Cognitive Liberty

Cory Doctorow has an excellent meditation on what a friend of his has called "cognitive liberty".

"...the freedom to choose your state of mind. The cognitive liberty cause encompasses the movements to legalize "recreational" drugs and to limit the power of the state to subject "mentally ill" people to involuntary pharmaceutical therapy (and, when it is still practiced, involuntary physical therapies such as lobotomies and electroshock).

Cognitive liberty resonates strongly for me. Like other forms of personal liberty, it is not without its perils -- when friends of mine were involuntarily medicated during acute incidents of schizophrenia, mania or depression, the interventions seemed like a good trade-off at the time (rampaging, irrational, out of control friends who are treated with meds that make them capable of reasoning with those around them are good poster children for "cognitive coercion"), and friends who've fallen down the well of addiction and ended up with ruined lives or even lives cut short are a strong warning against unbridled cognitive liberty.

But then there are friends whose touch of madness sends them on flights of brilliance, friends whose casual glass of wine, joint or hallucinogen use have made them happier, better adjusted, and more creative and fulfilled. What's more, my friends who've ODed, been committed, or who live with addiction haven't been helped by prohibition -- far from it. Some are in jail, some are medicated insensible, some are living lives of dangerous poverty.

The idea of cognitive liberty is very tempting, but I have an instinct that there's an approach to it that is grounded not in libertarianism, but in Canadian/European-style social democracy. "

Having had friends who have been addicted to various substances for the majority of their adult lives has made me feel almost exactly the same way, with the possible exception that the problems they have had with their addictions are in direct proportion with the legal status of those drugs and/or education about how drugs should be used or administered. A friend who died in the last couple of years had used drugs off and on for several years. In the 1960's she had been at art school in the UK and did what most people in their 20's did: go to a lot of gigs, party with your friends and experiment. She managed to unfortunately contract Hepatitis, which of course created all kinds of pathogenic hell. The effects of this on her liver was what finally killed her.

Or one of my old flatmates who is now in his late 40's and has been addicted for 30 years. The self-described 'Man with a Golden Arm' still manages to have something approximating what most would call a normal daytime existence, but might be swallowing 30mg of Diazepam to stave off withdrawal and get him through it. I once saw him pay $400 dollars for 40mls of Methadone from a friend because his withdrawal was so bad he was almost at the point where he was ready to punch his fist through a window. On that day, if someone had said drinking a litre of anti-freeze will stop it, he would have.

The fact is that the economies of purchasing drugs would never remain the same after decriminalisation. Or the very obvious dangers of buying drugs off complete strangers on the street would in all likelihood be ameliorated if support and access were replaced with the current ignorance.

The question of Cognitive Liberty in my mind is similar to abortion rights, or even assisted suicide: Who owns your body, you or the state? It's a question that needs to be asked more. I'm being a little facetious, but for years now i've been trying to teach my students that you are what you eat: If that means you're rearing yourself on a steady diet of Baywatch, Sahara, 50 Cent and you have an aversion to text, well, quite frankly, you're more dangerous than you thought.

It is almost a common occurrence in all of humanity that we can be individually selective in the horrors we believe to be acceptable, or more simply, there are particular issues, which are selectively never given any great force of conscience. This week PETA revealed an undercover video that was taken illustrating unusual cruelty in one of the KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) suppliers' factories in the U.S. Ironically, the site had been a recipient of a KFC 'Supplier of the Year' award and is seemingly a supplier of chicken to other fast food outlets. I also thought the name of the supplier, Pilgrim's Pride, was an exemplary example of a name that resonates so much of U.S. history: Turkey's, Thanksgiving et.al.

I was surprised to see both channel One and Three news services pick up the story given that PETA's presence is largely web based, however a great deal of U.S. based news, as was the case with this story, is being picked up from U.S. broadcaster ABC, a Disney owned company. Often the same stories you see on their 'ABC World News' programme, which screens after most have gone to sleep here, are either regurgitated or 'repackaged' by having a New Zealand 'journalist' redo the American voice-over, a voice-over that often has no difference from its original U.S. text.

