With Spring Comes the Fall (15 page)

Posted by Josh Guess at 
7:32 AM

Today is my first wedding anniversary. This isn't the world I thought I would live in on this day, but there's no use crying about it. Just letting you all know, as today I will be spending my time with the wife. Back to normal on the morrow, but for today, I am all hers.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
8:04 AM

Over a long enough period of time, you can get used to anything. Looking back over the last month, I realize that I have slowly acclimated to the threat of constant attacks, by man or zombie. I also sort of got used to the idea that it seemed like there were no large groups like ours left that weren't out to rape and pillage.
But man, was I wrong.
One of the "small groups" I contacted the other day has turned out to be a lot bigger than ours. More than a hundred. They are the reason this part of the country still has power and thus, internet. They have made a power station their home (about half of them worked there before the fall) and keep it running. They tell me that this won't last for much longer, perhaps two months if they can continue hauling coal from the local storehouses. Once those caches are gone, no more electricity unless we make it ourselves or go mine more coal. When that happens, they might come here, they might not.
A few of the other groups are bigger than expected. The crew from Cynthiana is waiting on Little David to get there (he's from there originally) and then they head toward us. Forty people, all packing supplies, weapons, and a strong willingness to work. I couldn't be happier.
Some of them managed to check out this blog on their phones, and I guess they shared with the others. It took a few hours to convince them that we aren't interested in ruling anyone's life, nor especially wanting to punish folks. There was a lot of worry among the various groups about some of my posts, what it might mean. Some of these people haven't had to fight a living person since all this began, and maybe think that we are just crazy for fights. I hope that our talks with them have alleviated at least some of this, but I do understand why, based on what I have written, people would be afraid. I scare me too, at times.
So far, no new conflicts have popped up. Ellen seems to be dealing with her anger...perhaps chopping wood when she would normally be off duty is teaching her something. Maybe swinging an axe is just a great way to blow off aggression. Or, less likely but admittedly possible, she's just enjoying the practice for a bloody spree of axe murders.
Kidding!
She's doing fine. I have talked to her quite a bit, she still feels as strongly as she once did, but realizes the error in taking out her frustration the way she did.
Darlene is going with Little David. It'll be good for them to get away for a while.
Other news...
Patrick is being followed around by several women now, and he's just as oblivious as ever. Which is funny, since he reads this blog. One of them will trip him eventually. Hell, maybe all of them. Hope they give him breaks in between.
My brother Dave is working on some designs for new buildings he wants to start work on sometime down the road, after we get the manpower. He wants to tear down some houses and build new structures in place of them, sort of like apartment buildings but designed around our current needs. We'll need them if we keep getting more people rolling in. He's also working on the logistics and final design of the wall we're going to put up around the entire compound. That is priority one.
Mom and Gabby are working like crazy in our makeshift clinic. Everyday someone gets a cut, hits their head, or does some other thing to get hurt that requires a nurse to check out. We take our health very seriously around here, and to that end both of them are trying to locate a doctor, anywhere, that is still alive and is willing to relocate.
Haven't seen much of Al, Elizabeth, or many of the others lately. I have been taking it easy, as my damn kidney is still tender (but healing well), and have been busy with almost daily committee meetings, trying to decide on all manner of things, and then trying to figure out how to get supplies to act on those decisions, and then how to budget our limited man-hours...you get the idea. This administration stuff has been going on since day one, but since we went and got ourselves an elected "government", seems like everyone has ideas. Problem is, we're a group made up of smart, realistic, and tough people--so the ideas are usually so good, we have to try and figure out a way to implement them.
Which leaves me less time to work on other stuff. I still put in time building, chopping wood, and all the rest, but writing this is getting harder and harder. I want to--the urge to keep whoever is left to read this informed and hopeful that others are out there is too strong not to. I am getting so busy, in fact, that I may have to start getting others to cover this for times when I just can't, and may have to slow down how much I am doing, labor-wise. I'm getting about five hours of sleep right now, and more work to come.
So, I'm off. Spent too much time here already. More tomorrow.

