Taboo, dignity and purpose

A judge from Augsburg, in Germany, has forbidden Gunther von Hagens from showing a couple of corpses having sex in the exhibition opening this month in the city. Von Hagens, medical doctor and Professor, invented the plastination technique, which allows to preserve corpses and display them in different postures, something he has been doing for pedagogic purposes in a number of exhibitions around the world, which bear the title of Koerperwelten. The judge claims the composition with the bodies shows contempt for human dignity.

As it happens, the exhibition has been open during the whole Summer in Berlin, where it raised no controversy, and one has to wonder why this part “shows contempt for human dignity” and other bodies displayed in the same exhibition playing the saxophone or catching a rugby ball do not. Perhaps the judge was influenced by two widespread taboos which play a role here, those of sex and death. However, in this region of the world freedom of expression is a paramount social value, and prohibiting an exhibition is a serious legal decision, which here would only be justified if it actually showed “contempt for human dignity”. It seems this is not the case.

The judge appears not to have taken into account the pedagogical purpose of the Koerperwelten exhibitions, which apparently has not offended the thousands of visitors that attend them each year in different countries and continents, which surely will have different perspectives regarding the representation of death. I attended one of these exhibitions years ago in Berlin and found it fascinating and very interesting. To judge by their attitude, the hundreds of other visitors that day had similar feelings.

In matters of freedom of expression, the rule should be “everything is allowed except…”, and the list of exceptions should be a minimum one, aimed at preserving human dignity, yes, but considering the matter on a case by case basis, and always assessing from an ethical point of view the purposes of the author and the coherence of means and ends. For instance, should we allow the display of explicit images of forced sex betwen adults and children, or of a human execution, devoid of any context? I would say we should not. Should one be free to show those images in, say, a movie, a book, an exhibition, etc., maybe not explicitly, in a meaningful context and with a purpose most would deem ethically acceptable? I would say one should.

I am well aware of the many caveats raised my choice of terms -”ethically acceptable”, “assesing purposes”, “coherence”-, and that this clearly is a moral minefield. However, a liberal system of values -the one we should cherish in our liberal societies- should hold freedom as its highest moral tenet, devising criteria -as morally sound as possible- aimed at making the list of exceptions to this rule a minimum one. Otherwise, it is all paternalism and censorship.

On a final note, I must admit that even the extreme examples I gave a couple of paragraphs before are not very useful to establish the moral boundaries of what we can legitimately display in the public realm. A few years ago, I attended an art exhibition in the P.S.1 museum in New York, which showed an excerpt of an old black and white movie in one of the rooms. In the film we could see a group of white hunters aboard an helicopter, flying above a tropical forest and shooting people with their rifles - apparently, members of an indigenous tribe, who run scared in all directions. Each time they hit one of them, the hunters would celebrate it blatantly. Brutal fictional images, I thought. However, these images became breathtakingly disgusting when minutes after I read the movie was not fictional: it was part of a recovered footage of real human hunting in the Amazon forest in the 70s, hunting for pleasure, as in a normal sport. Perhaps the judge of Augsburg would have censored this exhibition if it had taken place in his city, and for the very same reasons that lead him to censor part of von Hagens´ exhibition, but in doing so, he would have served very poorly the cause of human dignity, for the message the artist wanted to convey when showing this real movie -the radical, unthinkable and utmost inhumanity we could express towards our fellow individuals- reached this visitor deeply, and more so when this message was devoid of any obvious context (just the screen and some brief lines stating it was a real movie). The film itself rendered any description redundant from a moral point of view. Was this bare displaying obscene? Yes, it was. But it made us reflect on something -respect for human life- we carelessly take for granted, and this reflection started in our guts. Nothing short of sheer revulsion could have had such a moral effect.

Photo: Two corpses at the Koerperwelten exhibit in Berlin, 2009 © Koerperwelten.de

