Live data from Hacker News

Time to bring back asylums?

wsj.com

81–90 of 397 posts

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if most of the people you wish were interred there are competent enough to decide they don't want to be there but not competent enough to meaningfully integrate with society. This can even be true of some who definitely not competent now but would become sufficiently lucid to disinter themselves before discontinuing medication and resuming drinking and drugging.

You need to give them a purpose. The trades come to mind.

Roofers are where they get their drugs.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#82
post #8

A person does not belong to society or to the government. Sane or not, a person who chooses to not get mental, physical or preventive treatment (like vaccines) or other social manadates should not be compelled because humans lack the authority to do so. What should happen is they should be expelled from society. Expulsion was very common in historical societies. The famous version of this is leper colonies. The land…

I think you should be expelled from society for promulgating yet another sensationalist, inflammatory, absurd Internet theory. Why not? Who gets to say who is expelled? That's why we have human rights - people are free to do what they want, without giving a f- if you like it or not. You are free to do what you want without giving a f- if I like it or not. Yes, there are limits where we harm others. Let's be honest: P…

Take your own emotional reactions down a couple of notches there yourself first. Wtf!

What part of what I said was an "internet theory" and exactly what are my other theories? Do you just mean ideas you merely react to at a surface level instead if attempting any level of undersranding or discourse??

> That's why we have human rights

No, the only reason there are human rights is because people are human.

> people are free to do what they want, without giving a f- if you like it or not

What does this even mean? Are you saying society should be able to lock up arbitrary people for no reason or do you not know this already happens? Asylums are the institutuions, forced incarceration when you are considered insane is a thing, as are many laws that jail people who are not harming others on suspicion that they will cause harm or are behaving undesirably.

> Yes, there are limits where we harm others.

Or yourself, that's what the entire discussion here is about in case you missed it.

> Let's be honest: People just don't like other people who lack housing and look dirty; people are scared of what's different; the rest is mostly rationalization for oppression.

And my "internet theory" as you put it, instead of opression, it allows freedom for the would be oppressed to chase the life they choose. Have you heard of nudist colonies? That's the idea except you cannot rejoin mainstream society so long as you refuse to conform to its ways, but you should not have similar obligations either like taxation. If you are in these expelled communities like the insane, unvaccinated, etc... you still get to vote, access the internet and do just about anything so long as you stick to your physical isolation. It decriminalizes many victimless crimes.

And mainstream/majority society will decide like it already is doing.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that when you carve out exceptions to human rights, they get abused. If you can suspend the rights of someone declared mentally ill, the unscrupulous parts of government will be tempted to declare politically inconvenient people mentally ill and strip them of their rights. Even in the United States, this happened during the suffragette movement; those women hunger striking for the vote were sometimes imp…

> The issue is that when you carve out exceptions to human rights, they get abused. Even something as simple as detaining a criminal is "carving out an exception to human rights". You're correct that this could be abused, but so can any law. It's possible to mitigate though; that's the entire reason for the concept of an independent judiciary.

I don't think detaining a criminal is the counter-example you want to be using here. If anything, the horrific and egregious ways that the incarcerated are treated is proof that the government is incapable of not further harming people who they deprive of human rights.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#84

[flagged]

Your sarcasm/examples are false equivalencies. US cities were at one point far less car centric than they are now. Do you think we should maintain the status quo there as well?

I've read your comment twice and don't understand the point you're trying to make. Care to try again?

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#85

[flagged]

The rhetorical tactic keeps winning. It works so well that, even though they've been doing in much of the rich world (Murdoch in the English-speaking portion) for decades, you still can't even describe the tactic and don't know why they use it. Why would they stop unless they start losing with it?

Well don't keep it all to yourself. Break it down for me so I can understand.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#87
post #65

Asylums still exist. What this person wants to bring back is the ability to lock people up and keep people locked up there with little recourse. A typical case from this time[1]: > [Cramer] frankly discusses the “regimented, often hopeless conditions of state mental hospitals”, talks about a hospital in Alabama where “care was worse than simply inadequate: one psychiatrist for 5000 patients; astonishingly low funding…

As someone with direct experience with someone that has a mental illness, there needs to be something better than the present system. I think something went right, then wrong with the treatment of mental illness in california. Years ago, when the laws were changed to allow mentally-ill but benign or even non-ill people to escape the "snake pits", lots of people could recover. But later state mental illness funding wa…

> lots of mentally ill people don't get proper treatment, yet are still a huge burden on the health care system.

I'm not saying you're right or wrong, but why do you believe that?

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#88
post #55
post #8

A person does not belong to society or to the government. Sane or not, a person who chooses to not get mental, physical or preventive treatment (like vaccines) or other social manadates should not be compelled because humans lack the authority to do so. What should happen is they should be expelled from society. Expulsion was very common in historical societies. The famous version of this is leper colonies. The land…

> A person does not belong to society or to the government. Then..... > In communist governments for example, people are subjucts of the state and the state assumes authority even over what people belief. That is a false dichotomy. Who does a person belong too? We are nothing without our communities. Naked apes at the mercy of fate. It is our communities that make us able to survive. Our families, neighbors, friends,…

> Who does a person belong too?

Their Maker if you believe in one (read declaration of independence to see similar views around foundation of America), or no one I suppose if you are an atheist. This is why the government shouldn't tell you what to believe in.

> We are nothing without our communities. Naked apes at the mercy of fate.

You own your community/government in the US. Not the other way around. For example, conscientuous objection to participating in combat, for soldiers! (As government property as you get) is a thing because ultimately the government lacks authority over a person to override their beliefs or ways. The "community" as you put it only has authority over you over activities that affect it. My suggestion is to simply remove people from a community who refuse to play by its rules while allowing them to pursue their own ways.

> It is our communities that make us able to survive. Our families, neighbors, friends, foes, we are all in it together. Bonds of love and mutual obligation

Communities are consensual relationships not ones formed out of natural hierarchial authority over others. None of what you said here is relevant because the subject here is when people are being forced to do things against their will just because the majority wants it that way, making them lesser subjects and prisoners of the community instead of equal and consensual participants of it.

> Supporting each other, meeting the needs of others and having our needs met does not mean we live in North Korea

When your support jails people or makes it so that they can't function without conformance, it does indeed become opressive to them.

> Mutual aid is not the end of individual liberty. It is the engine that makes it possible

That's nice but what part of this topic is mutual aid?

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#89
For anyone who wants to bring back asylums: first and foremost, you must imagine that you will be subjected to asylums as they existed. You could simply be protesting while black or female, considered insane for protesting and forcibly detained-- for which you can be raped and assaulted, and any reporting to the police of your trauma isn't taken seriously because you're considered insane.

It's nonsensical to say we should bring back asylums and then not seriously consider what asylums were at the time. Women who tried to fight for their right to vote were put in asylums and raped.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#90
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can take what they want with them, farm the land, fish, build houses, cities,etc...

If they could do these things, they wouldn't be banished.

Yes they would, we are not talking about mental/physical handicapped people here. It's people who are already in mainstream society and end up being insane from the perspective of society, they can still fish, hunt, farm. Moreover, concerned people or even the government can provide them aid if they need it, they are still citizens.
Post reply on HN