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One of the foundations of capitalism is the idea of, in fact it's entirely founded on the

idea of the autonomous individual that's self-reliant and doesn't depend on others and is not in some way is free to make

all their own choices and also inherent in this belief is the idea that the individual is somehow

molded or shaped to a lasting set of characteristics or traits and identity is self, a soul that is inherent

for most of life and really so much of our criminal justice system,

our institutions, the way we look at and characterize people in our culture is this idea that you have these traits or this personality that is somehow there throughout your life.

That's not a matter of being shaped by context or early life events that can be shifted.

In capitalism, if you're a felon, you're viewed a felon for the rest of your life, you are at least in our branch or our version of it.

We don't tend to hold a lot of stock in our mythos in the idea that people can change or are fluctuate.

One of the dominant mythos in our culture is this meme of, if you, I see this in movies all the time.

They start, the movie starts with the retired detective or cop who's finally given out the rough and tumble years of his

Life on the Force. He's finally gotten to retirement and then some serial killer is released from prison that he helped put away years ago and even though he doesn't want to be called back into the action he

winds up being sucked back in because deep down and up he's a cop and deep down

the serial killer is a serial killer and nobody changes.

Either the good or bad, that's kind of the sort of underlying foundation that allows our institutions to treat people as inhumanly as we do.

And certainly all of the dominant religions that are endemic to our culture have this view that people have a soul that you are born with and is there with you and many takes on religions such as

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