“Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory,” said Noreen Hajinlian, the principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., who banned hugging two years ago. “It was needless hugging — they are in the hallways before they go to class. It wasn’t a greeting. It was happening all day.”

What a fucking tool. Oh my god people like her make me angry. Brings up old feelings of resistance from high school — but I can’t flout these rules, since I’m not at their schools. And no-one, absolutely no-one in the school system — not parents, PTA, teachers, administrators, school board — wants to hear what I think about it. They’d tell me to butt out of something which isn’t my business. But isn’t an injustice anywhere a threat to justice everywhere? Just like there is a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy regarding police officers and non-authoritarians — i.e. non-authoritarians are not drawn to or made to feel welcome to become police officers — just so there is a similar problem with school administrators. Too much, school systems attract small minds apparently incapable of respecting basic human decency and freedom.

I have been searching for a word which succinctly describes similar attitudes. Not “evil,” right? Not “well-meaning but misguided” because we’re talking about their unimaginative, uncommitted small-mindedness actively causing problems. Self-serving, yes, but it’s not necessarily conscious. Like, the Republicans are evil, and a few of the Democrats, but mostly the Democrats are just ______ (small-minded? uncourageous?). I feel sometimes like I’m awash in a sea of mediocrity, which is more infuriating than the tide of evil we also fight: enemies are enemies and have a locus to target or avoid, but the diffuse nature of mediocre power de-fuses our prime energies. They soak it up, frustrate it, demoralize … I don’t even want to be the principal of a school — what, merely to avoid being an asshat? (As opposed to: I’d definitely love to be senator.)

Each of the positions put forth in the NYT’s Room For Debate blog is articulate, well-considered, and is internally / logically consistent. This is rarely the case in the public debates I am familiar with. So often (read: virtually always) the “controversies” we discuss are not nearly so nuanced: it is usually pretty easy to tell who is wrong, especially with even a small amount of actual knowledge of the subject. An extreme example is gay rights, which has only one valid position. Less extreme is global warming, where there can and should be legitimate debates about what exactly to do, but where too often the debate is between truth on the one hand and lies and misrepresentations on the other.

But as the essays linked to above show, there seem to be actual debates to be had about international adoption. None of the six commentators seem to quite agree with any of the others, and the positions of some are completely, 100% opposed. And on the face all make sense. And the differences are philosophical as well as practical: about principles, law, facts, psychology.

This is a complex and nuanced question which I had frankly not given much thought at all. Still might not (I’m working on getting a hold on singularities, identity, and nothingness), but I love the puzzle. A great argument stemming from psychology might be overridden if the facts show it doesn’t apply in the majority of cases; a legal argument might just as well show that the law is unjust as that the behavior in question is wrong; a principled stand about what is best for the child may run head-first into corruption.

This is one issue where there are incompatible arguments from people I might otherwise be inclined to believe; someone will have to convince me through education and argument. Obvious? Not really. I don’t need to know what they’re talking about to know that Gov. Pawlenty or Dick Cheney are wrong.

And, as is their wont, they use a a large number of big words to say really very little. This behavior they would no doubt describe as “erudite” or “learned” or “reasoned and measured.” I think they’re compensating for lack of imagination and inability to structure their rhetoric in sync with their arguments, but that’s just, like, my opinion, man. Even in this case, which is pretty simple, they manage to make it almost sound like they’re not supporting it:

“We ought not pretend that there is no downside to legalization, much less allow ourselves to be seduced by the arguments of the marijuana-is-good-for-you camp[.]“

“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”

Wow. I’m amazed. It takes a lot of political courage to say that. It will take even more to follow through in concrete policy changes. Hopefully this isn’t part of the Obama administration’s alarming tendency to talk the good talk but walk the same old walk. But I’m impressed nonetheless.

Minor critique: He takes a mainstream liberal point of view, which is that people’s perceptions of the government are negative, and we have to do something to change people’s perceptions, but the perception is not a substantive critique — I may feel like the government is perpetrating a racist, classist war, but I just need to be educated. People “see” the war as a war on them, and we should show them how really we’re not at war with them. We are, of course, actually at war with the American people, and Kerlikowske doesn’t admit that. He can’t, so I don’t really blame him. And it’s a step forward to at least say that we don’t want to be at war with ourselves.

And insofar as this shows that Kerlikowske won’t be propagating the myths, lies, and propaganda that we’ve been fed for decades now, we can count this as a major development. A victory, even. The Long War, declared by Nixon and escalated ever since, is finally over, at least in narrative. All that’s left now is to make the specific policy changes to end it in practice. We need to disarm.

In other words, this is huge. Very huge.

