The term derives from the Greek δραπέτης (drapetes, “a runaway [slave]”) and μανία (mania, “madness, frenzy”).[4]
As late as 1914, the third edition of Thomas Lathrop Stedman‘s Practical Medical Dictionary included an entry for drapetomania, defined as “Vagabondage, dromomania; an uncontrollable or insane impulsion to wander.”[5]
Description
Cartwright described the disorder – which, he said, was “unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers”[4] – in a paper delivered before the Medical Association of Louisiana[2]:291 that was widely reprinted.
He stated that the malady was a consequence of masters who “made themselves too familiar with [slaves], treating them as equals”.[6]
If treated kindly, well fed and clothed, with fuel enough to keep a small fire burning all night — separated into families, each family having its own house — not permitted to run about at night to visit their neighbors, to receive visits or use intoxicating liquors, and not overworked or exposed too much to the weather, they are very easily governed — more so than any other people in the world. If any one or more of them, at any time, are inclined to raise their heads to a level with their master or overseer, humanity and their own good requires that they should be punished until they fall into that submissive state which was intended for them to occupy. They have only to be kept in that state, and treated like children to prevent and cure them from running away.[7]
In Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race, Cartwright says that the Bible calls for a slave to be submissive to his master, and by doing so, the slave will have no desire to run away:[4]
If the white man attempts to oppose the Deity’s will, by trying to make the negro anything else than “the submissive knee-bender” (which the Almighty declared he should be), by trying to raise him to a level with himself, or by putting himself on an equality with the negro; or if he abuses the power which God has given him over his fellow-man, by being cruel to him, or punishing him in anger, or by neglecting to protect him from the wanton abuses of his fellow-servants and all others, or by denying him the usual comforts and necessaries of life, the negro will run away; but if he keeps him in the position that we learn from the Scriptures he was intended to occupy, that is, the position of submission; and if his master or overseer be kind and gracious in his bearing towards him, without condescension, and at the same time ministers to his physical wants, and protects him from abuses, the negro is spell-bound, and cannot run away.
Prevention and remedy
In addition to identifying drapetomania, his feeling was that with “proper medical advice, strictly followed, this troublesome practice that many Negroes have of running away can be almost entirely prevented”.[4] In the case of slaves “sulky and dissatisfied without cause”–a warning sign of imminent flight–Cartwright mentioned “whipping the devil out of them” as a “preventative measure”.[2]:35[8][9]
Contemporary criticism
While Cartwright’s article was reprinted in the South, in the northern United States it was widely mocked. A satirical analysis of the article appeared in a Buffalo Medical Journal editorial in 1855.[10] Renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, in A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (1856), observed that white indentured servants had often been known to flee as well, so he satirically hypothesized that the supposed disease was actually of white European origin, and had been introduced to Africa by traders.[11]
“Oedipus and the Sphinx,” Gustave Moreau/ courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Columnist Linda Weltner says that there’s a dual purpose to cleaning your home, rearranging the furniture, adding new art to the walls, and doting on your potted plants. Taking good care of your environment is a primary way of taking good care of yourself. She writes, “The home upon which we have lavished so much attention is the embodiment of our own self love.” I invite you to make that your inspirational meditation for the next two weeks.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “For peace of mind, I will lie about any thing at any time,” said author Amy Hempel. Hmmmm. I’m the opposite. To cultivate peace of mind, I try to speak and live the truth as much as I can. Lying makes me nervous. It also seems to make me dumber. It forces me to keep close track of my fibs so I can be sure to stick to my same deceitful story when the subject comes up later. What about you, Taurus? For your peace of mind, do you prefer to rely on dishonesty or honesty? I’m hoping that for the next four weeks, you will favor the latter. Cultivating judicious candor will heal you and boost your intelligence.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In her essay about education, “Don’t Overthink It,” philosopher Agnes Callard reminds us, “No matter how much we increase our investment at the front end—perfecting our minds with thinking classes, long ruminations, novel-reading, and moral algebra—we cannot spare ourselves the agony of learning by doing.” That will be a key theme for you in the next four weeks, dear Gemini. You will need to make abundant use of empiricism: pursuing knowledge through direct experience, using your powers of observation and a willingness to experiment.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that when our rational minds are working at their best, they inspire us to cultivate our most interesting and enlivening passions. They also de-emphasize and suppress any energy-draining passions that might have a hold on us. I’m hoping you will take full advantage of this in the coming weeks, Cancerian. You will generate good fortune and sweet breakthroughs as you highlight desires that uplift you and downgrade desires that diminish you.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Leo author Wendell Berry suggests, “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.” Although there’s wisdom in that formulation, I don’t think it’s true a majority of the time. Far more often we are fed by the strong, clear intuitions that emerge from our secret depths—from the sacred gut feelings that give us accurate guidance about what to do and where to go. But I do suspect that right now may be one of those phases when Berry’s notion is true for you, Leo. What do you think?
