Jack Abbott

Jack Henry Abbott (January 21, 1944 – February 10, 2002) was an American author and prisoner. His most celebrated work In the Belly of the Beast depicted his life of crime and the psychology of imprisonment.

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Even European philosophers have taken notice that most of what we take for knowledge is nothing but bias and prejudice.

The world is amazed at how 'cruel' it is! (This is very funny to think about!) And then, when the 'chips are down' (Sartre's favorite expression), Sartre, who has never gambled but is enamored of the terminology of a kind of daring that doesn't involve getting his ass skinned, 'martyrs' himself. It is the same kind of responsibility anyone takes upon himself by submitting to your bad opinion of him by hanging his head and agreeing with all the accusations - and then, when he has done that, forlornly tells you he is sorry it rained last night, sorry the price of tea went up, etc. etc.

Most important, you learn never to trust a man, even if he seems honest and sincere. You learn how men deceive themselves and how impossible it is to help them without injuring yourself.

The mind does not regulate its own condition. Mental depression, for example, is a state of mind caused by the body. In a cell in the hole it only seems that there is a separation of mind and body - in fact, the body's condition (of deprivation of sensations; experiences, functions, and so on) controls the moods of the mind more than in any other situation I can think of.

The intelligence recedes, no more a tool of learning - because knowledge is based on experience - but a tool of the outside world it is deprived of knowing. It tries to contact other minds by telepathy; it becomes the Ancestor. Words and Numbers come to hold mystic significance: they were invented by some arcane magic older than man. The line between the word and the thing vanishes; the intervals of numbers in infinity collapse with infinity.

But a kind of genius can come of this deprivation of sensation, of experience. It has been mistaken as naїve intelligence, when in fact it is empty intelligence, pure intelligence. The composition of the mind is altered. Its previous cultivation is disintegrated and it has greater access to the brain, the body: it is Supersanity. Learning is turned inside out. You have to start from the top and work your way down. You must study mathematical theory before simple arithmetic; theoretical physics before applied physics; anatomy, you might say, before you can walk.

I feel that if I ever did adjust to prison, I could by that alone never adjust to society.

What if I am only justifying myself unconsciously with these words and they are silly excuses to be an asshole?

If society punishes its members by death and imprisonment, why is anyone surprised when a member of society punishes his enemies with "death and imprisonment"?

Machines can calculate. Therefore, calculation is the lowest form of intelligence.

So you see, the bullfight is by no means a sport. The matador does not even see it this way, unless he is confused as to what he is doing. A bullfighter pursues it as an art form, almost the way a professional actor pursues drama.

The qualities that are brought out in the bull--bravery, respect (at bottom, honor), intelligence (animal cunning heightened in combat with an intelligent adversary,) and more--these qualities are emulated by the human male. So the matador is in a sense fighting another man to death. It is a surrogate matador conflict.

When the matador brings the bull to its highest grandeur, the animal becomes ideally ennobled, and in a moment of truth--because ideally at that juncture the matador and the bull become equal--the matador pierces its heart.

...There was once a form of prison discipline called the starvation diet. You were thrown in the hole and fed once a day just barely enough to give you the minimum nourishment to exist: to exist in the hole, not to exist the way the average man does.

It is routine to see guards make sure prisoners who have vowed to kill one another are forced into a cell together.

A revolution is the most liberating experience, the most glorifying experience anyone can ever have. It is a time when a new world is coming into existence, when men and women carry their own destinies in their hands.

I think this country has an excessive number of people who take pride--openly or secretly--in the fact that their government is so inhumane, so evil; take pride in the fact that their government so thoroughly crushes men they consider "enemies" ("public enemies").

Society, which has never in reality accepted blacks as equals, gives them "equality" only in prison, where they immediately exploit that equality to get back in prison what society outside prison deprives them of: power.

It is the only time and place in this country most non-whites can redeem the promise of their childhoods, namely, to be men.

When blacks call one another "nigger," they have accepted that they are inferior as human beings. It is the same way homosexuals call one another "bitches"--they have accepted that they are inferior as men.

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Jack Abbott