The video of the cruelty is available on PETA's website and illustrates the most gratuitous cruelty to animals I have ever seen. My mouth was agape during the television broadcast, but the downloaded video provides a clearer rendering of sound and a chance to look more closely at the images. One thing that becomes most noticeable is the choice of music the factory workers have made. At times the soundtrack becomes extremely distorted and increases the horror of the images you're watching, at other times it is almost as if the actions have a soundtrack, albeit a soundtrack that represents my worst nightmares from the 1980's: working on a factory line listening to Guns and Roses and Bonjovi while animals are being killed, maimed and tortured. These images are of torture and worker frustration. The actions of the workers are truly inexcusable, but when I watch them I can't help but wonder how or why so many of the workers are doing what they're doing, and the culture of tolerance that obviously exists among those not participating in the violence.

My vegetarianism has been somewhat flaky since I began being vegetarian in 1991. I had, since adolescence, thought about vegetarianism a great deal, I was a huge fan of The Smiths and was anti-vivisection (a belief or movement that seems to have all but disappeared from public view here in New Zealand). Most of the reasons I had for becoming vegetarian were altruistic and politically motivated, I couldn't stand the objectification of animals as a source of 'needed' food; the means which are used to sustain, breed, keep and kill seemed horrifying and inhumane. The difficulty I had in maintaining my vegetarianism has changed little, the pressure from friends and family; trying to eat outside of home is still difficult in many, many restaurants etc. The hardest part is the amount of energy spent justifying why you are vegetarian and the sometimes weird feelings of guilt and shame you can have when someone you are close to engages you with looks or comments that make you feel as if you must be absolutely insane to merely eat what you eat. Or don't.

When I told my parents on a brief visit home in 1991 that I had become vegetarian, my father rolled his eyes and my mother's facial expression became serious. A deal was struck to either sometimes eat Fish or Chicken when I was home. What happened in reality is that for those first few years, every time I ate at home there would always be chicken or fish on the plate. Essentially that deal has been in place since 1991. From my mother's perspective there was the idea that I needed to look after myself, a healthy vegetarian diet could not be sustained, and Dad, well, he likes and believes meat to be an integral part of being alive. To this day, if I go home for longer than a week he still rolls his eyes if he has had to eat without red meat for 7 days and always has an accompanying quip about his deprived state.

I could give countless examples of other instances from daily life in the last 13 or 14 years, my point is that this kind of bargaining is no longer possible for me. The content of the Pilgrim's Pride tape is something I have always known, industrial farming and killing of animals is wrong. The tape, although extreme, is merely evidence of something we all know happens every day, the taking of something's life to (so goes the specious argument) sustain our own. It is wrong; I just hope my folks are going to understand the next time I go home.

As you would expect from a media watcher, i'm a fan of a lot of Michael Moore's stuff. I recently finished reading Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men (2001) and came across the following:

Secretary of State-Colin Powell

"When not fighting wars, Powell sat on the boards of Gulfstream Aerospace and AOL. Gulfstream makes jets for both Hollywood honchos and foreign governments like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. During his time at AOL the company merged with Time Warner, and Powell's stock rose in value by $4 million. At the time, Colin's son, Michael Powell, had been the only Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member who advocated that the AOL/Time Warner merger go through without question. Powell's son has since been named chairman of the FCC by George W. Bush; part of his job is to oversee the activities of AOL/Time Warner. He will also oversee any regulation of AOL's monopolistic "instant messaging" technology."

--Michael Moore 'Stupid White Men' (2001)

If you look a couple of pages down you'll see my post about what's been happening recently with the FCC and Michael Powell's involvement in the rise of global media conglomerates and their über-merging. I could say a lot about this, but i'll leave it for another day. However, of interest here is the following press statement in the last week and keeping Moore's statement in mind.

Thursday August 21, 5:21 AM

AOL gets FCC nod on advanced instant-messaging
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AOL Time Warner, operator of the world's biggest online service, on Wednesday won permission from communications regulators to offer advanced instant messaging services like live video streaming.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to lift a condition it imposed when America Online bought Time Warner in 2001 for fear it would dominate the emerging real-time messaging market when married with video or audio.

The agency agreed to lift the requirement after AOL convinced regulators it had lost market share to well-financed rivals including Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.

AOL's market share in the instant messaging market had slipped to 58.5 percent as of earlier this year, from 61.5 percent in late 2000, according to Media Metrix figures.