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In 1750, more than 250 years after Columbus first visited the New World, Native Americans were still a majority of the continent’s population. But between 1776 and now, the United States government stole 1.5 billion acres of land from its original owners—twenty-five times the size of the United Kingdom. Here’s another sad fact: Between 1778 and 1871, America’s federal administrations signed over 500 treaties with indigenous tribes—and broke every one of them. The possibility that these sins will eventually be remedied is very small. I bring them up only to serve as possible metaphors for your personal life. Is there anything you have unfairly gained from others? Is there anything others have unfairly gained from you? The next six months will be prime time to seek atonement and correction.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh advises you and me and everyone else to “seek the spiritual in every ordinary thing that you do every day.” You have to work at it a bit, he says; you must have it as your firm intention. But it’s not really hard to do. “Sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness is there,” he adds. I think you Libras will have a special knack for this fun activity in the coming weeks. (Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a series of “Mindfulness Essentials” books that includes “How to Eat,” “How to Walk,” “How to Relax” and “How to Connect.” I invite you to come up with your own such instructions.)
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): My unexpected interpretation of the current astrological omens suggests that you will be wise to go naked as much as possible in the coming weeks. Being skyclad, as the pagans say, will be healing for you. You will awaken dormant feelings that will help you see the world with enhanced understanding. The love that you experience for yourself will soften one of your hard edges, and increase your appreciation for all the magic that your life is blessed with. One important caveat: Of course, don’t impose your nakedness on anyone who doesn’t want to witness it.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): If you analyzed the best-selling songs as measured by Billboard magazine, you’d think we were in the midst of a dangerous decline in population. The vast majority of those popular tunes feature lyrics with reproductive themes. It’s as if there’s some abject fear that humans aren’t going to make enough babies, and need to be constantly cajoled and incited to engage in love-making. But I don’t think you Sagittarians, whatever your sexual preference, will need any of that nagging in the coming days. Your Eros Quotient should be higher than it has been in a while.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Pulitzer Prize-winning author Donna Tartt, born under the sign of Capricorn, writes, “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.” In my view, that’s an unwarranted generalization. It may sometimes be true, but is often not. Genuine beauty may also be elegant, lyrical, inspiring, healing and ennobling. Having said that, I will speculate that the beauty you encounter in the near future may indeed be disruptive or jolting, but mostly because it has the potential to remind you of what you’re missing—and motivate you to go after what you’ve been missing.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): On July 21, 1969, Aquarian astronaut Buzz Aldrin was the second human to walk on the moon. It happened during a spectacular astrological aspect, when transiting Jupiter and Uranus in Libra were trine to Aldrin’s natal Sun in Aquarius. But after this heroic event, following his return to earth, he found it hard to get his bearings again. He took a job as a car salesman, but had no talent for it. In six months, he didn’t sell a single car. Later, however, he found satisfaction as an advocate for space exploration, and he developed technology to make future trips to Mars more efficient. I hope that if you are now involved in any activity that resembles Aldrin’s stint as a car salesman—that is, a task you’re not skilled at and don’t like—you will spend the coming weeks making plans to escape to more engaging pursuits.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Astronomers say the Big Bang birthed the universe 13.8 billion years ago. But a star 190 light years away from Earth contradicts that theory. Its age seems to be 14.5 billion years, older than the universe itself. Its scientific name is HD 140283, but it’s informally referred to as Methuselah, named after the Biblical character who lived till age 969. Sometimes, like now, you remind me of that star. You seem to be an impossibly old soul—like you’ve been around so many thousands of lifetimes that, you, too, predate the Big Bang. But guess what: It’s time to take a break from that aspect of your destiny. In the next two weeks, you have cosmic permission to explore the mysteries of playful innocence. Be young and blithe and curious. Treasure your inner child.
Trinity Church Boston In this Price Lecture, Dr. Elaine Pagels, one of the world’s foremost scholars of religion, speaks about her groundbreaking work on the Jesus of the canonical Gospels and the Jesus one meets in the Gospel of Thomas. Dr. Pagels is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Her work on the extra-canonical writings of ancient Christianity spurred a revolution in the field of New Testament Studies and brought the exciting, urgent, and wonderful diversity of early Christianity to vivid life. This lecture was co-sponsored by Trinity & Contemplative Outreach of Boston.
Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which people decide on policy initiatives directly. This differs from the majority of currently established democracies, which are representative democracies. The theory and practice of direct democracy and participation as its common characteristic was the core of work of many theorists, philosophers, politicians, and social critics, among whom the most important are Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Stuart Mill, and G.D.H. Cole.[1]
Overview
In a representative democracy people vote for representatives who then enact policy initiatives.[2] In direct democracy, people decide on policies without any intermediary. Depending on the particular system in use, direct democracy might entail passing executive decisions, the use of sortition, making laws, directly electing or dismissing officials, and conducting trials. Two leading forms of direct democracy are participatory democracy and deliberative democracy.
Semi-direct democracies, in which representatives administer day-to-day governance, but the citizens remain the sovereign, allow for three forms of popular action: referendum (plebiscite), initiative, and recall. The first two forms—referendums and initiatives—are examples of direct legislation.[3] As of 2019, thirty countries allowed for referendums initiated by the population on the national level.[4]
A compulsory referendum subjects the legislation drafted by political elites to a binding popular vote. This is the most common form of direct legislation. A popular referendum empowers citizens to make a petition that calls existing legislation to a vote by the citizens. Institutions specify the timeframe for a valid petition and the number of signatures required, and may require signatures from diverse communities to protect minority interests.[3] This form of direct democracy effectively grants the voting public a veto on laws adopted by the elected legislature, as in Switzerland.[5][6][7][8]
A citizen-initiated referendum (also called an initiative) empowers members of the general public to propose, by petition, specific statutory measures or constitutional reforms to the government and, as with other referendums, the vote may be binding or simply advisory. Initiatives may be direct or indirect: with the direct initiative, a successful proposition is placed directly on the ballot to be subject to vote (as exemplified by California’s system).[3] With an indirect initiative, a successful proposition is first presented to the legislature for their consideration; however, if no acceptable action is taken after a designated period of time, the proposition moves to direct popular vote. Constitutional amendments in Switzerland, Liechtenstein or Uruguay go through such a form of indirect initiative.[3]
A deliberative referendum is a referendum that increases public deliberation through purposeful institutional design.
