“I am tempted to ‘go rogue’ and demand that students compose all their work in a state of unalloyed drug-induced psychosis. At least it might shake up dull formulations such as: ‘This essay will look at the question of…’ and ‘In conclusion, Socrates was an important thinker…’ I blame the system. Of course I do.” – Nina Power
Wired on “Gandhi Pills,” University of Sheffield’s Sean Spence case for morality enhancing drugs. He believes drugs might “target and increase a prosocial feeling and behaviour such as ‘kindness.’”
The Dystopic Hippie Election Movie That Might Have Stopped the Twenty-sixth Amendment
Right now, Germany is considering eliminating its voting age requirement. This is a great idea. The American Scene had a post a few months ago explaining why crazy as it sounds at first, kids are no less irrational in their preferences than adults:
I think another age barrier would be just as senseless as the one we have now. Kids should be able to get the vote when they decide they want the vote. A child who is old enough to vote (and who is a better judge of that than himself?) should be able to walk into his friendly neighborhood voting registration office and register for himself.
Does this mean the FLDS could become a viable voting block? Well, maybe. But:
each electoral system is skewed a certain way. Britain’s first past the post system under-represents many groups, and of course much has been said about the American Electoral College (note that I support both first past the post and the Electoral College); proportional party list voting, supposed to be most representative, gives disproportionate influence to small, niche parties (Israel, anyone?). Today’s system essentially amounts to a vote subsidy (which then turns into a cash subsidy) to the old. Giving kids the vote would correct skewed voting, not introduce it.With all these practicalities also taken into account, the final (and best) argument I can think of for giving kids the vote is simply one person one vote. It’s as simple as that. In a democracy, each person should have a vote. Children are persons. They should get the vote. The principle is straightforward enough, and I see no way to escape it.
You can read a lot of the comments here and here, but generally the only reason I think this could be a bad idea in practice is an obscure hippie dystopia-comedy called Wild in the Streets.
It’s based on a short story by Robert Thom (Death Race 2000) called “The Day it All Happened, Baby.” I can’t find the text online, but the title should give you some idea how it plays.
Rock star Max Frost wages a youth revolt after discovering “52% of America is under 25! They’re the minority! We’re the majority!” The kids rally together, first by electing the oldest of their friends to Congress. These 25 years old representatives make up a majority, and vote to lower the age limits. As Frost’s pothead girlfriend in a Paul Revere hat says, “Ask….for the constitution….to be…amended…to … uhh….” She bangs the drum. “We suggest the required age for a representative….be 14….for senete ….be 14….for president, 14.”
And they do it. Soon enough, Max Frost is elected United States president. “You’re part of that alcoholic generation, Dad,” a smirking kid says to his father, “But dig, I got the vote now, man.”
If you watch any of these YouTube clips, make it this one, with the campaign song, “14 or Fight”
It’s much stranger than The Trip or I Love You Alice B Toklas, or anything else I’ve seen from this era. Because rather than just playing out the absurdity of a twenty-something rock star president, things go all Lord of the Flies, and President Frost decides to send those old squares to internment camps where they are forced to take LSD. Cause they deserve it, those “sneaky panther olds!”
Everyone over the age of 30 is sent away, unless they pass as under 30 cause that means they’re cool, dig? “They’re heavy with honey and they can’t fly. You better believe me. they can’t fly!” President Frost explains to anyone who might think the internment camps are a touch insensitive.
Not to say he’s any less articulate than the sitting president, but the script clearly never saw a second draft. It’s chock full of gems like, “What about the chicks? nobody gave them the vote. they fought for it…we got the old tigers scared baby, because right now we outnumber the fuzz and we outnumber the shopkeepers…we can take them out, baby.”
It’s consistently bleak. Leading up to the grand idea of LSD camps, the “heads” joke about assasinating people in congress. And Shelley Winters has this disturbing LCD meltdown:
As you can see, she’s wearing a Peace sign patch on her sleeve. Hmm. Enforcing the LSD camps are black clad soldiers. The Holocaust insinuation becomes clearer when you watch some “olds” crying as they hide in a basement. Or maybe it’s an overblown comparison to slavery — they talk about finding an old person “underground railroad” to Mexico or Canada.
But hey, it’s cool. President Frost says, chill, he’s just trying to “create the most purely hedonistic society the world has ever known.”
Ummm….What exactly is this film trying to say?
Having watched it in its entirety, I am totally convinced this was all an elaborately staged pro-Nixon operation. And it’s a good thing it never found a wider audience, because it might have prevented the twenty-sixth amendment from passing three years later. “Hey man, we fight for our country at 18, we should vote at 18,” is a lot less convincing an argument coming from a tie-dye t-shirt-wearing dude with a pipe in his hand.
Wild in the Streets is the most coherent argument for political “experience” ever made. I’m now paranoid the GOP might find a way to start playing it on TBS Sunday afternoons as a super subversive Swiftboat attack. The Freepers, unsurprisingly, are at it, suggesting Barack Obama borrow the line “Who in America can resist the clarion call of youth? Never has it been so brazenly sounded. Experience? It has brought you nothing. Max Frost has told you that. Down with experience!” for his next speech.