A shameful dictator

Our little dictator does not give a damn about life -among many other reasons due to his close contacts with the mafia-, though he says he will do anything he can to keep alive an Italian citizen who has been in a coma for the last 17 years and who had previously expressed his will to be let die if she ever encountered herself in that situation. Our little dictator does not give a damn about freedom, for the same reason, nor has the least degree of respect for others, since he insulted repeatedly her father, accusing him of a vile attempted murder because keeping her daughter alive apparently would be costing him a lot of money. Our little dictator does not give a damn about the separation of powers in a democratic State, since he is willing to reverse the rulings of the Italian Supreme Court overnight -something the parliament cannot do-, to govern by decree, threatening the members of government who do not agree with him, and to change the Italian Constitution also overnight, that is, he is willing to confront any constitutional powers who oppose his decision to keep this individual alive at all costs. Our little dictator does not give a damn about legality, in this case or in any other case, since his self-proclaimed goal is to change Italian political structures in order the government -that is, him- faces no constitutional hurddles to impose its ruling. This comes as no surprise, since he entered politics to change every single law that could get him in jail due to his endless number of illegalities while running his businesses. Our little dictator is a successful man, since he has managed to change all these democratic rules and stay out of jail despite the hundreds of legal processes he has been involved in. Our little dictator does not give a damn about christian morality, since he has publicly acknowledged to have broken every possible catholic principle a number of times, those regarding with sexual fidelity in particular, yet he did not hesitate to always align his policies with the official positions of the Vatican -which does not care at all if he is a sinner, a thief or a murderer if he can help the institution to upheld its power-, Italy having the most regressive social legislation in Western Europe as a result. Our little dictator does not give a damn about women since, among many other reasons, he has repeatedly justified rape, saying happily in recent times, for example, that nothing can be done about it since the Italian women are the ‘più belle delle mondo’.

Shame on our little dictator. Shame on everyone who voted for him throughout these years. Shame on the political parties conforming the so called opposition, which are not able to defend dignity, legality and truth in front of this liberticide who mocks any conceivable kind of freedom and human decency.

Photo © tulipanonero

European paternalism

These may be unimportant news… or perhaps not. Adducing a certain research on the dangers of listening to loud music in mp3 devices, the European Commission wants to limit the decibels such electronic gadgets may reach, effectively banning the manufacturing and distribution of the more powerful ones in the European markets.

Nice the most top political institution in Europe pays attention to our health in such trivial matters. However, should it not devote its energy to the issues it has a explicit mandate over? Why governmental bodies find it so difficult to differentiate between making information relevant to our private daily lives available and ruling on private matters? Why they often cross the boundaries of their legitimate and beneficial informative functions -no objections to the Commission diffusing the aforementioned study- to become paternalistic organizations that feel entitled to control private decisions that affect only the individuals making them, not to speak of broadly distort markets?

Since all answers given to these questions throughout history have to do with the accumulation and use of power, this fact highlights the importance of states observing neutrality over different conceptions of what may be regarded as a personal good life, and of limiting governmental authority, in particular when it comes to the undisputable core of our private realm.

Photo: ‘Bossanova ‘84: Orwell’s world’, 2008 © Manuel Todde

Happy birthday, my friend

Today my friend Tom turns eighty-eight. For a variety of reasons, I have seldom contacted him lately, but I did not want to miss out the chance to express publicly my respect, my admiration and my personal gratitude to him. Tom is probably not only the world´s most important expert in psychiatry, psychoanalysis and personal and social behaviour, but also the person who has had the most significant impact on worldwide generations of social researchers, politicians, physicians, and scholars worried about the increasing medicalization of society and the progressive loss of our basic liberties on the medical-political Establishment´s hands. However, forgive me if I do not devote this space to praising his public figure right now. Check out any of the two-million Google search references with his name, or, better still, visit his website, The Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility, if you want to know about his intellectual stature, his dozens of books, and hundreds of articles and speeches. Read his texts. You will realize that, the number of his works being almost immeasurable, what makes a difference is what he says, rather than how many times he says it. I am not going to talk about his magnum opus either. There are many studies, articles and reviews on The Myth of Mental Illness (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1961) and the importance of this paramount work in the medical, social, political, and philosophical fields. What I really want to do is to talk very briefly about the Tom I had the pleasure to meet some years ago. Actually, I ‘met’ him before actually meeting him, when I read for the first time Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market (New York: Praeger, 1992), and became fascinated by the logical strength of his arguments. Then The Myth of Mental Illness, The Meaning of Mind (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), and many other of his books contributed to change the way I had thought about personal freedom issues for good. Since I started reading him and, later on, communicating with him, I have never come accross a single book, article, letter or piece of text that has not left me thinking, reflecting, and later wondering how on earth someone could possibly write such a number of masterworks. In 2001, I had the honor of translating into Spanish his book Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), and a year later I visited him in his hometown in upstate New York. I will never forget how nicely and kindly he greeted and showed us around the amazing national park surrounding Syracuse, his brilliant reasoning in our conversations, and the peaceful atmosphere of his beautiful house in the middle of a forest in the town of Manlius. I have never meet anyone with such intelligence and mental strength, and, at the same time, equally high principles, decency, kindness, and sense of humour.

