Sometimes the block to empowerment is not in the circumstances surrounding a person, but is rather within the person himself. Regardless of physical options, regardless of conscious consent with the goal to make a certain choice, a person may be incapable of making the healthy choice.

For example, we may draft a rule against habitual or unregulated use of painkilling drugs that can lead to suicide.  One of the factors that will lead to compliance with that rule (by people in chronic or acute pain) is that they concur with the goal of avoiding risk of death under all circumstances.

We might as well acknowledge that sometimes people use addictive drugs fully knowing that self harm is a possible result, precisely because they have within them the conscious or subconscious goal of tempting suicide.

But suppose there is no true suicidal motivation. Since the option to refuse the drug is nearly always evident, the other factor that will lead to lack of compliance is powerlessness to refuse. The physiological change that is the addictive condition determines to what degree one experiences actual choice.

Empowerment involves creating options outside of the person. And it might also involve a decision by each person involved to engage in the healing work to free themselves from compulsions within.

The change in the person that is the addictive condition is a very good model for the change that has occurred in the person who has caught the disease that causes the display of destructive episodes of all types.

In drug addiction, the body chemistry becomes distorted around an initial injury presented by the interference of the drug. Then the body experiences a compulsive mandate to repeat that interference, in order to maintain the artificial balance within.

And in criminal compulsion, the subconscious or psychological structures become distorted around an initial injury. This can lead to a compulsion to repeat the event of the injury, again to maintain some inner balance.  Inability to avoid becoming a habitual victim to repeated crime is also a result of the disease of psychologic distortion.

Just like in recovery from drug addiction, the distortion in self that is the disease of criminal compulsion can be eliminated with a process very much like withdrawal from addiction.

The healing process to lift the disease of criminal compulsion is the process of emotional discharge to heal the unresolved initial injuries stored in the subconscious mind.  Catharsis causes a release of the stress that is pent up, leftover from unresolved dangerous episodes. These were the episodes of contagion of the disease.

Emotional catharsis is an essential part of the immune system that creates recovery from the diseases of inhuman behavior in each human being. When emotional discharge - crying, laughing, talking it out, etc., operates, the intelligence is kept free to understand what has happened and act to create the best response.

When the immune system is working, the disease process does not win and people do not become "criminal," even after being subject to criminal behavior. The disease is "arrested" before it reaches a critical stage.

In most people, this natural immune system has been suppressed via assaults against the system itself, such as when we are punished as children for crying, or for "talking back" to our parent.

This early conditioning can cause us to fail to apply our (emotional) immune system responses then and also later in life. This causes obstruction of our intelligence, for when our discharge systems do not operate, our intelligence is not free to understand what has happened and then act to create the best response. The inhuman response becomes stuck in our subconscious mind, where it forms a template for unthinking behavior.

So our problem of being subject to the diseases of general crime is compounded by our particular cultural disease of emotional immune system suppression, also a contagious disease, also passed by destructive episodes from one person to the next.

Action to repair the immune system itself becomes effective action against all disease of inhuman behavior.  Making the re-identification of catharsis, or speaking one's mind, as good behavior rather than bad behavior is a first step in general immune system repair.

The immune system in the person is full expression of catharsis, coupled with new opportunity to make responses to prevent being hurt again. The immune system in society is the collected true knowledge about the nature of the disease of crime and the nature of recovery, applied through institutional responses to block contagion and support each personal recovery.

Our culture has many changes to make in order to achieve the goal of arresting the epidemic of inhuman behavior now being displayed virtually everywhere. We will need a variety of tools to bring the disease under control and bring the immune systems up to par.

But the main tool we all will use is our natural and inherent human intelligence.

Identifying the natural law that is

is the inoculation against the crime of forcing intelligent people to obey stupid rules . . . rules that are aiming at the wrong goal, rules that don't work to reach the right goal, rules that create needless drudgery or waste, rules that ultimately make things worse instead of better.

Most of our rules regarding responses to crime are based on our historical assumption that Justice = Punishment.  But these rules do not act to really eliminate our problems.  They just act to help us fool ourselves (some of the time) into believing that some of our problems are gone.

When rules lead mainly to the perpetuation of illusion of success, these rules are definitely making things worse and not better.  For if we console ourselves with illusions about defeating a problem, surely real problems become more compounded over time.

A society is always vulnerable to the spread of problem rules when "might makes right" - when enforcement is used in place of cultural engineering.

When we replace the rule of "law enforcement" with the natural law of compliance, we will no longer be chasing illusions of success in cultural reform.  We will create the actual result - realizing the actual goal implied by the rule.

In designing ways of living well, if we focus on the consensus and empowerment end of the equation, the inventive and dynamic population will develop ever increasingly good rules to follow, in order to accomplish our common goals.

We don't need a mono-culture of robots all doing everything the same just to give us the appearance of law and order. There is true natural law governing all objective reality and human beings are part of that reality. And the natural order of abundance in intelligent diversity springs out of the very nature of Human Being.