Previously:
The New Wave of Neural-Advertising in Michael Crichton’s “Looker”
Oliver Stone’s Prescient SFnal Scientology Critique
Related links:
- Youth cults in film and fiction
- Dan Graham’s Don’t Trust Anyone Over Thirty
- Germany Considers Voting Rights For Kids, NPR
- “Voting age” in Wikipedia
Brion Gyson, who invented and later taught William Burroughs the cut-up technique, also gave Alice B. Toklas the recipe for her now famous brownies.
“I just found out army bases don’t want to carry the book because they think the skeleton’s smoking a joint. So the publisher had to call them and explain that the painting was done in like 18-something and that they didn’t have joints then—it’s a hand-rolled cigarette.” – David Sedaris on the Van Gogh cover art for When You Are Engulfed in Flames. (via.)
A drug in clinical trials could potentially grow new neurons in the brain. BrainCells “hopes the compounds will provide an alternative to existing antidepressants and says they may also prove effective in treating cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s.”
Fruit and Colors
This week the New York Times wrote about miracle fruit, the West Africa berry thats been dazzling foodies by radically altering their taste buds. It’s set to revolutionize dieting (although we’ve heard that one before,) but for now it’s a cool party trick.
After eating a berry, bitter and sour foods taste sweet. Cheeses, Brussels sprouts, mustard, vinegars, pickles, dark beers all tasted chocolate-y or fruity to the “40 or so people who were tasting under the influence of a small red berry called miracle fruit at a rooftop party in Long Island City, Queens, last Friday night.” Even Tabasco sauce tasted like “doughnut glaze.”
The language “under the influence” is intentional. Many have compared the experience to tripping. But there’s something so darned virginal about it. The hippies had acid, Montmartre had absinthe. Making food taste radically different is awesome, but it isn’t transgressive. No one’s ever going to paint Starry Night or write Naked Lunch after trying it. Plus, there’s no known danger in taking it — it’s a fruit after all.
Jacob Grier, food blogger, magician, and think tanker, has written quite a lot about miracle fruit over the past few years. There’s more at the blog where he contributes, EatFoo. One EatFoo writers says, “If you have the choice, go for the magic mushrooms, but otherwise miracle fruit is one of the weirdest food-induced experiences one can have. It’s like some weird new experiment from Willy Wonka’s factory, only Willy Wonka is some shady horticulturist from Fort Lauderdale known to the world only through his cryptic messages on obscure gardening blogs. But he came through.” (The “shady horticulturist” is Curtis Mozie, who charges $1 per fruit.)
What’s most really amazing about it, is our sense of taste is so influenced by visual stimulus. Most of us have a little bit of synesthesia. John Stosell once had his 20/20 interns take a blind taste test, arranged by Brian Wansink, author of the book Mindless Eating. Wansink, a Cornell food science professor, asked them which of two cups of yoghurt “had more strawberry.” Everyone answered one or the other.
It turns out it was vanilla yoghurt mixed with chocolate syrup of varying concentrations. Nobody noticed it wasn’t “strawberry” at all (well, partly because out unnatural “fruit” flavors are pretty arbitrary.)
Around the same time I was reading the article on miracle fruit, I was reviewing some of my delicio.us bookmarks on color theory. Every stoner has wondered, “is my orange, your blue?” But few people realize the answer — sort of — exists. People have a varying number of color-sensitive cones in the human retina, yet the brain tends to perceive them all the same way. Medical Optics researchers viewed the cones the pick up specific colors and found for the tests individuals, they all asked similarly depending on the color they were given to look at. (Of course, if you’re stoned you can debate whether this is the chicken or the egg for eternity.)
This isn’t a total digression from miracle fruit. Another experiment from the same researchers, involved several several people wearing colored contacts. After a little while adjusting, they reported they were seeing colors normally, as their eyes had adjusted. But researchers found that wasn’t the case. Under scrutiny, “even when not wearing the contacts, they all began to select a pure yellow that was a different wavelength than they had before wearing the contacts.” The researcher explained, “Over time, we were able to shift their natural perception of yellow in one direction, and then the other…This is direct evidence for an internal, automatic calibrator of color perception. These experiments show that color is defined by our experience in the world, and since we all share the same world, we arrive at the same definition of colors.”
So, I wonder if it’s not that the effect of miracle fruit really wears off after an hour, so much as our perception adjusts? I’d love to see a scientific study of it. In any case, I’m really astonished that it exists and works…. and can’t wait to try it myself.
- Christopher Williams, Untitled 2000
- John Baldessari, Six Colorful Inside Jobs
- Jim Dine, The Studio
- Dan Flavin, Untitled 1987
These images are taken from MoMA’s exhibit, Color Chart: Reinventing Color from 1950 to Today. It closed, but you can buy the really beautiful book.
This message is brought to you by Panexa. Ask your doctor for a reason to take Panexa (via)
Images du monde visionnaire, an educational film by Henri Michaux and Eric Duvivier which was “produced in 1963 by the film department of Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz (best known for synthesizing LSD in 1938) in order to demonstrate the hallucinogenic effects of mescaline and hashish.” Jahsonic on Michaux.
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