Humanity, Culture, Life

Here is a video of a windmill being broken by storm in Hornslet, Denmark:

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek talking about the phenomenal movie Children of Men:

BBC News has posted an article regarding the use of and subsequent outrage regarding high-pitched auditory devices that allow individuals to effectively disperse crowds of young people by playing tones which only young ears are consciously sensitive to.

From the article:

The devices, which exploit the fact that a person’s ability to hear high frequencies generally declines once they reach their 20s, have proved popular with councils and police who aim to tackle anti-social behaviour by using them to disperse groups of youths.

But a new campaign called “Buzz off”, led by the children’s commissioner for England and backed by groups including civil liberties group Liberty, is calling for them to be scrapped.

As with a few of the organizations outlined in the article, I believe that using these kinds of devices in public or private settings is patently wrong. It appears that our perspective on dealing with modern youth can be rather easily summed up as one of complete disinterest until the personal discomfort of the “mature” leads to annoyance. The fact that many of these devices are being used in commercial centers in the UK is laughable. Indeed, it is becoming more and more evident that our own “need” to consume in the peaceful confines of shopping malls, replete with painstakingly designed and tested advertisements saddled with complimentary muzak to create feelings of indifference towards our spending, has replaced our understanding of one of our foundational rights; that of our own cognitive liberty.

It strikes me that the concept of cognitive liberty, which I believe is the paramount philosophical creation of the human mind, is the liberty in which all other liberties swim with impunity. Without it as a foundation and breeding ground for thought, other liberties, such as free speech and the freedom of religion, become nothing more than good intentions bolstered by empty rhetoric. To subject another human without permission or warning to a sound with the intent of actively disrupting their thought process and, in some cases, causing them some deal of physical discomfort seems to be another sign of a potentially scary future. This seems especially true when the individuals utilizing these dispersion techniques are doing so out of concern for the material goods they’re peddling. The scary future exemplified by not only intentions of these kinds of devices, but by the lack of foresight of the men and women who bring them to the table as good solutions is something to take into great consideration as we continue to turn our understanding of the human body and technology against the people who will one day be asked to better it.

Scientific American posted an article entitled “Psychedelic Healing?” about the potential medical and psychiatric benefits of a number of different psychedelics. While the staff of humemes does not support the widespread, unrestricted use of any psychedelic compounds, psychedelic research has been going for for nearly 50 years and has shown incredible signs of being effective in helping to curb or stop many different mental ailments. As discussed in Dr. Rick Strassman’s book DMT: The Spirit Molecule it has become increasingly hard for researchers to get their hands on a number of these compounds due to their legal status. It strikes me as odd that we allow our war on drugs to extend to only a certain number of compounds while so many others are left open to scrutiny and testing.

An excerpt from the article:

The past 15 years have seen a quiet resurgence of psychedelic drug research as scientists have come to recognize the long-underappreciated potential of these drugs. In the past few years, a growing number of studies using human volunteers have begun to explore the possible therapeutic benefits of drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, ibogaine and ketamine.

Much remains unclear about the precise neural mechanisms governing how these drugs produce their mind-bending results, but they often produce somewhat similar psychoactive effects that make them potential therapeutic tools. Though still in their preliminary stages, studies in humans suggest that the day when people can schedule a psychedelic session with their therapist to overcome a serious psychiatric problem may not be that far off.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Holidays and work have been really kicking my ass as of late. C’est la vie. On a brighter note, 10ZenMonkeys has thrown up a piece written by the late, great Robert Anton Wilson entitled, “Santa’s Crimes Against Humanity.”

An excerpt:

It wasn’t the first time Mr. Claus got the boot from a Christian congregation. Pope John XXIII threw the suspiciously merry old clown out of the Roman Catholic church back in the late 1960s. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have always denounced Santa for his unsavory pagan past. (They also recognized Christmas trees as phallic symbols long before Freud.) Many fundamentalists believe that all pagan gods are basically one false god — the same demon in different disguises — and they think the disguise is thin in the case of this particular elf. It only takes a minor letter switch, they point out, to reveal Santa Claus as SATAN Claus.

I sort of think the fundies have it right for once. Santa not only has an unsavory pagan ancestry but a rather criminal family history all around. Let me Illuminize you…

I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season.