Power of recall gives the public the power to remove elected officials from office before the end of their designated standard term of office.[9]
One strand of thought sees direct democracy as common and widespread in pre-state societies.[10][11]
The earliest well-documented direct democracy is said[by whom?] to be the Athenian democracy of the 5th century BC. The main bodies in the Athenian democracy were the assembly, composed of male citizens; the boulê, composed of 500 citizens; and the law courts, composed of a massive number of jurors chosen by lot, with no judges. Ancient Attica had only about 30,000 male citizens, but several thousand of them were politically active in each year and many of them quite regularly for years on end. The Athenian democracy was direct not only in the sense that the assembled people made decisions, but also in the sense that the people – through the assembly, boulê, and law courts – controlled the entire political process, and a large proportion of citizens were involved constantly in public affairs.[12] Most modern democracies, being representative, not direct, do not resemble the Athenian system.
Also relevant to the history of direct democracy is the history of Ancient Rome, specifically during the Roman Republic, traditionally founded around 509 BC.[13] Rome displayed many aspects of democracy, both direct and indirect, from the era of Roman monarchy all the way to the collapse of the Roman Empire. While the Roman senate was the main body with historical longevity, lasting from the Roman kingdom until after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, it did not embody a purely democratic approach, being made up – during the late republic – of former elected officials,[14] providing advice rather than creating law.[15] The democratic aspect of the constitution resided in the Roman popular assemblies, where the people organised into centuriae or into tribes – depending on the assembly – and cast votes on various matters, including elections and laws, proposed before them by their elected magistrates.[16] Some classicists have argued that the Roman republic deserves the label of “democracy”, with universal suffrage for adult male citizens, popular sovereignty, and transparent deliberation of public affairs.[17] Many historians mark the end of the Republic with the lex Titia, passed on 27 November 43 BC, which eliminated many oversight provisions.[13]
Modern Era
Modern-era citizen-lawmaking occurs in the cantons of Switzerland from the 13th century. In 1847 the Swiss added the “statute referendum” to their national constitution. They soon discovered that merely having the power to veto Parliament’s laws was not enough. In 1891 they added the “constitutional amendment initiative”. Swiss politics since 1891 have given the world a valuable experience-base with the national-level constitutional amendment initiative.[18] In the past 120 years, more than 240 initiatives have been put to referendums. The populace has proven itself conservative, approving only about 10% of these initiatives; in addition, they have often opted for a version of the initiative rewritten by the government. (See “Direct democracy in Switzerland” below.)[5][6][7][8]
Modern Direct Democracy also occurs within the Crow Nation, a Native American Tribe in the United States of America. The tribe is organized around a General Council formed of all voting-age members. The General Council has the power to create legally-binding decisions through referendums. The General Council was first enshrined in the 1948 Crow Constitution and was upheld and re-instated with the 2002 Constitution.[19]
Some of the issues surrounding the related notion of a direct democracy using the Internet and other communications technologies are dealt with in the article on e-democracy and below under the heading Electronic direct democracy. More concisely, the concept of open-source governance applies principles of the free software movement to the governance of people, allowing the entire populace to participate in government directly, as much or as little as they please.[20]
Direct democracy is the basis of anarchist and left-libertarian political thought.[21][22][23] Direct democracy has been championed by anarchist thinkers since its inception, and direct democracy as a political theory has been largely influenced by anarchism.[24][25]
Athenian democracy developed in the Greekcity-state of Athens, comprising the city of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 600 BC. Athens was one of the first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, and even though most followed an Athenian model, none were as powerful, stable, or well-documented as that of Athens. In the direct democracy of Athens, the citizens did not nominate representatives to vote on legislation and executive bills on their behalf (as in the United States) but instead voted as individuals. The public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire of the comic poets in the theatres.[26]
Solon (594 BC), Cleisthenes (508–507 BCE), and Ephialtes (462 BC) all contributed to the development of Athenian democracy. Historians differ on which of them was responsible for which institution, and which of them most represented a truly democratic movement. It is most usual to date Athenian democracy from Cleisthenes since Solon’s constitution fell and was replaced by the tyranny of Peisistratus, whereas Ephialtes revised Cleisthenes’ constitution relatively peacefully. Hipparchus, the brother of the tyrant Hippias, was killed by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who were subsequently honored by the Athenians for their alleged restoration of Athenian freedom.