Dear Tom, I hope you have had the best of birthdays, full with the love of your family, and surrounded by the Spring colors of the amazingly beautiful trees of your place. We do not forget you in this side of the Atlantic.

All the best,

Photo: Thomas S. Szasz, Syracuse, New York, 2002 © www.szasz.com

It wasn´t me, mummy!

Last month, a canadian woman won a lawsuit she had filed against a man. It was a very special lawsuit, since she was suing the dealer who sold her the drugs she overdosed with. The woman, Sandra Bergen, now 23, bought from Clinton Davey some crystal meth in Biggar, Saskatchewan, in 2004, and then smoke it with him. She had consumed the substance before, and claims she was addicted to it back then. After smoking it for a while, she felt very sick, and wound up in hospital, in a coma. She eventually got out of it and decided to sue her dealer. She accused Davey of knowing “the drug was highly addictive and harmful” without letting her know, and of intentionally wanting to “inflict physical and mental suffering” to her. She also named as a defendant the person who supplied the drugs to her dealer. In the pre-trial examination process, Davey refused to reveal who provided him with the drug and, facing the threat of a contempt-of-court charge, he agreed to have his statement of defence struck, de facto admitting his liability. That lead to Sandra Bergen legal victory. A future trial will determine the amount she will be awarded in damages. According to her statement of claim she is seeking more than $50,000.

Leaving aside some paradoxical aspects of this legal process (i.e.: may an individual be accused of breaking an implicit contract -“you give me something which I will enjoy and will not hurt me and I will give you money in exchange”- when the whole transaction is illegal, to begin with? I would really like to hear from any legal expert regarding this question), the case exemplifies perfectly well the extent towards which freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. Freedom entails choosing among different courses of action and different possible outcomes, hence the need to assume responsibilities for those choices. Mrs. Bergen wants to be free to consume crystal meth, knowing such behavior carries some risks linked to the frecuency and amount of the drug comsumption, to her own physical condition in relation to the drug´s effect, and to the substance composition. In any case, no one forced her to buy and consume the drug. If she was not sure about the mentioned circunstances, she should not have bought it. However, she did it, voluntarily, and claiming she was addicted to the drug does not change the fact that it was a voluntary act. Addiction does not really exist, since any comsumption habit may be stopped (all of a sudden or in a short period of time, depending on the substance, doses and lenght of comsumption) if the consumer chooses to do so. When the undesired outcome materializes, Mrs. Bergen refuses to admit she is the only responsible for it, and starts looking for someone else to blame (her dealer, his supplier), seeking compensation.

If so called recreational drugs were legal (actually, drugs have always been legal except for the past 80 years, the years of the prohibition crusade), they would have to display an accurate description of its components and detailed administration instructions. Failing to do so would result in the banning of its commercialization, and frauds would be prosecuted. However, governments have chosen to keep the production, distribution and consumption of drugs illegal out of paternalism and other reasons, thus effectively making children out of us adults when it comes to making an informed choice about which substances we want to consume. In this day and age, it is not us who decide what we wish or is convenient to put into our bodies, but our governments, which restrict our freedom and our responsibilities in our supposed best interest. Needless to say, many adults are only too happy to relinquish as many responsibilities for their actions as possible.

As in the case of the woman who sued Starbucks Co. because she scalded herself when spilling the coffee she had just bought at one of its stores, and many other such examples (obese consumers suing McDonald´s after years of happily visiting its restaurants or lung cancer patients proceeding against the tobacco companies which provided them with so many smoky pleasures come easily to one´s mind), Mrs. Bergen´s case conjures up the tender image of a child who mischievously breaks his favourite toy. With weeping eyes, he will run to his mother, denying the evidence and pointing the finger at something or someone else instead: “Please mummy, fix it! It wasn´t my fault! I didn´t do anything…!”

P.S.: Besides her legal victory, and the money going with it, Mrs. Bergen´s story has yet another happy ending: she got a job and a purpose in life. Now she tours the country speaking of her experience for “38 cents a kilometer or airfare” and “$250 honorarium (negotiable)”, “in order to educate whom ever, where ever” about the dangers of drug consumption!

Photo: ‘Black Opium’ cover, illustrated by Robert Maguire © The Book Palace