Tag Archives: Humanism

Reclaiming Our Humanity

by James Krivacska, Psy.D.
(reprinted from Reflections from the Jetty: Using Reason to Reform Your Life, available as Kindle Book).

What can we do to reclaim the humanity we have lost? This may well be the first challenge of the man or woman just returning to society from jail or prison. Prisons serve many functions, but perhaps one task in which “correctional facilities” excel, is the dehumanization of the men and women placed in their charge. From the assignment of inmate numbers (and in some institutions, the means by which you are identified), to the humiliating strip and cavity searches, to the demeaning and degrading manner in which inmates are treated and often abused, jailers have become masters of dehumanization. Indeed, it is only by the act of dehumanization that the same people who shake their head in disgust at brutal treatment inflicted on an oppressed people by third world dictators, who pride themselves on the core American values they taut to their friends and family, can engage in the kind of abuse that was inflicted on detainees in Abu Garib. Continue reading here…

We Are Not Our Labels

by James Krivacska, Psy.D.
(reprinted from Reflections from the Jetty: Using Reason to Reform Your Life, available as Kindle Book).

You’re not going to find a lot of pictures of me without a shirt in my childhood photo albums. Even snapshots of me at the beach in Manasquan, unless they’re of me wading in the surf, are likely to show me in at least a T-shirt. Now partly, this is because I was cursed with incredibility pale, fair skin. I was incapable of tanning as a kid, my “pigmentally challenged” condition leaving me a token albino amidst a sea of golden pucks and pixies down at the beach. I’d spend a half an hour in the sun, turn red with sunburn, peel a couple of days later, and revert back to my pale self within a week. We didn’t have sf 70 back in the 60s, and even liberal and frequent applications of Coppertone weren’t enough to ensure that, after spending a day at the beach, I didn’t emerge like a lobster fresh out of the steamer. Continue reading here…