The greatest and longest-lasting democratic leader was Pericles; after his death, Athenian democracy was twice briefly interrupted by an oligarchic revolution towards the end of the Peloponnesian War. It was modified somewhat after it was restored under Eucleides; the most detailed accounts are of this 4th-century modification rather than of the Periclean system. It was suppressed by the Macedonians in 322 BC. The Athenian institutions were later revived, but the extent to which they were a real democracy is debatable.[27]
Switzerland
In Switzerland, with no need to register, every citizen receives the ballot papers and information brochure for each vote and election and can return it by post. Switzerland has various directly democratic instruments; votes are organized about four times a year. Here, the papers received by every Berne‘s citizen in November 2008 about five national, two cantonal, four municipal referendums, and two elections (government and parliament of the City of Berne) of 23 competing parties to take care of at the same time.Main articles: Politics of Switzerland and Voting in SwitzerlandFurther information: Landsgemeinde and Federal popular initiative
Most western countries have representative systems.[28]Switzerland is a rare example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of the municipalities, cantons, and federal state). Citizens have more power than in a representative democracy. On any political level citizens can propose changes to the constitution (popular initiative), or ask for an optional referendum to be held on any law voted by the federal, cantonal parliament and/or municipal legislative body.[29]
The list for mandatory or optional referendums on each political level are generally much longer in Switzerland than in any other country; for example, any amendment to the constitution must automatically be voted on by the Swiss electorate and cantons, on cantonal/communal levels often any financial decision of a certain substantial amount decreed by legislative and/or executive bodies as well.[29]
Swiss citizens vote regularly on any kind of issue on every political level, such as financial approvals of a schoolhouse or the building of a new street, or the change of the policy regarding sexual work, or on constitutional changes, or on the foreign policy of Switzerland, four times a year.[30] Between January 1995 and June 2005, Swiss citizens voted 31 times, on 103 federal questions besides many more cantonal and municipal questions.[31] During the same period, French citizens participated in only two referendums.[28]
In Switzerland, simple majorities are sufficient at the municipal and cantonal level, at the federal level double majorities are required on constitutional issues.[18]
A double majority requires approval by a majority of individuals voting, and also by a majority of cantons. Thus, in Switzerland, a citizen-proposed amendment to the federal constitution (i.e. popular initiative) cannot be passed at the federal level if a majority of the people approve but a majority of the cantons disapprove.[18] For referendums or propositions in general terms (like the principle of a general revision of the Constitution), a majority of those voting is sufficient (Swiss Constitution, 2005).
In 1890, when the provisions for Swiss national citizen lawmaking were being debated by civil society and government, the Swiss adopted the idea of double majorities from the United States Congress, in which House votes were to represent the people and Senate votes were to represent the states.[18] According to its supporters, this “legitimacy-rich” approach to national citizen lawmaking has been very successful. Kris Kobach claims that Switzerland has had tandem successes both socially and economically which are matched by only a few other nations. Kobach states at the end of his book, “Too often, observers deem Switzerland an oddity among political systems. It is more appropriate to regard it as a pioneer.” Finally, the Swiss political system, including its direct democratic devices in a multi-level governance context, becomes increasingly interesting for scholars of European Union integration.[32]
In the New England region of the United States, towns in states such as Vermont decide local affairs through the direct democratic process of the town meeting.[33] This is the oldest form of direct democracy in the United States, and predates the founding of the country by at least a century.
Direct democracy was not what the framers of the United States Constitution envisioned for the nation. They saw a danger in tyranny of the majority. As a result, they advocated a representative democracy in the form of a constitutional republic over a direct democracy. For example, James Madison, in Federalist No. 10, advocates a constitutional republic over direct democracy precisely to protect the individual from the will of the majority. He says,
Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.
[…]
[A] pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.[34]
John Witherspoon, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, said: “Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.” Alexander Hamilton said, “That a pure democracy, if it were practicable, would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity.”[35]
Despite the framers’ intentions at the beginning of the republic, ballot measures and their corresponding referendums have been widely used at the state and sub-state level. There is much state and federal case law, from the early 1900s to the 1990s, that protects the people’s right to each of these direct democracy governance components (Magleby, 1984, and Zimmerman, 1999). The first United States Supreme Court ruling in favor of the citizen lawmaking was in Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Oregon, 223 U.S. 118 in 1912 (Zimmerman, December 1999). PresidentTheodore Roosevelt, in his “Charter of Democracy” speech to the 1912 Ohio constitutional convention, stated: “I believe in the Initiative and Referendum, which should be used not to destroy representative government, but to correct it whenever it becomes misrepresentative.”[36]
In various states, referendums through which the people rule include:
Referrals by the legislature to the people of “proposed constitutional amendments” (constitutionally used in 49 states, excepting only Delaware – Initiative & Referendum Institute, 2004).
Referrals by the legislature to the people of “proposed statute laws” (constitutionally used in all 50 states – Initiative & Referendum Institute, 2004).
Constitutional amendment initiative is a constitutionally-defined petition process of “proposed constitutional law”, which, if successful, results in its provisions being written directly into the state’s constitution. Since constitutional law cannot be altered by state legislatures, this direct democracy component gives the people an automatic superiority and sovereignty, over representative government (Magelby, 1984). It is utilized at the state level in nineteen states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and South Dakota (Cronin, 1989). Among these states, there are three main types of the constitutional amendment initiative, with different degrees of involvement of the state legislature distinguishing between the types (Zimmerman, December 1999).
Statute law initiative is a constitutionally-defined, citizen-initiated petition process of “proposed statute law”, which, if successful, results in law being written directly into the state’s statutes. The statute initiative is used at the state level in twenty-one states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming (Cronin, 1989). Note that, in Utah, there is no constitutional provision for citizen lawmaking. All of Utah’s I&R law is in the state statutes (Zimmerman, December 1999). In most states, there is no special protection for citizen-made statutes; the legislature can begin to amend them immediately.
