Thanks! I’m glad you’re doing better now too!

My dad moved a lot actually. He lived all over the country. He moved to be close to his parents (my grandparents) who helped raise me.

I’m sorry you experienced the hardships you did. Are you saying you’d rather do a 10 year prison sentence in Norway instead of the poverty you experienced on the street? That’s pretty unfathomable to me.

Anyway, I never said anything about it being “free and easy.” Life is hard. But being in prison is neither free nor easy, even in a fancy Norwegian prison.

Yeah I don’t get it. I’m trying to convince people that it’s better to be free than in prison and they’re not buying it?! What?

I think people create prisons for themselves in their own minds. I’m saying choose the situation you’re in. You’ll be much happier for it! Some people don’t want to be happy though. And they’ll resent you for even suggesting it!

Is that the poverty only experienced by a true Scotsman?

I’ve never had to live on the street, if that’s what you’re asking. I was raised by a single father. We had as many as 4 roommates at various times, including alcoholics and drug addicts. I’ve had to call the police on some of them. I’ve had to stay at my grandparents’ while my dad drove across the country as a salesman just to pay the bills.

I dropped out of high school at age 16 and only managed to go back and finish in my 30s. I got into university and graduated with a degree, thanks to generous government loans and grants. Now I got my first job post-graduation working in a mail room at age 41.

Was my life easy? No. But I wasn’t living in a slum in central Africa drinking contaminated water and suffering from Guinea worm disease. I think anyone in North America who grew up in a working class home is a long, long way from that kind of poverty.

I’m not saying it’s easy! I’m saying it’s possible.

Having family and family obligations is still your choice. Many people walk away from all that because it’s unbearable to them. A prisoner doesn’t have that option: they’re stuck with whoever their cellmates are, no matter what.

Right, but you don’t have to live in that city. You have the choice to move somewhere else! Prisoners don’t have that choice.

The idea of zero being a number rather than the absence of a number took a very long time to settle on. There’s a whole history book on the topic!

A gilded cage is still a cage. I’d rather work and pay rent and live in a modest apartment than be imprisoned in a luxury hotel that I’m not allowed to leave. Prisoners in Halden prison don’t get to set their own schedule, don’t get to quit being a prisoner and move across the country, don’t get to code with whom they live and associate.

Even with a minimum wage job you can save up enough money for a plane ticket to anywhere in the world and just leave. Or even just a bus ticket across the country to live somewhere else.

Or how about taking your girlfriend/boyfriend out on a date to a nice restaurant? Or rent a cabin in the woods for a weekend and just relax? Or go out to the bar for a few beers with a friend? Or volunteer to spend time with some elderly folks at a nursing home!

Being in prison sucks, no matter how much they dress it up. The vast majority of things you might do are closed off to you just because you can’t leave. Every single one of those prisoners knows they’re being punished. Every single one of them counts the days until their release.

People who lived before the invention of zero counted like that!