The Slippery Slope of Ethical Collapse

Scientific American has an interesting article (sorry if it is pay-walled) titled, The Slippery Slope of Ethical Collapse—And How Courage Can Reverse It.

The gist of the article is that ethical collapse is self-reinforcing. Biologically. 

Researchers at University College London have described one biological basis for this habituation. While in an fMRI scanner, study participants played a game in which they could enrich themselves by deceiving others. The more people lied to other players, the more exaggerated their lies were likely to be the next time around. These habitual liars also showed reduced activation in the brain’s amygdala, which is involved in emotional arousal—and the lower their amygdala activation, the more flagrant their lies were in the next round of the game. The researchers believe gradual neural adaptation is at play: the more times people lie, the less emotionally distressing lying feels, which allows for increasing comfort in dangerous moral waters.

This I believe is what happens so often within family court. A lawyer skirts the edge of fraud thinking they are advocating for their client and then crosses the line. Once they do so, it becomes a habit. The same with judges and litigants. 

Unfortunately the normal way of operating in family court, as well as much of the legal system overall, has become unethical and often straight up criminal. 

However there is hope. The process works in the opposite direction as well. 

Yet moral snowballing can also happen in the opposite direction. Surprisingly, just as neural habituation can drive ethical collapse, it can also drive escalating spirals of virtue, in which one honest or brave action makes the next one easier to carry out. And because our brains adapt to repeated behaviors, movement in a given moral direction can persist—making it all the more critical to pinpoint where and how that movement begins.

Unfortunately the legal system will never reform on its own. How can this be changed? It isn't that hard. Laws and ethical rules which are already in place simply need to be enforced. If lawyers who commit fraud are disbarred and litigants who commit perjury are punished, we will quickly see a surge in ethical behavior. 

Real Life Ebbing Missouri

The excellent Oscar winning movie Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in which a mother put up billboards chastising law enforcement for not doing enough to solve the horrible murder of her daughter had a real life version in (coincidentally) St. Louis County Missouri. 

The real version chastises family court judges not law enforcement. Like the movie people are named.  

The person behind the effort was an elderly grandmother. 

Father Calls Out Corrupt Judicial Council & Family Court Corruption

Well said. 

 

The Stand With Meg Show

I ran across and interesting podcast called, The Stand With Meg Show — Defending Parents’ Rights. Protecting Children. Giving a Voice to the Voiceless which advocates for parent's and children's rights in family court.  

Especially interesting is the episode Family Court is Failing Our Kids: One Father’s Fight for Fairness.

In today’s powerful episode, Meg is joined by Ben, founder of Menbuse and creator of the AI-powered custody tool "DocketMind." Together, they expose the silent epidemic of father erasure in family court and the cultural biases that pit mothers and fathers against each other — all while the court cashes in on broken homes.

 Website: https://menbuse.org

House Hassels

I have not posted in a couple weeks due to a series of unfortunate events at my house. 

The worst was somewhat serious flooding in my lower level. I did quite a bot of landscaping, gutter work, as well as removing carpet and drywall in the room affected. I still have quite a bit more to do. It will keep me busy for a a few months. 

Second, my Internet was knocked out for a week due to a truck snagging the lines down the alley. 

Third, squirrels chewed though a cowl on one of the plumbing vents on the roof of my house. I have it partially fixed but I have more work to do. 

The gutter and plumbing vent issues required me to climb a tall ladder as well as get up on the roof. Although I don't have a big fear of heights I am not thrilled about being that high at my age. 

Soon I'll return to my regularly scheduled blogging. 

Baby Crying - Men Vs. Women

In what may be uprising to some the reaction of men is the same as women to baby crying. 

The study follows work last month from researchers in Denmark that challenges the claim that women are hardwired to wake up more easily than men when a baby starts crying. It found that men were as likely as women to be woken by wailing infants, despite mothers being three times more likely to get up and tend to the child.

The reasons for the disparity are up for debate, but Prof Christine Parsons, who led the team, suggested two potential factors. First, mothers often took maternity leave before fathers took paternity leave and learned how to calm their baby earlier. Second, when mothers were breastfeeding, it might be sensible for fathers to sleep through.

“Much of the previous work on adults’ physiological responses to infant crying has looked at heart rate, skin conductance, or even brain responses. So this study is innovating,” Parsons said. “People often assume there will be a clear distinction between men and women in how they respond to crying. The authors set out to test this, and found no evidence for a difference,” she added. “We were also surprised at how little difference there was between men and women.”

From personal experience I was more often the one to get up when my kids cried at night. But then again they were remarkably good sleepers and rarely cried. What I did hear a lot was them calling for me early in the morning. And to be truthful I loved getting them up in the morning. I have find memories of peaking around the corner of their rooms before lifting them out of their cribs. 

Bryan Hooper Sr.

Bryan Hooper Sr. was recently released from a Minnesota prison after serving nearly three decades for first degree murder. The witness who testified against Hooper admitted she herself murdered the victim. 

A man wrongfully imprisoned for nearly three decades for murder has been released from a Minnesota prison, after the woman who falsely implicated him confessed to the crime.

Bryan Hooper Sr.'s first-degree murder conviction was vacated by state District Court Judge Marta Chou the day prior to his release from Stillwater Correctional Facility on Thursday morning, a spokesperson for the Great North Innocence Project confirmed.

Sloppy police. Sloppy prosecutors. At best. 

How do things like this happen? Much of it starts in family court where misconduct by lawyers, judges,  and prosecutors runs rampant. People think such actions are less important because they occur in family court. That is false. It is the same judges and prosecutors, and often the same legal firms, who work in criminal court as family court. It isn't like people who commit crime in family court cases somehow are reluctant to do the same in other areas of law. 

Our legal system is institutionally corrupt.That is the open secret most lawyers know but will not admit publicly.