Instant messaging is a popular Internet function that allows individuals or groups to have real-time text discussions, but providers have been developing more advanced services to lure more customers.

"Removal of the condition will benefit consumers through the addition of a third significant competitor to the advanced instant messaging-based high-speed video services market," FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who voted in support to lift the ban, said in a statement.

AOL Time Warner said the instant messaging market had become more competitive and Powell noted that neither consumer advocates nor the company's competitors protested lifting the condition.

Yet, the two Democrats on the FCC, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, voted against lifting the condition, stating that it was premature because the market for such advanced services had not fully developed.

"As a matter of policy, the goal of open, interoperable Internet communications services justified this condition as serving the public interest, and nothing in the petition convincingly shows otherwise," the two commissioners said in a joint statement.

AOL has already planned to offer the ability to send recorded video clips and have voice conversations through instant messaging in the next version of its online service, AOL 9.0. But, the software will not feature live streaming video at its September launch.

"This decision, which will allow AOL to fully compete in advanced IM services, will clearly benefit consumers through increased choice and innovation," said AOL spokeswoman Tricia Primrose.

AOL Time Warner shares fell 25 cents, or 1.56 percent, to close at $15.75 on the New York Stock Exchange.

In my day to day life I teach film and media, and by and large, I like what I do. Opening people's minds to how different institutions and ideas are represented, the treasuring of imagination, creativity, but also how ideologically the world comes to be represented through what we consume.

A personal major turning point for me in all of this would have to have been when I was researching my Masters thesis on Jean-Luc Godard and realised that the western world very nearly did become something very different than it presently is. I'm talking about May 1968 in France, but also about a number of other folks who were living in the United States and elsewhere who perceived a different way of life that wasn't, amongst many other things, found in the mass consumption of the 1950's. Much of this research meant that politically I became considerably blurrier than I was previously. Although i've never been a party supporter I have always openly admitted to being politically left and many would say liberal, but this liberalism is only kinda right in that it's definitely my public face.

There are many things about 1968 that are usually discussed in an international context and I guess if you want to, you can read my thesis to find out what I mean. There was the Tet Offensive, Vietnam being just one of many countries breaking away from colonial rule. There were assasinations like the Ben Barka conspiracy, the assassination of Patrice Lamumba, MLK, Robert Kennedy; and in very recent memory for the residents of 1968, the Arab-Israeli war which is still reflected in many of the things we're still dealing with today.

The more I read the more I fell in love with revolutionary theory and figures like Ben Barka, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Patrice Lamumba, Guy Debord, Che Guevara and so on. But the funny thing with all of this was when I thought about the type of world they envisioned, and one day while reading Theodore Roszak's 'The Making of a Counter Culture' it quite literally made me cry. I felt like i'd finally come home. The passage in Roszak that made me cry really shouldn't have, but the obviousness of what he was saying was like some kind of epiphany. Roszak has a discussion about the high use of prescription medicines that had been escalating in prescription and usage throughout the 1950's and 60's, notably anti-depressants and drugs such as Valium that were in their hey-day of being prescribed for many people. Roszak's argument essentially turns around and says 'well, lets think about this a second, if this many people are on anti-depressants, maybe they have something to be depressed about because of the lives and the societies they live in'.

The difficulty in coming home for me has meant there is no way back.

Which brings me to Sean Penn. I should say at the outset that I like Sean Penn's work very much, his acting is always good and a great deal of the time, outstanding. Directorially his work is always interesting and, I think, he chooses interesting stories to tell or be a part of. However what I want to discuss is Penn's contributions to the current debate about the involvement of the U.S. in Iraq.

Reading Sean Penn's contributions to the current debate on U.S. involvement in Iraq is like watching a political consciousness, albeit conflicted, come alive for the first time. Whether this is a posture or not is worthy of discussion. It would seem naive to believe he hasn't thought too much about U.S. foreign policy before the latest Bush administration. The only thing I can think of is that the latest steps taken by the Bush led administration are just too much to bare. Another possibility, and this is a very big reach, Penn's father Leo was a talented TV director blacklisted during the McCarthy era and perhaps he perceives a similar threat looming. Perhaps ironically, if there is a blacklist being created of those within the entertainment industry, Sean Penn will probably be near the top of it because of his so-called 'unpatriotic' public statements. Is the U.S. returning to a McCarthy era? Are we currently seeing a return of the U.S. to the 1950's? My opinion? Yes, definitely.

