Medication and Personal Autonomy

I think that a lot of discussion of medication is about its necessity and while needing medication is certainly a valid reason for wanting to fix access problems to it, I think it's also perfectly valid to just want a medication because it helps you accomplish goals that are important to you.

For example, I don't technically *need* ibuprofen a lot of the time I'm in pain. I know from experience that I can suffer through without it. Sometimes, I still do if I have any prolonged pain since I worry about the possible side effects of overusing ibuprofen (such as kidney damage, among other things), and I tend to err on the side of caution. Also sometimes other things like ginger tea can help relieve pain for me. But I also know I function much more effectively when I do take an occasional ibuprofen when I have a lot of pain, and for me it often has the strongest, fastest, and/or longest lasting effect compared to non-medication options. I also much prefer the experience of not being in pain, and I think that's an important factor even if productivity is unnecessary at the time.

People have different goals in life, and one problem with how medication is gatekept is that what those goals are and should be is chosen for you. Better to have an informed consent model and support to help minimize or manage any side effects of a medication than having someone else dictate to you what those priorities should be.

I think this is a big reason why people who need or want medication or therapy sometimes feel threatened by people in similar situations who don't. But forcing someone to take medication or go to therapy is no better than forcing someone not to do these things. Some people benefit from these things; some do not. But also, if you value a person's autonomy, you should not seek to force them to do something they don't want to do. If you value justice, it's important to acknowledge that others not only need but want different things than you. And so even if they would genuinely benefit from the treatment (or lack thereof) you think they should have, the ultimate choice should be up to them.

Everything Old is New Again

Coyote's discussion of Yesterweb makes me want to write my own manifesto for a movement to adopt aspects of the 'old' web.  I've placed old in quotes because I don't really think of the web as old.

According to CERN, Tim-Berners Lee invented the web in 1989.  Which means that there are plenty of people alive today that are older than the web.  So really, the web is young at only around 34 years old.

But just like with a person, the web has changed a lot in 30-some years, not just in size but in culture.  Some of those changes have been good.  Better security.  More capabilities.  HTML 5.  No one needs proprietary Flash anymore. But some have been bad. The lack of organization, increased corporatization, the proliferation of ads, the overreliance on highly centralized websites.

Then there are the cultural differences. Expectation that others will divulge personal information, and along with this expectations that people can and should be segregated by age even when no age-inappropriate content is present. This is one place where I feel that Yesterweb uncritically adopts modern web culture.  For example, in this description of the 32-Bit Cafe:

The 32-Bit Cafe originally started as a Discord server, an 18-and-over, safe-for-work offshoot of the Yesterweb Discord server. Alexandra had been part of conversations with adults who felt uncomfortable being in an all-ages chat server with a lot of teenagers

This feels much more like the more extreme endpoint of some of the views I've seen expressed on Tumblr than a perspective that sees value in older web culture.

The Manifesto for Yesterweb demonstrates no particular understanding or commitment of the underlying cultural trends, particularly for the less savory parts of the 'old' web.  One of its core commitments is:

The commitment to rehumanizing social relations and reversing the process of social alienation:

They further clarify this commitment with, among other things, the following statement:

 This includes unlearning dehumanizing behaviors such as treating others as potential sources of profit/assets or romantic/sexual objects without knowledge or consent

Let me just say, that whatever positive aspects the old web had, this wasn't one of them.

CW for brief discussion of sexual violence (specifics not included) under the readmore

( Read more... )

 

There's a lot more I could say about this manifesto, but I'll leave it at that for now.

All of this makes me want to develop a new manifesto that proposes a genuine engagement with the history of the web, that seeks to adopt the positive elements without ignoring the bad or seeking to replicate every element of the old web.  Here's an outline of my manifesto:

The New Old Web Manifesto

1. Inclusive but not exclusive to developing 'community'. One of the nice things about the old web was how it made lurking easy. Surfing the web *could* be social, but it often wasn't, and there was typically a higher barrier to entry to actually socializing than just making or reading a site.  Let's bring back forums and chats in an appropriately modernized way. But let's not focus on them as the only thing that made the old web great.  Let's de-Wikipedia-ize our approach to information on the web.

2. No ads. None!  Making a site where you sell your work? Fine. Plugging that site in the appropriate location in a forum or chat? Also fine.  But the use of advertising to fund a site like this is television? Absolutely *not*.

3. Decentralization. Lets revive the diversity of small sites that used to be what the old web was built on. Centralization has increasingly put the power to define and determine the direction of the web into the hands of corporate interests or large NGOs. Let's give power back to the people.

4. Human organization and curation.  Don't rely on tags as your sole method of organization. Absolutely no AI organizers or organization centered around media 'consumption' or 'virality'. Organization should be focused on helping people find what they *explicitly* state they are looking for, not trying to guess what they want. Use links to separate pages.  Absorb the concept of folders.

5. An attempt to adopt more than just surface aspects of the good elements of old web culture, while avoiding its bad elements.

6. Cultivating an interest in the actual history and culture of the 'old' web beyond superficial aesthetics.  

Anyone who wants to engage with this, feel free to!  I don't know if I'll have the time, energy, or resources myself to develop these ideas further, but I think this could be a good starting point for anyone interested in making the old web new again.