Bucky Group - Shock Incarceration

25th September 2010

This Saturday, we started our session with a Skype connection with Dr Cherie Clark from Albany, New York State. In true blue Bucky Group impromptu style, with some of us still munching our breakfast and others probably didn't know what was going on in the beginning when we were merely exchanging pleasantries.

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However, it didn't take long before we learn of Dr Clarke's impressive programme called "Doing Life", which she taught to inmates of several Correctional Institutions in the US, to help rehab them. Dr Cherie has adapted Bucky's Synergetics: the 12 degrees of Freedom, which are 6 positives and 6 negatives into the programme. To date, 42,000 inmates have graduated from her programme with a very high success rate, since 1987. This programme has since spread to five states in the US.

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The programme is tough. It is 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for 6 full months! Not for the feeble minded! The inmates though have the motivation to complete it and do well because they will get their sentence reduced from 3 years to 6 months. This saves the prisons a lot of money every year and transform the inmates back to useful citizens in the mainstream of society.

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For the video about the "Doing Life", click here.

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More about 12° Of Freedom: Synergetics and the 12 Steps to Recovery, click here.

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Bucky said, "Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them."

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AND

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"... reform the environment instead of trying to reform human."

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So, by accepting that the inmates too are geniuses, the programme seeks to re-genius them. This has been well demonstrated and 42,000 graduates from the programme can attest to that.

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Cat's Play - Come back!

Two days ago, we were much saddened when we found Greygri, our grey cat laying dead by the main road. We brought the body back and buried it in our garden. Then curiously during the night, we heard the little cat door flapped, as if Greygri was back! Next morning, in a bizarre turn of events, we even noticed that the cat food was consumed and the dish moved! Then, as we were standing there, to our astonishment, Greygri came through the door. We were stunned!!!! “HUH? Wasn't Greygri supposed to be dead?” I thought. Then did we realised that we had buried the wrong cat!!! .

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Also two days ago, an old and good friend whom I have tried contacting many times since the year 2000, but to no avail, turned up online on LinkedIn.com!!! I had earlier assumed that he is 'no longer with us'. Anyway, he revealed that he had just came out of prison after 8 years, allegedly being framed for a crime he didn't commit. While he was doing time, he studied and achieved a first class honours degree and continued halfway into a PhD. Now out on good behaviour, he has enrolled in an engineering degree. He has also got an application for a patent pending for an online user authentication algorithm; and also waiting to test a concept he has, that would generate energy from a renewable source.

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I admire his strength living through all those years in prison and having attained those academic and intellectual achievements. He must have gone through immense agony though. I told him that the past is now behind him and he ought to endeavour to live in the present. That he says he will.

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For other posts about Cat's Play, read here

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