the misconception develops that the individual is free.

Since a society is the sum total of its component parts, and its component parts are primarily individuals, the immediate plans should be the nurturing of the dignity and forms of expression of each human being and group. (p. 61-75)

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Community Development