Statute law referendum is a constitutionally-defined, citizen-initiated petition process of the “proposed veto of all or part of a legislature-made law”, which, if successful, repeals the standing law. It is used at the state level in twenty-four states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming (Cronin, 1989).
The recall election is a citizen-initiated process which, if successful, removes an elected official from office and replaces him or her. The first recall device in the United States was adopted in Los Angeles in 1903. Typically, the process involves the collection of citizen petitions for the recall of an elected official; if a sufficient number of valid signatures are collected and verified, a recall election is triggered. In U.S. history, there have been three gubernatorial recall elections in U.S. history (two of which resulted in the recall of the governor) and 38 recall elections for state legislators (55% of which succeeded).
Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have a recall function for state officials. Additional states have recall functions for local jurisdictions. Some states require specific grounds for a recall petition campaign.[37]
Statute law affirmation is available in Nevada. It allows the voters to collect signatures to place on the ballot a question asking the state citizens to affirm a standing state law. Should the law get affirmed by a majority of state citizens, the state legislature will be barred from ever amending the law, and it can be amended or repealed only if approved by a majority of state citizens in a direct vote.[38]
Antonio Zadrais a sleep and dream researcher at the Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur’s Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine and a professor of psychology at the Université de Montréal. His books include When Brains Dream: Exploring the Science and Mystery of Sleep (2021), co-authored with Robert Stickgold, and The Dreamkeepers (2020), a suspense novel blending sleep science with dream mythology. He lives in Montreal, Canada.
Edited by Christian Jarrett
June 28, 2021 (psyche.co)
My fascination with dream characters began while I was in college. That’s when, in the midst of a dream in which I knew I was dreaming (a ‘lucid dream’), I had my first encounter with an older gentleman, who tried to convince me that, actually, my experience wasn’t a dream. Over the next two decades, this man appeared in several other of my lucid as well as non-lucid dreams. He always maintained he was real, one time going as far as to suggest that we were sharing a common dream or, even more unsettling, that I was a character in his dream. Setting aside the intriguing nature of these exchanges, several aspects of this enigmatic dream figure were particularly striking, including his clever discourse, the liveliness of his gaze (which gave me a genuine feeling of ‘being looked at’ by another sentient being), and the fact that I never quite knew what he would do or say next.
Of course, characters in our dreams can appear one-dimensional or behave like mere ‘extras’ in a play, but others, like the gentleman I came to know, evince an intriguing degree of psychological depth – saying and doing things as if acting upon their own thoughts or feelings. Moreover, much as in waking life, we sometimes encounter people in our dreams whose actions elicit a myriad of physical and emotional responses within ourselves. Through their choice of words, facial expressions, tone of voice and mannerisms, not only can dream characters pull us into all kinds of discussions and interactions but, more amazing still, they can display convincing behaviours and feelings in response to different events taking place within the dream world.
Even in lucid dreams then, it is your dreaming brain, and not your conscious self, that is the true director and producer. Herein lies one of the great and often underappreciated mysteries of dreams: your brain is responsible for creating both your sense of self in the dream (often as a first-person participant or observer) as well as the virtual world with which you interact – including the people, animals and sordid creatures you might encounter – but it keeps key aspects of this process outside of your awareness. Alongside innumerable details of the setting (such as whether the sky is clear or dotted with clouds), this almost always includes what dream characters opt to say and do in your dreams, whether you’re lucid in them or not.
In one intriguing study from 1989 that illustrates the extent of this phenomenon, Paul Tholey, a German dream researcher and Gestalt psychologist, had nine proficient lucid dreamers ask people in their dreams to perform specific tasks, such as writing or drawing something, coming up with a rhyming verse or a word unknown to the dreamer, or solving simple mathematical problems. Not only were several dream figures willing to give such tasks a try, but some were surprisingly good at them.
When one lucid dreamer gave a dream character what he thought was the correct answer to the maths problem, the dream figure corrected him – and was right
For example, when one participant asked a dream character to produce a word unfamiliar to him, the character immediately said: ‘Orlog.’ This word really was unfamiliar to the dreamer. It was only upon waking that he learned, when he looked it up, that oorlog is Dutch for ‘war’ or ‘quarrel’. Likewise, when asked to write or draw something, some dream figures produced accurately rendered letters and sketches while sitting opposite the dreamer, with the dreamers sometimes having to rotate the sketch 180 degrees toward themselves in the dream to fully appreciate the drawing.
Dave Green, an English artist who uses lucid dreaming to create original sketches, recently described to me some similar unexpected twists in his dreams. For example, when Green asked a dream character to explain a drawing he’d just made, the man replied that he was from the Czech Republic. In another dream, a woman handed Green her finished drawing, only the sheet didn’t feature a sketch but a collection of random numbers and words.
Dream characters’ responses to arithmetic problems can be just as intriguing. In Tholey’s original work, as well as in a follow-up study from Germany in 2011, the vast majority of dream characters’ answers to even very simple maths problems, such as three times four or two plus three, were wrong. In a handful of cases, dream characters first gave a wrong answer, then corrected themselves. Moreover, when one lucid dreamer gave a dream character what he thought was the correct answer to the maths problem, the dream figure corrected him – and was right. Some of the characters’ emotional reactions to the questions were also peculiar. One dream character started to cry, another immediately ran away. In other cases, dream characters replied that the question was of a personal nature or that the answers involved were either too subjective or important to be shared.