In a social and political climate of so much fear, uncertainty and doubt (that seems to be pathologically exacerbated by the U.S. government and the media) it's very, very gutsy to publicly put your political point of view across -- and this is the root of the problem for high-profile americans not just at the moment, but always. There has always been reluctance on the part of the public to embrace celebrities who 'go against the grain' of current civil thinking. Of course the converse of this equation is true of pre-1950's America, the public seemed to embrace figures who endorsed governmental actions, for example, the images of Gable and Stewart heading off into WWII were not only perfectly acceptable, but had them labeled as heroes. Unfortunately the days of America's revolutionary past are seemingly now just that, the past.

Why is it so egregiously wrong to go against your own government's foreign policy? The justification i've seen on the political right is that it's anti-democratic to go against the wishes of the duly elected government (something that should be questioned anyway, regardless of how many hanging Florida chads there were). My contact with some U.S. individuals seems to revolve around the belief that their president is somehow infallible and beyond the questioning of the citizenry. If this change in policy is due to 9/11 then i'd really like to know if all of those U.S. security organizations have thwarted any terrorist threats since 9/11. Has the U.S. been under any direct threat from foreign or domestic agents since September 11, 2001, or is it more important for U.S. interests to propagate fear for their own advancement? Not so funnily enough the changes in the media landscape of the United States may before too long mean no amount of money can make your opinion heard unless you're a media mogul such as Murdoch and co.

There are some truly frightening things happening in the U.S. media landscape at the moment, the following extract is from a Boston Globe article.

".....the Federal Communications Commission is expected, by a 3-2 vote, to throw out several decades of regulation limiting media monopolies. The FCC chairman, Michael Powell, is trying to ram the vote through before wider opposition can build, short-circuiting the commission's usual public comment process. Even if legal, Powell's scheme is awful policy. If he wins, all three major networks could be owned by the same conglomerate (which could also be a defense contractor). The limits on cross-ownership of newspapers and radio and TV stations will also be lifted, as will the constraints on networks' ability to buy up local TV stations.

If you want a glimpse into this utopia, consider the deregulation of radio, which Congress enacted in 1996. Before then, the FCC limited how many stations any one company could own, and ownership was widely diversified. It took less than a decade for most US radio stations to be owned by just three conglomerates.

To see the potential for political mischief, look at what conservative radio networks did to the Dixie Chicks after their lead singer criticized President Bush. Cumulus Media banned the Chicks from its 42 country stations and some Clear Channel affiliates promoted record-trashings. Right-wing media are particularly benefiting from the new concentration. Clear Channel, with more than 1,200 radio stations, is dominant in many smaller cities. One of its top executives is a close business associate of George W. Bush. Shouldn't liberals just start a radio network of their own? Good idea, but nearly all of the stations with strong signals are taken, and they're not for sale. Here's where politics and monopoly commerce intersect.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch owns Fox, the fastest growing cable company, and just bought the dominant satellite TV company. With his control of TV programming, Murdoch will soon be in a position to squeeze local cable operators. And with the FCC's new ruling, Murdoch could also buy up the major TV networks."

Another article on this topic can be found at the Mercury News site. I like Dan Gillmor's response:

"We, the people, need to understand what's happening, and why. Then we need to get angry."

At the beginning of the month the U.S. FTC decided to hold a forum about spam and invite anyone and everyone who held an interest in either seeing it dead or proliferate even more than it has. I'm glad that there has been sufficient interest to try and think about this more on a federal level, what with those 80 or so predominantly U.S. spams I get greeted with daily in my hotmail account, it'd be nice to think it would lessen.


Anyway, on the subject of spam and the FTC, the thing that got me blowing my coffee through my nose is that the head of the FTC is a guy called Orson Swindle.


Say that really fast a couple of times.

A friend of mine is keeping a good online source of media coverage of the war in Iraq. His site is an excellent resource until i get around to writing something of my own. Unintended Consequences