Reply to CBC Decisions Article

This is a reply from Corinne Guilmain to my article Avoiding CBC Decisions. Corinne and I used to work together on the DSC in Motion student newspaper in fall 2009.

Hi, Richard,

I don’t reply very often to your newsletters, but I did have something to say about this newsletter.

Your article was interesting. However, you didn’t mention secret rulings. I call them “secret rulings” because the individual in question is not allowed to speak their mind or present anything on their own behalf. Anything having to do with a CBC will never be revealed to the individual in question. Decisions are made behind closed doors among people who are self-proclaimed judges. Records are sealed and decisions are made that can be very detrimental to the individual in question. These people make judgment calls as if they can stand in the shoes of the person in question.

It’s as if there is no such thing as a “person” and that the only way a “person” exists is because someone else defines their reality. Other people call the shots, make arrangements and worse of all make judgment calls that can be very destructive to the other person who has been denied their day in court and the right to face their accusers. I call it a “setup.” This is happening more and more everyday with the people “in the know.” It is happening on a grand scale that is unbelievable. The right of the individual is being supplanted and restructured. I believe this is part of homeland security. It’s as if those in authority believe they know all there is to know about what being a human is all about. They have structured every facet of being human. They have categorized relationships and the meaning of life. They have become “God.” Personhood or the right to exercise one’s consciousness has become a game, a power play, over that person in terms of corralling them into a state of being and experience. The individual experience has now been defined as a community experience. The means has now become more important than the ends because it is for the greater good. Women especially have no voice. They are defined by their fathers, husbands and a variety of theological definitions. Consciousness has come within the reigns of despotism. Big brother has arrived. And it’s not the government.

Corinne Guilmain

Avoiding CBC Decisions

The primary goal of all institutions is to avoid case-by-case (CBC) decisions by setting up a bureaucracy to handle every decision not based on possibility (pro-actionary), but based on precedent (reactionary) OR by delegating or removing those decisions to an independent, definitive, un-coerced third party, which is not necessarily or even desirably neutral and fair.

This is why in the United States of America we have a jury system of common people to judge all courtroom proceedings and unanimously determine guilt. If even one of the twelve jurors has doubts, he can deny the State the right to incarcerate, fine, or otherwise punish the defender, be him a victim or a criminal. The jury is not a star panel — any citizen can be drafted at any time for jury duty and jury selection should be of the person’s peers, coworkers, or neighbors rather than strangers, because if his friends rule him not guilty when they know him to be guilty, one to twelve of them will have to fear him on the streets or in public if he is truly a criminal.

Similarly, the system of federal courts and a Supreme Court to prosecute federal law and strike down states’ laws if they violate the spirit of the Constitution is set up hierarchically so that a case can be removed to an independent, definitive, un-coerced third party in a pattern of escalation or de-escalation, unless it reaches the Supreme Court, in which case a CBC or non-CBC decision is made which cannot be appealed, confined, over-turned, or escalated to an international or world court. Similarly, the case can be “thrown out of court” if there is no crime committed, or if the case is not worthy of the court’s time, because all time and resources are finite and never infinite.

While avoiding CBC decisions may be ideal for institutions, it is not ideal on an individual scale because every person has certain gut feelings he or she is unable to articulate. For this reason, personal discrimination is a sacred right which must always be upheld, and you should not hold yourself to machine-like standards because you are not a machine.