I woke up this morning with a post on my mind.
This is not that post.
I jotted a few notes about that post and ran off to meet with a good friend and mutual mentor, the savvy, talented and heart-driven entrepreneur and author, Tom Ruwitch.
(He heads up a boutique email marketing company called MarketVolt and has co-written a book called “Generation Big” and I call HIM whenever I get stuck on my communications strategy!)
I left that meeting pumped up and ready to be productive, with that blog post uppermost in my mind.
Then I took a little detour.
It’s a girl thing (I think for the MOST part it’s a girl thing anyway) but I do some of my best thinking sitting in one of those big massage chairs with my feet in hot water. So I took my trusty notebook and walked into a nail salon for a mani/pedi. (for you non-believers out there, a manicure/pedicure is a well-known wizard’s trick to lift your spirits and pump up your self-esteem.)
The televisions were on – a distraction for me since living without the noise and motion of a television screen has made me hypersensitive to one if it’s in the same room with me. (I grew up without a television and made the choice to turn mine off forever several years ago. I SAID it was so I could stay positive and productive, but the truth is that the remote that came with the new television was smarter than I ever hope to be!)
It was on a commercial, I had no idea what programming it was tuned to, so I settled back into the pummeling of the chair and sank my feet into hot sudsy water. I counted my blessings and opened my notebook. Ready to WRITE that post! (yeah I know, there are things called laptops, iPads or even PHONES that I could post from, but for thinking, I like paper and a pen I can chew on!)
So there I was. Feeling great about my productivity so far on this beautiful Saturday, treating myself to some pampering, and anticipating that I’ll go home with a great post, type it up at lightening speed and then relax in my garden with a good book.
Except the televisions were all tuned to the aftermath of the Casey Anthony trial.
I am not going to discuss our legal system. I’m not going to discuss the trial (I didn’t watch it, I read enough to make myself physically ill.) Nor am I going to discuss the trial outcome.
What stuck with me was the public outrage that the defendant and the jurors could sell their story and potentially profit from their part in the experience.
I heard a lot of talk about “there outta be a law.”
I didn’t hear one person ask “where is that money coming from and why is there a demand for the story?”
There ARE people willing to pay for that story (their views, book purchases and attention all equal money to someone) and it gave me pause to wonder why people are so drawn to these stories that there is a market for them.
I asked myself to keep my own biases out of it. To keep my emotional reaction out of it. I asked myself to just pose the question – “What value do people derive from seeing accused killers interviewed, from reading their books, or from listening to a juror’s version of the trial from the perspective of the jury box?”
Where is the value?
And, if a law to prevent people from paying them is in order, then I have to ask, “Where is the harm?”
Not, “is it RIGHT?” That’s my judgement, according to my values and my sense of highest right. No, by MY values it isn’t right. Nor, by MY values, is it right for me to feed on those stories, whether the content is given voluntarily or for pay. It violates my sense of highest right.
But laws are there to protect people, not to mandate that they follow MY sense of highest right or align with MY values (or any one else’s.)
So who are we protecting if we pass a law that no one tried and acquitted of a crime, nor anyone serving on the jury can be PAID for telling their story?
The other function of law is to establish guidelines for punitive justice. So if we were to pass these laws who are we punishing? The jurors? Why? What wrong did they commit other than to give up days of their lives and submit themselves to intense scrutiny and stress in order to perform a civic duty that many people do their best to dodge? The defendant? IF they are innocent (and public opinion and beliefs aside, legally a defendant who has been acquitted is innocent and remember this law would apply equally to those accused who had they sympathy of the public as well as those, like Casey and O.J., who don’t) so why are we punishing them?
On the other hand, perhaps there are people who have something to learn from seeing, hearing or reading those stories. We all learn from experience, and we can also learn from the experiences of others. So if there are people who would in some way be served by having access to the perspective of the defendant or the juror, and we cannot force these people to tell their story for free, then passing a law against paying them for their story is actually doing the public a disservice.
If the public doesn’t want them to profit from their experience all the public has to do is to not view, not read, not give it their attention. WE are in complete control, the purest form of majority rule. Why should we NEED to pass a law?
You can probably tell I’m still searching. I know I’m likely to get a lot of emotional rhetoric here – go ahead, vent if it helps you. But I suspect that a lot of the emotional rhetoric is the same as I was trying to quell today – the rational mind’s way of trying to distract us from the deeper lesson, to avoid challenging our own beliefs, searching our own souls, and to keep us from noticing that we aren’t always reflecting our highest self either.
Okay, the floor is yours. I will delete anything that is purely hateful or uses foul language. That’s just my sense of “highest right” not to expose myself or my readers to such content.
I’m going to head for the garden, I need to visit my “rose nymphs” and “daisy naiads” and reground myself in my own purpose and light. I hope each of you have a place you can go to do the same.
