GdaY @Hope4me
Just a quick reply to say thanks for your response. Taking the time to write a fuller reply as there is a lot in it.
But briefly I think I what it's important to learn from the ongoing issues with Royal commissions is his important it is for everyone to live free from Violence, abuse & exploitation and discrimination
The Victorian Royal Commission turned out to be an exercise in cover up, a lot of people tried to get abuse & harm & wrongdoing heard and put in the TOR. But couldn't.
Thankfully we now have the Royal Commission into Violence abuse and exploitation of persons with Disabilities that may fall short too but we keep trying again and again to get proper human rights.
What it is important to realise is that the so-called "medical model" is an ideology, not a reality or a science, but a belief system.
It wasn't discovered but invented and this is a demonstrable fact.
It's controversial, and gas been throughout its history.
The idea that it possible or reasonable to lock people up to prevent from committing "future crimes" is abhorrent to many.
It effectively does harm now, to prevent the imagination if harm in the future. As there is no reliable way to predict the future actions of a human, it inherently deprives if human rights to force this belief. It is also delusional to think it accurate as it is demonstrably false, unsubstantiable, and a breach of our most deeply held rights to be innocent until proven guilty of an actual crime that already exists, let alone an imaginary future crime.
What is important is your stated desire for confinement.
I agree if you think you need confinement, whether you actually need it or not,it should be provided, because what is really being provided is emotional security - you want confinement, so getting it may well help you.
But by the same token forcing that confinement will not help another. And there may be questions about how you came to want confinement etc that you might find you want to to resolve in your life, or not, as you see fit in accordance with your individual right to autonomy and self determination.
But as one routinely and systematically harmed by the process of "assessment" who was never guilty of any "future crimes" and ironically deprived of the legal capacity to take rightful responsibility for my actions in the few times I was genuinely guilty of a misdemeanor, punished without rights instead,I don't agree there is a need to protect against "future harm" by causing harm in the present. That is madness to me, if you pardon the ironic choice of language.
I was weird, not dangerous.
I was weird, not incapable.
The persons charged with "assessment" has no insight into my experience and thought it "floridly delusional". They had no room to understand. Their training actually went against their ability to understand. And ironically made them delusional - in the sense of posessing fixed, false beliefs.
while it was clear from the written evidence that their position was ideological, they though it was "real" -not just one perspective but the only possible interpretation of actual reality. This was always false, but it is very common among humans to become entrenched in beliefs that are actually false, that's why we try to make sure they aren't forced on one another - by the mechanism of inalientable human rights.
This way people can be free to hold their false beliefs (which we all have all the time) without them harming others. If we give them the power to violently force their beliefs by not affording a person the power of escape, depriving them access to needed things or violently acting on them or physically confining them, we are doing harm. It's often not until later we realise the belief we were forcing was false. So best not to go around enforcing beliefs in the first place. I think that is pretty fair.
They locked me up because I was different and they convinced themselves it made me dangerous and incapable.
The reality was it they who caused harm.
We have come a long way but not far enough.
There's a big difference between opting in to confinement or handing over the reigns to others & being forced.
There is risk of harm to self in this act of choosing to hand the reins to others and be confined, harm a perseon may not know they are doing because theur understanding of the situation is limited by their range of past experience but there is risk in all adult decisions. So if you want to be a consenting adults entering a contract for risky confinement, I will fight for your right to do so.
But please don't think that a makes your choice not a risky one. It's just your choice.
We once thought it to be for the common good to burn witches or take Indigenous children from their parents. Our western "civilisation" is rife with cognitive dissonance.
Delusional thinking, true delusions, are not the rarity but the norm.
A person in an alternate state of consciousness may not be delusional at all, but processing something that is more aligned with their inner meaning, while still aware enough of the outer world to be physically safe.
A person with a Psychiatric qualifation mat possess beliefs that are fixed and false, by contrast.
