Oh, okay. Didn’t see that thread. Seems like he’s going through a hard time in his life where he feels powerless. I can’t fault him for that. Life is hard. I hope he figures it out.
Nope, totally cool. But if he wants to explain too, that’s great.
I think “the prisoner” should stay.
Every person I know would rather take on some responsibilities (you know, those onerous responsibilities which every other adult manages to deal with without any trouble or anguish whatsoever), in order to savour the freedom that comes from being beholden to nobody.
Obviously this does not appear to be a good deal from “the prisoners” perspective. If he doesn’t value growing into an adult and grabbing that freedom for himself, then he should stay where he is as long as others will enable him to avoid adulthood.
Bringing kids up so enmeshed that they aren’t capable of living on their own, is emotional abuse.
Your parents failed you. But now, as an adult, you are perpetuating that.
What would it take for your 3rd attempt at leaving to be a successful one?
I don’t know whether it’s a urban legend or not, being one of those stories which are hard to search for… but the story says that when Spain’s “life” got switched over to “25 tops”, there was an old gent in a prison who, a few days after being released, went back and asked them to take him in, for he’d been in prison since he was a teen and that was over 40 years prior, and he had no family or friends outside and didn’t know how anything worked. They hired him as a gardener (which was the job he’d had while inside).
You’re a lot better off than he was, CC. You’ve got professional training (and any degree can open doors for many different jobs, not just “the one you trained for”), you’ve navigated bureaucracy succesfully before… he hadn’t.
Well does this prisoner earn $700/month,
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15030654&postcount=1
and is 38,
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15030883&postcount=3
or is this prisoner making $500/month and is 43?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15830711&postcount=7
I would say the prisoner should stay and just get some hookers.
Also I was never abused. In Russia I knew people who were abused by their parents – their life is not like that of a Swedish prisoner.
Real prisoners in USA have much worse lives…
Possibly he will. Why not?
Well, yeah. Just wishing you well, dude! Everyone has it better than someone.
His birth date is a normally distributed variable with nean of 1970 and standard deviation of 5. His salary is a normally distributed variable with nean of $500/month and standard deviation of $200/month.
According to a Swedish law of 1999, he will return to prison for six months. But I am not interested into going to a Californian prison.
I met a former convict in the US with a similar dilemma. He missed and pined for prison life.
Some good friends lived in an apartment, and we all became friendly with the people next door to them, three members of an extended family. One day, their cousin came to live with them. He was middle-aged and had been in prison in California for almost all of his adult life. He was paroled to Texas because of his relatives there. We’d often share a beer at night, and he was a genuinely nice guy to talk to. Completely open and honest about himself. He’d been given a decent job driving an airport limo, was making good money from that and seemed really to be trying to make a go of it. One quirk that he had, though, was always reminiscing about how good life was in prison. You could see he truly missed the place. He’d tell how you could have anything you wanted there, even pornography and sex.
About that time, a series of armed robberies began in the area. Yep, you guessed it. During one robbery, the perp ended up shot through the neck but lived. Yes, it was my friends’ paroled neighbor. It seems going back to prison was a main motive for the robberies. They obliged him and sent him back.
Real US prison is MUCH MUCH WORSE then my situation. Yet few of those who have not experienced it can understand me.
So the prisoner makes $300/month. That’s not a lot of money for hookers.
To say nothing of the blow.
Physical comfort is an important thing in life. But I don’t think it is the most important thing.
I don’t know what the most important thing is. Maybe it’s love. Or self-actualization. It’s probably different for everyone. But I think most people would put “having a soft bed to sleep in” at the bottom of the list.
Olaf is assuming that freedom means going without “nice” things. But I would tell Olaf he’s a victim of black-and-white thinking. He may not be able to replicate all the luxuries of prison life out in the “real world”, but those things can be replaced with something else. For instance, prison has cable TV–a luxury he probably won’t be able to afford on his own. But in prison, he will never be able to go see the Grand Canyon, go camping out in the desert, or take a weekend trip to the beach. In prison, he can be rest assured he will get the adequate amount of calories he needs for survival. But he has no choice about what he’s going to eat and he can’t experience the pleasure of “pigging out” on his favorite foods. Cravings go unfulfilled in prison. They are catered to in the real world.
In the real world, there’s always hope that he will able to do everything he wants to do one day. He may not have the nicest furniture now, but maybe tomorrow he will. There is no change in prison, though. What you have now is what you will always have.
If hope is the most important thing in the world, even luxurious prisons are hell.
First, I just want to say I have a good idea of where the ‘prisoner’ is coming from. It’s not something I’m proud of nor like to admit to, but I’ve been living in ‘prison’ for five years now. For five years, my daughter and I have been completely financially supported by my parents. We’ve lived with my parents for about three of those years, including the past year and presently. During that time, I’ve had no job and my parents have not made any sort of push for me to get one. The first year or so, I was highly motivated to get a job, as I had been independent of them for the previous ten years. But as time went by and I remained unemployed, the urge to get a job became less and less. I should also add that I suffer from depression as well, though I am finally getting treatment for it.
What I’m trying to say is, I know how hard it can be to get out of a situation where your most basic needs are met and there’s no real outside pressure to change it. You get used to it and the longer you’re in the situation, the harder it is to get out of it. In my case, my depression has made it difficult for me to get the motivation to change things for the better. On top of that, having a five year gap of unemployment makes finding a job in an already slow job market even harder. But I’m finally starting to try. Because I know that, while I may be satisfied with life as it is, I’m not really happy. It’s hard, and I’m constantly dealing with negative thoughts and feelings of hopelessness but, if I don’t try, nothing’s ever going to get better. A person just has to make the final decision for themselves, that if they are unhappy with their life, they need to make whatever changes are necessary to change that.
In order to see Grand Canyon he has to travel to USA – out of question.
Hard to say – definitly luxurious prisons are much better then US prisons or a life of a homeless person. Besides the fact that at his age he may be too old to start from the beginning.
Thank you – your and my situations are not rare.
Why is it out of the question? Olaf as a free man may win a sweepstakes and get an all-expense paid trip to anywhere of his choosing. Or he may save up all his pennies and decide to go traveling one day.
That’s the beauty of not being in prison. Olaf can have dreams and see some of them come true. But a dreamer sentenced to a lifetime in prison is nothing but a poor fool.
A prisoner who has a choice to stay in prison for its “luxuries” is well within his right to stay there. But he’s sadly mistaken if he thinks he’s always going to get a lifetime of prison-quality luxuries, just by virtue of being alive. One day the warden may decide to transfer him to a worse prison, one where no one will care that he’s Olaf the Innocent. And at that point, he won’t have the option to leave. He’d be better off taking a risk of being homeless now, when he’s younger and has more resources, than hoping the quality of his prison never deteriorates.
Sad people are going to be sad no matter where they are. If Olaf was suddenly tapped to be a million-dollar-per-engagement, world’s foremost lecturer on all things social science he would still be miserable if he was unhappy as a $700/month intern living with his parents or a prisoner in a luxurious swedish prison. There might be lessening levels of sadness but overall Olaf is going to be sad.