Here’s to YOUR highest self – and to you right to follow where it leads!
Dixie
I am really intrigued with this post. I read it last night and woke up thinking about the question of law, what purpose it serves, when it is truly beneficial for society.
Some would posit that laws are wholly unnecessary; that, at some point we will evolve so that we will all be guided by our own consciences rather than some outside force (and that, even before then, there is a big question about whether laws actually change behavior in any case).
I’m not sure yet exactly where I fall on that question. Even if we accept the idea that laws do not change behavior (and I’m not sure about this), is law a way for a society to express its values?
These are important questions.
As to the matter you raise, whether there should be a law prohibiting an accused murderer or her/his jurors from profiting from telling their story, I believe I am in agreement with you.
I find it hard to believe that passing such a law would protect children from being exploited. And in the meantime, it seems that passing a law may keep us from some soul searching we may want to do as a culture. If we pass a law prohibiting selling such stories, we can feel that we’ve “done something,” and then we don’t have to look more deeply at why there is a market for the stories in the first place. Or why we are so disconnected from each other that we don’t realize so many children are in danger until it is too late. Why are we so interested after the fact, but not willing to risk the level of social engagement that would prevent many of these cases from happening at all?
The easiest solution to keep people from selling such stories is to quit buying them. And the easiest, and only truly effective, way to stop the media from obsessing over the stories is to quit watching and reading about them.
Even beyond the question of law here there is a question of the meaning of celebrity, particularly in a culture where many are famous, and followed, not because they have contributed anything meaningful to the culture, but simply because they are famous.
And then there is the question of why we as a society spend so much of our time and energy following the lives and stories of people we will never know, and relatively little contemplating our own stories, and how we are impacting the world with the lives we are living.
Thanks for raising these questions Dixie. I’m going to be thinking about this post for some while.
k
As you always do, Kimberly, you’d added layers of meaning and asked deeper questions. With your background in both psychology AND law, your perspective is even more relevant. I’m not one to believe law is unnecessary or that “nature should run its course.” Neither do I believe that there should be a law against everything *I* believe is wrong for ME. But the question I’ve been pondering more than that is the purpose of story. What is it about the vicarious experience that draws us? What are the commonalities in what brings “fame” and why do we care? You know… those questions that challenge the spirit rather than the mind. Because I don’t think we can KNOW the answers. But if we’re bold enough to ask them we open pathways to our own spiritual power and discover the things that, in the past, we have let prevent us from following those pathways.
For ME – the public view of the Anthony trial is a power-robber. Which causes me to ask “why” and “is that universally true or only true for me?
just writing out loud… 🙂
Dixie I really appreciate that you’ve started this conversation–one I continue to ponder!
And I agree with you–it is the QUESTIONS we ask that end up directing and giving meaning to our lives. For me, the answers are much less important.
You might hate this poem. I wrote it in my late teens, when I was anti-establishment of any description, including religious. So apologies if it strikes you as blasphemous. Even on reflection, I believe that killing people is beyond human jurisdiction, so I am glad the U.K. figured that out before I was born; but I realise this discussion is not about law or politics, so let’s stick with the profitability of outrage. I think my angry little prayer, probably coming from a scarcity mentality, was attempting to find some incorruptible common ground . . . I should have stuck with the vine tendrils and artichoke eruptions.
The Swords Flare
R for the Rich – smart litigators.
Fallow be their flame
Shallow be their shame
And Gallows be their game
Most of their working Lives.
Liveried attendants are duly shed,
Shivering with trepidation as they
Take to the job search with minimal funds.
For dimes be their income.
The hour of need beckons.
The point of this story’s
The clever will sever
A livelihood
For the sake of a wig
And if you want some justice
They don’t give a fig.
Fortune be the law’s tune.
The judge and the jury.
Together we might make
A change.
IF I hated it that would tell me much more about me than it does about you. But (to reference my response to Kimberly’s comment) I have found that hating someone’s expression of self robs me of the power to express myself. If I were to somehow believe it right of me to hate what you express I must also, by extension, grant that it is right of others to hate MY self expression. So how, then should I feel safe expressing myself?
No apologies requested or required. Your word weaving is so rich. Of course I respond to the closing line, but the three other stanzas make eloquent points as well. “Working lives” – hmmm DO their lives work? Or is their living truly only a means to an end? And who will respond to THEIR hour of need? If no one, then are they truly rich?
For those of us who know that wealth and money are not measured in the same coin “justice” has a completely different meaning.
The last “sensationalized” news cast I watched was the Columbine massacre. I kept asking “Why do they keep showing these horrifying scenes over and over again?”
Of course the answer is “Because I keep watching them and that’s good for advertising revenues.”
I haven’t shut my TV completely off, but I try not to pay attention to sensational stories like the Casey Anthony trial.
Thanks for writing this Dixie. Great food for thought. Enjoy your garden!