The fact that dream characters can exhibit remarkable cognitive abilities, from speaking fluently (sometimes even with a foreign accent) to engaging in complex social interactions, to displaying a range of situation-specific emotions, reveals something astonishing about the dreaming brain. Alongside the unfolding story and your own sense of self, it can create a host of dream characters who not only interact with you (or among themselves), but also appear to have private access to their own subjective perception of, and reaction to, the events unfolding within the dream.
Experienced lucid dreamers will sometimes delve into this dynamic process by asking key dream characters potentially insightful questions such as: Who am I?Who are you?How can you help me?What is the most important thing I should know about what awaits us? Not only do some dream characters appear to take these questions seriously, but their replies can be startlingly witty or insightful. In rare cases, dream figures have even presented the dreamer with a possible solution to a pressing problem. I believe that, when used in this manner, lucid dreaming can allow you to explore and interact with parts of your mind (you might call it your unconscious) in ways that you can’t in non-lucid dreams – or during wakefulness, for that matter. To paraphrase the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, this way of interrelating with people in your dreams can help make ‘the unconscious conscious’.
One adaptive function of dreams resides in the brain’s ability to imagine possibilities, and to use this information to better prepare us for an uncertain future
Even if you aren’t a habitual lucid dreamer, you can still explore this facet of your dreams. Start by keeping a dream diary, which involves making notes on your dreams, either during the night if you wake then, or first thing in the morning. After you’ve collected about 20 or more dream reports, look for patterns in your dreams. For instance, where do your dreams tend to take place? Who are the people you most frequently see in your dreams? Are these characters present in dreams that have specific themes or emotions? Who do the characters remind you of and why? How do they make you feel, and how do you interact with them and they with you? As you explore these questions, you might learn more about the ways in which your brain constructs your dreams and, in the process, learn something new about yourself.
However, the way that your brain keeps much of the dream ‘script’ and dream characters’ minds outside of your immediate awareness isn’t just a fascinating quirk that’s worth exploring out of personal interest. Rather, some of my colleagues and I believe that it might play an important role in the biological function of dreams, helping to explain why we evolved to dream at all.
In our recent book, When Brains Dream (2021), Robert Stickgold, a sleep and dream researcher at Harvard Medical School, and I drew on scientific findings to argue that while dreaming, the brain explores novel and creative associations between recently formed memories and older, often only weakly related memories, and monitors whether the resulting narrative constructed from these memories induces an emotional response. If an emotional feeling is detected, we argue that the brain tags the association as potentially valuable, strengthening the link between the two memories and making the association available once you wake up.
This model suggests that one adaptive function of dreams resides in the brain’s ability to imagine possibilities within our dreams, to evaluate our reactions to them, and to use this information to better prepare us for an uncertain future. This overarching function of dreams is likely optimised when people react to their dreams much like they react to the things they consciously experience during wakefulness. And, for the most part, that’s exactly how we behave in our dreams. After all, it’s usually only after we wake up that we realise that the experience we were having was in fact a dream. While immersed in the dream-world, we typically believe that the dream is real, which is why we feel sad in a dream upon being told that a loved one has passed away, or bewildered by the fact that we find ourselves unprepared for that high-school exam, or why we run away in a panic from a knife-wielding figure.
If our model is correct, it would help to explain why the people we encounter in our dreams, while not physically real, certainly seem to behave as if they are, and why we, the dreamers, routinely engage with them as if they were autonomous, conscious beings. The unpredictability of dream characters is also consistent with, and important for, several other recent models of dream function, such as: the threat simulation theory of dreams (this is the idea that dreams evolved to help prepare us for a range of real-life threats and dangers); the social simulation theory of dreams (which sees dreaming as an evolutionarily adaptive mechanism that allows us to rehearse waking social perceptions and interactions); and the longstanding idea that dreams play a role in emotion regulation.
In all of these models, part of the efficacy of the presumed function of dreams depends on us being emotionally engaged by the dream narrative and believing (while still asleep and dreaming) that what we’re experiencing is real. Having characters in our dreams say and do things as if they were real, sentient beings certainly helps to make this possible.
Of course, the fact that the characters in your dreams might serve some evolutionarily advantageous function of dreaming doesn’t detract from the extraordinary nature of what’s going on when you sleep. Consider the notion that, since your brain is responsible for creating your dreams, any time a character says or does something that surprises you in a dream, you are, in a very real sense, surprising yourself. And who knows, maybe some dream characters are surprising themselves too. Now that I think of it, perhaps the next time I meet that older gentleman in my dreams, I’ll ask him what unexpected night-time encounters he’s experienced lately. As to how he’ll opt to reply, your guess is as good as mine.
People queue up for last issue of Apple Daily at a newspaper booth at a downtown street in Hong Kong, Thursday, June 24, 2021. Hong Kong’s sole remaining pro-democracy newspaper has published its last edition. Apple Daily was forced to shut down Thursday after five editors and executives were arrested and millions of dollars in its assets were frozen as part of China’s increasing crackdown on dissent in the semi-autonomous city. ( AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
HONG KONG (AP) — The final edition of Hong Kong’s last remaining pro-democracy paper sold out in hours Thursday, as readers scooped up all 1 million copies of the Apple Daily, whose closure was yet another sign of China’s tightening grip on the semi-autonomous city.