We can't say who will harm whom until the harm us done. Even then, sometimes we go into denial or we don't know of other options so we may not be aware of the harm fir some time, or ever.
That's why human rights are fundamental and inalienable and shouldn't be at the whims of status quo or popular opinion.
Nor should one person be able do constrain or abrogate the rights of another by claiming to impute "incapacity" by invoking fear if "future harm".
In the case of vic royal commission. It was definitely politics.
Many people don't understand human rights development in Disabilty and keep thinking this idea of "harm to self or others" is real.
It is not. Nobody can decide a person's future actions.
What is important is providing support and recognising where we have become conditioned into belief systems that don't hold up to logical scrutiny, and in so doing are actually causing real harm not preventing imaginary future harm, when we force those beliefs onto others.
Your right to decide is yours and should be reasonably facilitated because it is your right. But by the same token, so should mine.
A society that continues to do real harm because it believes in "future crime" is, sadly doing much harm and twisting reality around to make the victims appear to be the perpetrators and vice versa.
Here is the very logical view if the UN human rights council on the matter
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRPD/14thsession/GuidelinesOnArticle14.doc&ved=2ahUKEwj0_dLk5tHiAhWJWX0KHc29DJgQFjABegQIDxAG&usg=AOvVaw18bpFfbXNMSjXpJbaWGCgF
I think the way forward is to raise consciousness on this so that *everyone's* genuine rights are protected.
That means we need to stop this belief that weird or troubled means dangerous, it was once black that meant dangerous.
I'm not putting down real struggles with suicide etc. Quite the opposite. I lost a loved one because of forced incarceration. It can't be assumed that everyone finds confinement soothing. We are all different. I respect your rights but I need mine and my loved one's rights to be respected too.
And that means full implement the UNCRPD as interpreted by the committee which means no forced psychiatry, confinement or any other 'treatment'.
That doesn't mean you can't choose to 'opt in' to being confined by others at future times if you want to take that risk of harm to yourself, it just means that others are protected from that harm.
If you choose a directive for confinement, it does not violate my rights or harm me. But if it is advocated that because you chose confinement while It harmed me and my family, that it should be forced on me and my family. When it harmed us, in my sister's case to the point if death. Quite contrary to the claim force was necessary it was lethally dangerous.
If the persons advocating for that are also persons who gain financially and they seek to misinform, distort or hide other options or deeper understanding from people because they gain financially or if they are persons who seek to hide their own wrongdoing from others or sometimes even from themselves- then it is not only violence harm, it is also abuse and exploitation. There are arguments that it is still abuse and exploitation even if it is not consciously done to cause harm. or consciously done knowingly. Often parents emotionally abuse their children by putting them down or depriving them of emotional needs without meaning to. Human beings have a way of perpetrating harm on each other even if they don't hold the conscious intention to do so - we are complicated creatures that way.
As for speaking here it's about the need to feel safe to speak as we all should.
And its also great to have conversations and learn things from each other, as you said people who have been on the receiving end get it, the more similar your experience to mine the more likely you are to understand and vice versa. Its also why its important to realise where our differences lie so that your needs and choices can be respected for you without being forced on me. If it causes harm to you that is your risk totake. But it being forced on me because the harm was hidden - and it was claimed to be the 'safe' option while the default of me having access to human rights was considered 'dangerous'? that is a fallacy. Its never safe to deprive human rights. A person can choose the risk of potentially harmful confinement because they want to without it violating their rights, a person forced has their rights violated and the basis of 'risk' is not a substantiated one but predjudicial one assumed from their weirdness or difference.
There are also provisions in the UNCRPD for people with intellectual disabilities, every person deserves full access to rights, no matter how strange or different, the days when we believed you had to be 'like me' or brutalised or confined 'for your own good' are hopefully something more and more people are recognising need to be put into the past.
Speaking out is vital. And it is an action. Indeed all the activities you suggested are also words. I think sometimes we forget how important and powerful it is to share our words.
