Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery

-Bob Marley, "Redemption Song"

We exist within the sandbox of HLS, where we acquire the tools we’ll need to construct the castles we aspire to in the real world. You’ve taught us how to sift in order to build. Our sand is knowledge. It may be abundant but its value is in the form we give it. You’ve taught us to be aware of how and why the systems we exist in "sift" stories and knowledge before they even get to us.

Society. Society dictates the value of information and so determines whose story will be told. The paparazzi hunt a woman to death to get her picture because she married the future King of England. Meanwhile, the untold stories of thousands of tortured Chileans goes unnoticed. Society sifts out what stories will be told and which will fall into oblivion through three main forces.

The first force in the sifting out of information is "Solomon". "Solomon" is symbolic of the powers-that-be. Solomon needs awe. He needs his own spin cycle -- and the elusion of alternative stories. By taking away the voice of the harlots, Solomon suddenly strong-arms us into approval and awe. Pinochet to peasants. Corporate America to Woburn. Harvard to Berkowitz. By not giving voice to the victims, their stories are lost forever- silenced by the powers-that-be. Does an event ever really happen if it is never told?

A second force is the market. Economic considerations are closely tied to the spread of knowledge. Revisit Princess Diana. The press created her through stories and images, thus placing a premium on her stories. (Ironically the value of her story superseded the value of her life.) Compare the stories of the eight Woburn families that lost their children. It wasn’t until several quasi-Solomonic figures endorsed their story that it gained value. This is why shows like Jerry Springer are so popular. They let people tell their stories. They let a drag queen be Princess Diana -- if only for an hour.

The third force is the necessity each society feels to uphold certain mores and values. For example, the fact that Monica had an affair with her married drama teacher or that Gillian Guess was a provocative forty-something become relevant background information in the societal scheme of things -- a kind of locator for their place in society and often, an invitation to pass judgment.

Legal system. The legal system is a second mechanism for sifting information and one that often clashes with the first. Through both rules and judges, it sifts information providing a multi-step framework which purports to eliminate the unnecessary in order to reach TRUTH. First, the rules constitute a background authority that purports to objectively ground and standardize the legal system. Yet they themselves are laden with societal assumptions and often burdened with exclusionary values. The fact that the Rape Shield laws were only passed in the 1970’s demonstrates this well. Second, with the judge as gatekeeper, at each stage in a trial, information is sorted and put in a context of a story. From Rule 11 to summary judgment, the judge sorts and sifts what he will hear and how he will hear it.

Individuals. Here is where we as students of Nesson come in. On one level, we are law students, learning to sift through information. To separate the relevant from the irrelevant. The inflamatory statement from the cold truth. The homemade grits from the instant grits. We are learning to structure stories in ways that they will be "sifted" -- by society, judges, and rules-- in a way favorable to our "awe-tcome". On second level, we are life students, learning to sift through information in our own lives so that we can make educated decisions amidst the clouds of societal assumptions, the powers-that-be, and the often-skewed story-tellers and rule-makers.

Internet. Internet is an appropriate backdrop against which to learn about the systems because it has revolutionized the sifting of information. No longer must all information be sifted through society’s "power" structure. No longer must a story have a tangible value to be told. There are no rules and consequently, no hidden assumptions. This places a higher responsibility on the individual to know how to sift for herself in order to get to the place she wants to be.

Once we’ve learned how to sift for ourselves and put it into the grander context of society and the legal system, we realize that you’ve taken us on a journey to the Third and Fourth levels of Connoisseurship. It is now our responsibility to exist in the Fifth.