Making The Activist: Through ANY Media?
Here discusses the sincerity or validity of one of the most used, phrased and mentioned Articles of the Human Rights 1948 declaration, Article 19.
This is the 1st PART in it.
ARTCLE 19 Follows:
ARTCLE 19 of the Universal Human Rights:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
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Through any media? Media being communicative means of transmission or simply what one may use to show or project anything possible. Like an artist with his canvas, or a filmmaker with his camera.
How fantastic must it seem then, that I can use any given “media” to break through any existing “frontier” meaning where to get any sort of information across to myself and to others without there being any regard whatever to what I choose to get across and how I get it across. In other words no medium or tool should prevent me from transmitting or communicating any of the ideas in my little creative skull anywhere I please. Pause for a thought.
Is this the kind of desired freedom that should govern the world universally?
That would be the question, only if this mandate were possible in both civil and social practice and thought. Even though it may be said that this policy only pleases those already use to a democracy, which is true, it would be pushing those that are not to barriers unknown. Yet if this policy or mandate or ideal or proposition cannot work well in truth for all then at best it should work for none. If it can’t work for London, HOW should it work in Lagos? If it can’t work for In Detroit, why should it work for Laos?
If the Western forerunners that may find it easier to by pass more moralistic values than other States and countries can’t fully implement this policy into all areas of social and civil liberties from the ground up regarding all aspects of practices political or not then how can one expect the “foreign nations” without the “freedom of speech” head-start to follow on the road to world democracy -
(ie peoples freedom over the state government World Wide)?
For the person I ask myself, can this sort of policy truly follow every aspect of my life as a free-thinker? The answer I get is no, not in the least. There will always be what there has always been that is; barriers within and around, they only come in different forms but all ask the same question.
Is what I may do by the ruling State-Law always morally right?
Is it rooted in my past? What would my forefathers have done, and does it comply to God’s Laws?
That’s just my conscience speaking, but as a citizen of the State I ask myself the same question; can this sort of policy truly follow every aspect of my life as a free-liver? I ask myself, yet still I fall into the same category of no. For, I would keep in mind anytime I take any step, that I may tread on someone else’s property at the wrong times and place making me liable to another kind law "their law," and however I choose to express myself there would have to guarantee that I don’t get violence done to me just for being the “different” in "their space." Districts varying among multi-cultural communities shows the hostility to the "other" at its best or worst.
Judging from this, I am neither free to think what I may or may not do, or live what I may or may not feel to.
What this rule has managed to do aside from the fact that it has laid down what cannot be individually or universally practiced on a personal and political level is that it forced and signed other would be nations to state it as a rule, while bearing in mind that some were just gaining independence and escaping ages of unpopular, foreign and enforced governing that so indented their counties ways of life till my day.
The ironic thing is this sort of "freedom disregarding frontiers" concept never worked in my High or Secondary school where at least the creative work done there was not based on profit but merit, and if one dared to express anything peculiarly explicit that student would be ridiculed by his mates for even conceiving it, not to mention face a fail, and could even face suspension or banishment for expressing his true opinions artistic or not through any chosen medium within “the frontiers” of the academic campus. There he, the student will learn to repress not express or discipline his natural tendencies of thought and action in order to achieve what he or she is there for, good grades instead of accepting those same tendencies to use them as tools in life as he will have to learn later. Institutions such as that of the academics play a very important role in shaping our minds for how we will view the outside world.
I will then think of the term “disregarding frontiers” what this Article claims anytime I decide to post something on the internet. After all each net-community forum or group have their own set of rules that all members should comply by. If the rules are broken, well it wouldn’t be a difficult thing for the Host-end to excommunicate the law breaking community member. Just a few buttons and the law-breakers IP address shows to manipulate and eliminate their access to the forum or group. Kind of like a “Digital Exile” a bit short of a virtual-dictatorship, only in the name of whatever the forum stands for.
There aslo stands the Intellectual Property Digital Act that means I could download a bit of material only as long as I don’t keep it over a certain minimum of days and it does not get around to any one else I may intend to give. So therefore I am lent the material but not really lent, because the supposed owner still had the power over what I may do with the goods I borrowed but not really borrowed. Or even worse, is the case of a child exercising their free-given rights to chosen media within the virtual frontier who downloaded a bit of musical material by the means of their home computer then was tracked down by the same technology they used to get the desired media, and fined for it. This did not happen in Belgium or China, but closer to home in terms of freedom.
I will also then spare a thought for my right to freely communicate when I next enter the public library to distribute non-government information- on alleged government property. As I seem to remember being thrown out of a government building for publicly or freely distributing independent media non-government affiliated in broad daylight.
So isn’t a bold thing to give everybody the freedom to express themselves when it is in actual fact not possible without conflict, disregard for other parties, business and individual’s values? After all that is why parents do complain and campaign on what should be shown on national television. That is why when peculiar print media such as “fly posters” or tagging known as “graffiti” are -sanctioned- as prohibited in the public-space and will be prosecuted, while on the other hand billboards from the large companies may hypnotise the masses if they please. As seen here:
Now if I COULD NOT express my full blown opinions within a democratic environment in a public school where one starts to learn the right from the wrong then what chance have I in the real world to express myself without any help from business, that brings in income, prestige or pleasing the authorities to make me feel safe? Meaning if it sells and is popular however immoral it may be, then it can be allowed. Or if government associating powers ruled it in the rule-books then I can do it, because it is not illegal today but may have been before.
So if in high school I could not express my self personally without risk of suspension or fail and now I can’t choose to express or communicate whatever wherever however I please due to the anti-social slogan being slammed or it not being in the state-rule book then what effect is the above ruling of ARTCILE 19?...and what really is the difference between the learning institution of the academics and the everyday experience of civil-society where freedom of expression should be compromised to fit the status-quo in societies claiming democracy, Individual’s RIGHT TO freedom? Then again many societies and States are officially democratic yet yield anything but democracy.
For the School, they will prize anything that lifts their image and represents their polished slogans and for the outside world anything that the “social-popular” want is in vogue, however immoral if it pays well. The same way whatever the governing parties of any country or state mandates becomes the “allowable” however immoral or protested.
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Is article then just a status quo to keep people in place? To keep our feet on the ground or to make us feel that even though the true authority is from God and not the State, at least the State recognises everyman’s right to freedom?
How far does the State, or will State go to implement that right in light of the obvious contradictions is another question?
ONE THING THAT I CAN NEVER BE, OFFICIALY CURED, OR OFFICAILY SAVED. I AM A CHRISTIAN AND MY CONVICTIONS is that THE true freedom in us cannot be given by the State rule solely but rather by HAVING the living spirit of BROTHERHOOD DO JUSTICE from the inside out in my life, and surroundings FIRST.
This is what I feel seems to be the situation of injustice today world-wide.
A written but unpractised Liberty.
Prisoner Of Conscience ID:Resolution1948-Through ANY media? 1st Part
MY
ENTRIES