Across the densely populated metropolis, people lined up early in the morning to buy the paper, which in recent years has become an increasingly outspoken critic of Chinese and Hong Kong authorities’ efforts to limit the freedoms found here but not in mainland China. The paper was gone from newsstands by 8:30 a.m.
The newspaper said it was forced to cease operations after police froze $2.3 million of its assets, searched its office and arrested five top editors and executives last week, accusing them of foreign collusion to endanger national security.
“This is our last day, and last edition, does this reflect the reality that Hong Kong has started to lose its press freedom and freedom of speech?” an Apple Daily graphic designer, Dickson Ng, asked in comments to The Associated Press. “Why does it have to end up like this?”
The paper printed 1 million copies for its last edition — up from the usual 80,000. On the front page was splashed an image of an employee in the office waving at supporters surrounding the building, with the headline “Hong Kongers bid a painful farewell in the rain, ‘We support Apple Daily.’”
While pro-democracy media outlets still exist online, it was the only print newspaper of its kind left in the city.
The pressure on the paper reflects a broader crackdown on Hong Kong’s civil liberties, ramped up after massive antigovernment protests in 2019 unsettled authorities. In response, they imposed a sweeping national security law — used in the arrests of the newspaper employees — and revamped Hong Kong’s election laws to keep opposition voices out of the legislature.
The result is that dissenting voices have been almost completely silenced in the city long known as an oasis of freedoms on mainland China’s doorstep. The increasing restrictions have come despite China’s promise to protect Hong Kong’s civil liberties for 50 years after the city’s 1997 handover from Britain.
The closure of Apple Daily raises the specter that other media outlets — though none as outspoken — will become even more cautious, such as the more than 100-year-old English-language South China Morning Post. The paper, while identified with the political and business mainstream, has thus far continued to report on controversial issues in Hong Kong and on mainland China, even after its owner, internet business titan Jack Ma, dropped from sight last year after publicly criticizing Chinese government policies.
Apple Daily’s closure marks a “dark day for press freedom in Hong Kong,” said Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law.
“Without Apple Daily, Hong Kong is less free than it was a week ago. Apple Daily was an important voice, and it seems unlikely that any other media outlet will be able to fill its shoes, given growing restrictions on free speech and freedom of the press,” he said.
Taiwan’s Cabinet agency responsible for China issues also lamented the paper’s closure as a heavy blow to media freedom in Hong Kong. The island is a self-governing democracy that split from mainland China in 1949 but that Beijing continues to claim as its territory.
“This shows the international community that the Chinese Communist Party, in its exercise of totalitarian political power, will stop at nothing to use extreme means to wipe out dissenting opinions,” Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said in an emailed statement. “Humankind’s quest for freedom, democracy and other universal values will not be lost to history, but history will remember the ugly face of the power behind the suppression of freedom.”
Beijing has dismissed such criticism as interference in its internal affairs, and Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Thursday lashed out at foreign officials who have criticized the legal actions against Apple Daily.
“Press freedom is not an excuse of impunity and whoever disrupts Hong Kong has no extrajudicial privileges,” Zhao told reporters at a daily briefing.
On Wednesday night, over 100 people stood outside Apple Daily’s office building in the rain to show their support, taking photographs and shouting words of encouragement.
Inside the building, associate publisher Chan Pui-man told staff who gathered around the newsroom to big applause: “You’ve done a great job, everyone!” Chan was one of the five arrested last week.
In the early hours of Thursday, residents in the city’s Mong Kok neighborhood in the working-class Kowloon district began lining up hours before the paper hit the stands.
Apple Daily’s Hong Kong website contained only a notice on Thursday that read: “We are sad to inform you that Apple Daily and Next Magazine’s web and app content will no longer be accessible at 23:59, 23 June 2021, HKT.”
“We would like to thank all of our readers, subscribers, advertisers, and Hongkonger(s) for your loyal support,” the notice read.
A similar message was posted on its news app.
In the wake of the announcement of the paper’s closure, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said authorities were using the national security law to curtail freedom and punish dissent, calling the paper’s closure “a chilling demonstration of their campaign to silence all opposition voices.”
German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Adebahr said the closure was “another sign that pluralism, freedom of opinion and freedom of the press in Hong Kong are subject to erosion.”
Last week’s arrests of the Apple Daily employees represented the first time the national security law had been used against journalists for something they published.
On the face of it, Pennsylvania’s bill doesn’t look too bad. It makes it prohibited to “each, advocate or encourage the adoption of racist and sexist concepts” at schools and universities. It’s even forbidden for students to “adopt or express racist and sexist concepts.” Good news, right? Wrong. When you understand that this bill is drafted by American ultra-conservatives, you might get the suspicion something is very wrong here.
Their definition of “sexist and racist” concepts isn’t…anyone sane’s. They mean things that are “anti-white” and “anti-men.” For example, something like “America was a racist country during the Jim Crow era” Is now a “racist concept.” What the? Or something like: “America was the world’s largest apartheid state until 1971.” Or even: “American Blacks suffered history’s longest genocide, which is what slavery was.” Even saying “men unconsciously perpetuate patriarchy” is now considered a “sexist concept.” They’re literally trying to cleanse history of all its follies, sins, and errors — by flipping the meanings of everyday terms on their heads. By preventing schools from teaching it. How Orwellian is that?