This is not so obvious as it may seem. A particular drug may be prescribed by a doctor, in which case it is assumed that, taken as directed, it is not abuse to use it. And the assumption is that any drug use — even of prescription drugs — outside of the prescription system is automatically abusive. This is transparently false, and is easily refuted by daily experience. These beliefs about abuse are totally beholden to a medico-political regime which is seen as objective, scientific, disinterested when in fact the complex network of institutions and practices which form it are inherently saturated with power, ideology, and interest.

Even addiction is a fuzzy concept, with no clear definition which is universally applicable. At least, none I’ve seen. It’s not enough to say that drug use becomes abuse when addiction becomes involved; otherwise I would be a drug abuser for my daily caffeine intake. I know some people would say that I am a caffeine abuser, but I do not receive the general approbrium of my fellows that I would if I were addicted to heroin instead. Even if I was just as effective at my job.

So it is relatively easy to destroy “addiction” and “drug abuse” as having objective scientific validity — after all, these are social diseases, and their definition, identification, treatment, and punishment are constituted of strategic social relations. But it is not so easy to create a useful definition for “drug abuse.” One questions the need for such a definition, which would seem to serve a (purely?) normative function within a system of control, identification, and segmentation.

But it may be that we need ethical concepts of self-abuse to help people manage their drug-body-mind interactions. For just as the falsity and interestedness of the medical/judicial stranglehold on processes of legitimation and approval/disapproval of drugs and their uses is made clear by only a modicum of lived experience, so I cannot deny the negative effects that drug use continues to have for many people. Alcoholism and drug abuse are distinct dangers for those who choose to consciously alter their consciousness, even if we can’t define the danger scientifically.

It’s just that too often the questions we ask are, “Who is addicted? What are they addicted to? Who is prone to addiction? How do we prevent drug abuse?” We should be asking, “What forms of use and methods of self-control can be created and learned?What social harm can come from my drug use, and how can I minimize or avoid that harm?”

It’s not enough for a drug to be legal or illegal. It’s not enough to define “good” drugs and “bad” drugs, or “good” people and “bad” abusers. We must work out methods of behavioural self-control and social practices of encouragement and discouragement which lead to a saner, more interesting, and less fucked-up world. How do we help people avoid abusive relationships with drugs? vs. How do we define and control “addicts”?

We will have to be open to ideas from abnormal and sometimes dubious quarters. Drugs are too important to be left to the doctors. We may find that we have lesson to be learned from those we have forced underground, those on the fringes, those who have been dealing with these issues without the watchful eye of the clinician.

Parker takes a nuanced conservative view of abortion, where she uneasily allows it to be legal. This is the correct position for those opposed to abortion to take, and Parker deserves credit for not fully supporting the government’s interference with the intimate details of women’s bodies. So I don’t want to pile on her too heavily, but she gets it so wrong I have to comment.

She says, “It has always seemed to me that the truest form of feminism, as in the earliest days of suffrage, would be to hold abhorrent the state-sanctioned destruction of women’s unique life-bearing gifts. Out of material expedience, we’ve somehow managed to convince ourselves that life is a mistake.”

So legalized abortion is the “destruction of women’s unique life-bearing gifts”? It’s not like the government is sending thugs around to tear out women’s wombs. Yes, child-bearing is an ability men (mostly) lack, but that does not justify the eradication of women’s autonomy and self-determination. This is a problem a lot of conservatives / pro-lifers have, because their underlying mindset is not truly feminist but is conservative / militaristic / totalitarian — ‘We had to lock up the woman to save her ovaries.’ And no-one is saying “life” is a mistake — only that women shouldn’t be forced to bear children against their will.

Conservatives sometimes claim support from some old-school women’s suffragists as an appeal to authority in support of their feminism. While it may be true that Susan B. Anthony and others were opposed to abortion, there’s no need for modern feminists to accept or believe everything our forebears believed; we’ve learned a lot since the 19th century. The leaders of the past should not exert a stranglehold on the future. (Even Barack Obama espouses a position on homosexual marriage that will be widely seen as backward in the not-too-distant future.) ‘If you see the Buddha on the path, kill him.’ Good advice when dealing with spiritual leaders, and absolutely critical when dealing with people who fall short of the Bodhisattva ideal …

Conservatives are too quick to tell us what feminism really is. This is a problem some on the Left have, too, but that’s more on the order of internecine squabbling and (relatively minor) turf wars. Not to put down the importance of some of those debates, but the Right represents a far more dangerous threat to the well-being and freedom of humanity. And their attempts to define the terms of debate to suit them have been very successful — see the plight of the word “liberal”. I don’t think they will be so successful with “feminism,” but against such threats an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of vicious struggle.

And sometimes the delta turns back on itself, and the density of thought turns into a swamp — a vast, unwieldy apparatus. Currents undercut and interpenetrate to such an extend that the river just collapses, spreads out. No longer a haven of deep water for proud and modern ships, but not dry and parched like the vapid and insipid mainland, the swamp-book becomes a contradiction: not an easily used tool, not a functional ideological object, and yet still murky and grimy like the most well-worn of implements. The passions and internal contradictions are such that the conventional style of the river cannot hold you, even in its broadest and most humid of forms. Neither implementation nor beautification. Sometimes the words get away from you, and you are left standing knee deep in the mud you’ve created of your cultural heritage.