So thanks for yours, I'll be sure to properly take them in and respond.
I think it's vital for views are respected fir your own life but also not allowed to be imposed on others.
It's that last bit where we've really gone wrong s a society, like the old bible story seeking to see others as Incapable or likely to commit future harm we blinded ourselves to the harm we were actually causing in doing this.
Like with all systems that have forced their views sadly, many were convinced, and really couldn't see the harm they did. They were, ironically, incapable.
No human is perfect. That's why we need things like UNCRPD. We need guidance so we don't inadvertently continue to cause real harm out of fear of imaginary harm. Or in reality often fear if difference or the unknown.
Increasingly we have to also guard against harm done because of denial or unwillingness to learn from history or change our ways.
I did write and call my local MPs wet the Vic royal commission, so did many others.
Changing our society from one of force, predjudice, misunderstanding and blind trust in the status quo is something that ultimately I think we all need to participate in. It's the real way to understand and prevent or heal from harm to self or others in my view.
I hope you enjoy the UN committee's explanation of article 14 and why it was being breached by so many nations including our own. I find it a very important restorative statement. We need to understand that the 'harm to self or others' claim is often used to cause harm, not to prevent it, a good example of this might be manus island. While some of the population have been convinced this horror is for the 'greater good' to 'stop the boats', thankfully increasingly many people don't agree this is a reasonable thing to do and do not fear refugees. Others do. The refugees are being locked up out of fear and politics not because of any genuine risk of 'harm to self or others'. It is a logical fallacy to be causing harm that is so severe it qualifies as an atrocity and claiming to do it to avoid harm. I fear the society that does not question this belief and evolve beyond it. to me it is quite clearly not something that has a basis in reason or reality.
For a long time I have been trapped under the truism of "for their own good" or "they might cause harm".
Thus evokes fear, but it doesn't hold up to logical scrutiny. It's imou to recognise it was similar logic used to justify the stolen generation and other atrocities.
Every single day I am harmed or caused fear by this belief of others. We call this belief prejudice. Because that is what it is. Others belief, falsely, that I am a harm to them. The moment they hear about my past. They believed, falsely that I was at risk at harm when Iwas experiencing those things. That others might really be struggling with suicidality doesn't change that, I've struggled with all sorts of things too, everyone is different. If you want to take the risk of being confined that's your right. It's not your right to invoke prejudice that others should be forced. That is causing harm, not preventing it. You don't know what is good for them. Neither do people who happened to be schooled in a particular degree.
That there will always be those who advocate force out of fear is one of the saddest things in our society, until we learn that lesson we are doomed to cause harm over and over again, never realising that there are other ways, never realising that we have not got that right and we need to take the log out of our own eye, not attempt to take the speck out of our brothers. If we force, we harm. If we seek to help, we need to learn how to be gentle, trustworthy, and respect the boundaries of others. We need to be ok with uncertainty and not knowing. And we need to establish inalienable rights and boundaries. So that people can choose their own risks. As there are inherently risks in all choices. Confinement isn't avoiding risk, its an incredibly risky and potentially extremely harmful thing to do.
We need to guard at these logical fallacies if we are genuinely to prevent ourselves or others causing harm.
Of course, that isn't the same as a person making decisions fur themselves that may include confinement. But the question arises: has that person been given other options to understand? Are they causing themselves harm by choosing confinement?
Maybe they are, but it's their choice as an adult. Nobody has perfect knowledge. That's why we don't punish people or confine them pre-emptively fur crimes they have not committed or force them into confinement because another person chose it. What one chooses can harm or even be fatally harmful fur another if forced. It is an act of violence.
And as a victim if this and one who lost someone because I perpetrated it on her, convincing myself it was fir her own good, I beg my community to face this painful reality and heal from it. Not go into denial and make unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable claims it was "necessary" to prevent imaginary future harm when the evidence points in the opposite direction.