Teaching American history is now “racist.” Teaching feminism is now “sexist.”
Pennsylvania is trying to memory-hole history. To whitewash it away. As if it never existed. Why?
But Pennsylvania is just one state where a fanatical frenzy by conservatives over “critical race theory” is going into overdrive. Serious legislative overdrive. In other States, the game is much, much more easier to see clearly. Missouri’s bill, for example, simply prohibits teaching “divisive” concepts. Like, presumably, evolution, science, reason, logic, not to mention equality and democracy.
What’s going on here?
Fascism is.
None of this, really, is about “critical race theory.” That’s totally uncontroversial, at least to any thinking person. All it says is a) race is a social construct, not a biological reality b) which gives rise to hierarchies of power and money and class. Easy enough to understand — and self-evidently true. Race didn’t exist in the Bible — it was invented during the Enlightenment, and like many theories invented then, like the sun spinning around the earth, it was dead wrong.
This is about something much bigger than a mere theory.
This is the second coming of American fascism. What’s really going on here is this. America’s conservatives are blossoming into a full-blown fascist movement. The Trump years proved they could attain authoritarian power, and reshape society in grotesque ways — along racial and ethnic lines of hatred and supremacy. But those years were also marred by incompetence, chaos, venality, and outright stupidity. This movement — in its second phase, its post-Trump phase — has grown more organised, sophisticated, tough, and smart.
You can think of it as the third coming of American fascism, if you like — if you begin with the Nazi sympathisers during the 30s, of which there were a lot. I mean second in the modern sense though — fascism after Trump.
What’s happening now is that America’s fascists understand that they can reshape society from the state level. Since they don’t have control at the national, federal level anymore, they’re attempting to grasp power at the state and regional level. So a huge wave of bills is washing on the shores of legislatures like poisonous hazardous waste from a doomed shipwreck.
These bills all share the same intention. What did Orwell really warn of, in 1984? Truth ceasing to matter. History disintegrating. Reality turning inside out. Control that, and you control everything. Because you can make people see and think whatever you want. That’s fascism’s most sophisticated way of seizing power — something far, far more dangerous than mere coups and putsches. You don’t need to fire a bullet if you can make people see a hateful reality — and cheer for it.
So legislatures across America are now facing a strategy from the hard right which is far more sophisticated, organized, and smart than Trump’s ham-fisted hammer blows. This strategy is about eviscerating basic freedoms — and even the things which underlie them, like the freedom to think, know, understand, care. The freedom to act like and be a decent human being. They’re doing that by sanitising history, and doing what fascism always does, which is to say that a) there are the pure blooded and true of faith among us b) they’re the chosen people, the Nietzschean ubermen c) they rightly deserve to be atop all others and d) they have never done anything wrong, because they are inherently perfect.
The only problem with that is there goes history, truth, and reality. A nation confronted by fascism’s ultra-nationalist lies is also one incapable of learning from its mistakes, seeing its errors, understanding its failures, because, of course, there aren’t any. It’s easily seduced by those lies, too, because, well, who doesn’t want to be one of the chosen people? Bang. That way lies social collapse, brutality, violence, and ruin.
So this second coming of fascism is much more sophisticated and more organized and smart in three ways. It attempts to control what people can think and how they can interact. It attempts to do that at a local level. And it often does an Orwellian inversion of reality — being “anti-white” is what’s really racist, not, say what minorities and Black people go through — to achieve its end. That end is what it always is: absolute power. Only now we’re not just talking political power, but something more potent still — mental power, psychological power, the power to shape history, truth, and reality.
The closest analog for what’s happening in the States as this second coming of American fascism accelerates is, ironically, what happened to the Muslim World. Americans don’t like to hear that, but it’s true. The Muslim World wasn’t always a place of Sharia law and repression. Tehran was the Paris of the East once, just as Lahore was the Paris of South Asia — literate, sophisticated, humane places of artistic expression, philosophy, thought. And then along came the fascists.
They didn’t just contest political power. They contested something deeper. We could call it “cultural power,” but that seems to understate the point. They contested norms, values, ideas. Right down to history, truth and reality. They made it seem to the average person like the intellectual and artists and anyone foreign or strange or different was the “real” threat, with careful propaganda campaigns of demonisation and hatred. Eventually, they were successful enough that these societies fell as ones even aspiring to democracy, mostly. The average person came to accept and even want institutions like Sharia Law, religious and sectarian hate, ethnic violence, teaching science, indiscriminate brutality, repression, the stifling of any dissent against it all.
The fanatics taught a desperate, impoverished people that modernity itself — openness, democracy, freedom, respect, dignity — was their real enemy, and that regressing to a bygone age was their best hope for the better life they’d been promised, but never had. The people — enough of them — broken mentally, emotionally, financially — believed them. Bang. A huge wave of social implosion happened, and the Muslim World regressed to a fictional, nostalgic, utopian reality of caliphates and empires, which in truth had never really existed at all.
Sound familiar? Itshould. That’s what American conservatives want to do to America. And are doing.
The second coming of American fascism’s going to be more dangerous than the first. There’s every chance that the GOP’s grass-roots attacks on democracy will succeed. And, like people around the globe, Americans find themselves living in an authoritarian fascist society faster than they think. Don’t get complacent. Recognise the danger. This isn’t a drill, and the fascists are still right there, striking hammer blows at the idea of a free society. The question is how far Americans will let them go — this time.