Posted by Josh Guess at 
8:34 AM
 

Treesong posted some comments on a few posts, putting on the written record what he has already expressed in words, to the rest of us. A link to that post can be found 
here.
 I will reiterate why some of our positions on punishment have been chosen, because I feel very strongly about this. Also, because not a lot else is going on at the moment, as our normal routine hasn't been interrupted, and our (hopefully) new arrivals have yet to...arrive. Yeah.
So:
First, I ask this: what should be done to a person that rapes a woman, caught cold at it? A child? Under the laws that used to be enforced across this country, that person would go to prison. Possibly suffer chemical castration, but not actual castration. What should happen to a person that kills one of the few remaining people on earth in cold blood, not for self defense or defense of another? Again, the old idea was to stick them in a prison.
It was basically the same solution to every crime. Because people, somewhere along the way, got this idea that criminals had rights just like everyone else. So prisons became places where criminals went to work out, get three squares a day, and learn from other criminals how to be better at committing crimes. I'm not saying that incarceration was a walk in the park, at all. But I am saying that such a system did not work then, and cannot possibly work now. So I'm open to suggestion.
The system I have written about previously is one built on realistic needs, and from a strong desire to avoid many of the pitfalls of the old ways of doing business. Prisons were a huge drain on resources, and essentially allowed offenders to eat food provided by others while doing no work of value. We can't afford the manpower to run such a facility, and frankly, I am frightened of the mindset that thinks such an obviously broken system should be reinstated.
I am all for individual liberty. I think that anything anyone wants to do that doesn't hurt anyone else (and in our case) doesn't endanger the group is fine. So no nitpicking here. But I most certainly do expect people to go right one being people, making mistakes to varying degrees. Honest mistakes can often be forgiven, but outright choosing to do wrong cannot.
I am reminded of Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", a novel set in the future on the moon, during the Lunar revolution. Many of these same issues are at play. In that story, the citizens of Luna are both incredibly polite and willing to kill at the drop of a hat--both environmentally required to survive there, long term.
We are in a similar scenario. Few of us left, compared to the vast population we once had, and faced with tough choices. Tree said in his comment that these ideas might be necessary in the short term, but long term, we need to build a society that does not need to use these punishments. In part, I agree. But I think we can only live in a society that does not need to use them by living in one that uses them as a deterrent.
So, once more, I ask you; What to do to a man who rapes? Do you put him in a cell and feed him, locking him away from others, keeping him warm and safe, siphoning food from the mouths of those who did not commit an atrocious act? What do you do with him after his sentence is up? Can you release him back into the fold, thinking that his time alone has taught him the error of his ways? Please.
The reason this system didn't work is because that is what you do to children. You put them in a corner. You give them a time out. The reason society was already fraying at the seams is because far too many children grew up and realized that for most crimes, the punishment had not changed. Look at history if you doubt me--true crime was much less common back when people were killed publicly, flogged, and given punishments that fit the crime.
The difference is that we won't be accusing folks of crimes for political gain, or to control the populace, like so many governments and churches did before modern times. We want to combine the effectiveness of more brutal punishment that fits the crime with a modern view, that it should be used if for no other reason than to deter heinous acts.
A man commits premeditated murder, he dies, because who among us wants to let a man who kills for revenge or from rage to go on living, risking others? I believe in basic human rights very strongly, but I also believe that certain acts remove those rights. You might call me arrogant for thinking that I have the right to judge this, and that's fine. You have your own views. But I will do anything I must to ensure that the most basic needs are met for those around me, and safety is number one.
If needed, I will personally castrate a man who commits violent sexual acts against another. I will kill a man who does so to a child. What punishment seems right to you? Could you live with yourself knowing that you shut him away, hale and unharmed, for a period of years, only to let him out in the future, to do it all over again? Personally, I don't understand how juries, judges, and lawmakers could go on after making such a decision, knowing that they had only put a man's nose in the corner.
People have to know that there are consequences, real ones, that are based on our need to keep living in this world. Instead of creating a system that has no real deterring effect for harming others, instead I choose, WE choose, to create one that will instill a healthy fear of consequences. Because sane, rational people will make one of two choices: either choose to act in their own interests and do no harm, or to knowingly commit such an act, and accept the results.
I wouldn't want to live in a society where people think that there is a third option. If we harm none, no harm is brought upon us. If we harm others, we are harmed in equal turn. Living by any other code seems total madness to me.
I'll let you decide.
Comments?

Posted by Josh Guess at 
9:24 AM
 

Another short post today, for two reasons. One is that I am feeling like crap, my head is killing me and I feel like I have the flu. The other is that while I am feeling really shitty, I am still working to cool heads about this whole crime and punishment argument. We are expecting the first new arrivals just after lunch, and we've been scrambling to make space, among the other preparations that come with accepting new people into the compound. A busy day. 

I feel very strongly that I am right about this. I just can't see any other ways to address some extreme behaviors, not any that seem moral to me. And of course, since my sense of right and wrong as well as my morals, are dynamic and now based in this zombie-filled nightmare. My main problem at this point is that no other reasonable options are being presented. 

So while we are getting busy today, let me know what your thoughts are. 

Posted by Josh Guess at 
9:21 AM
 

I have seen many things in my life that have taken my breath away. Sights that have given me hope, filled me with joy, and touched my heart. No experience I have ever had moved me the way yesterday did. 

A line of vehicles hundreds of feet long, packed and strapped all over with all manner of supplies, so dense with items that no one car had more than two people in it. They all had the hard look of people who had been through much, the deep lines around the eyes of folks who have spent a lot of time watching all corners of their world for threats. 

So imagine what it did for me to see the light suddenly bloom behind those thousand yard stares. It was beautiful beyond any description. Many of them wept openly at first sight of the compound, the work going on here, the tantalizing hints of normal life.