Let us play in the mud and get dirty.

But the notion of a right to “freedom of speech” is misleading. Yes, this legal hack helps to protect people, but it goes only so far: it is a negative right, serving merely to constrain the activities of the government. While direct government censorship is rare in the United States, the discursive activities of its inhabitants are not “free.” The power to censor or repress is certainly a mighty one, but I would argue that it is not the primary way in which people are subjected to control. Power carries its effects not only as a limit or restraint: power networks are creative, too, and this positive effect is not always welcome. (Hat tip to Michel Foucault.)

Example: School students certainly are subject to censorship and prohibition; but even more they are the victims and subjects of a great proliferation of speech. Teachers, parents, school officials, doctors, counselors, police: what they say, how they say it, to whom they speak, which boxes they pencil in and which they leave blank — these constitute potent methods of control. And the speech which is required of you — who cares if you have the right to remain silent? If you do not speak, they will happily speak for you. The negative right of free speech does nothing to protect you. Indeed, free speech can be a cover which enables others to speak over you, for you, to you, about you. The phone call from principal to parent; the parent-teacher conference; the report card. What right protects you? What right can ever protect you from these reports and conferences of control?

(In fact, we may find that one of the prime functions of the First Amendment’s rights to speech and assembly is to serve as an ideological spine-stiffener. The actual legal protections promised by the First Amendment are not themselves universally available or homogenously deployed; but the general understanding that you can say and write whatever you want helps give people determination and the moral / mental force they need to mount their resistance. Rights bear great moral weight, and so can sometimes be used to sway those who otherwise don’t give two shits about you. Rights are activist tarbabies — if you can trick your interlocutor to violate your right, you’ve got them, but all it requires to nullify your power is to stay just outside the boundaries of Violation. Skirting the edges of the range of your weapon … )

Rights are powerful and often effective discursive and legal tools of resistance. They allow groups and individuals to push back against direct domination and certain types of government actions. It is proper to seek out and secure our rights. But the rights discourse completely bypasses whole realms of power relations which together influence and determine our lives in profound ways. Rights help you only insofar as the power networks you find yourself caught in are primarily juridical, or can be moved to that sphere. They give you something to hang on to; a cause of action or someone to sue; they are shields and rallying points, if you can somehow force your opponents to focus in and get trapped. But we need more pivots and handles than any regime of rights can ever supply. We need to branch out and find other tools of resistance — and perhaps more imaginative applications for the discourses and legal constructs we already live within.

I want more attention paid to our concrete experiences of resistance and more focus on what untapped opportunities we can find for (Memetics is an interesting field in this vein.)

Questions: Can rights have effects greater than the narrow ones I allow them? Might it be helpful to have a “medical bill of rights” (or “fill-in-the-blank bill of rights”)? Was this all too abstract, requiring more and more blog posts to make sensible?

Our visions of the Future have long been filled with hope — and fraught with anxiety. For thousands of years humans have sought insight into the workings of the future and the truth of their fate. Out of such seekings have emerged many oracles and prophets. Almost all of those people are dead. Most of them were wrong.

I do not claim to make predictions about the future. The future is not monolithic, and it cannot be mapped out. I speculate, and I hope I make informed speculations. “I can already see where this is going…” I try to trace out possibilities and potentialities. I hope to be helpful and add my own little shove to reality in the general direction of beauty — and survival.

In order to speak of the future we need to have some idea of the past. History is a cultural product of supreme flexibility, and we have to beware of the stories and narratives we are told (and the ones we tell). If we do not contest history, we implicitly cede it to those who would turn it against us. “Even if you don’t care about history, history cares about you.” The history of the future is already being written, and we must not let it be scripted by those who do not have our best interests at heart.

Given the scale of our modern 7 billion-plus global society, most of us think our actions are too small to matter. But history — and therefore the present and the future — is emergent from our local, micro-political games. Small events feed into larger flows feed into larger movements which topple regimes and create new horizons.

The world is changing at an accelerating pace. This great mass has truly gargantuan inertia; we cannot hope to stop it. A new world presses against our backs, waiting to be born, and as it gasps and erupts there will be (are) many opportunities — where a little push can go a long way. There will be (is) simple scurrying in desperation not to get killed; there will be (is) great ‘profit’ potential, as old structures are swept away and new ones (some non-capitalist) created; there will be (are) openings in which to shove a wedge to widen spaces for freedom. The inertia of the present may very well blow up the past, creating moments of uncertainty — where past, present, and future meld into possibility.

This blog hopes to explore some of those avenues of escape.