Know Where You Are Part II

Following the responses to my question:

Can it be a fundamental human right to know where you are?

I would like to rephrase the question (be careful what you wish for).

Can it be a fundamental human right not to have knowledge of where you
are denied to you?

I guess in part the question came about because of the anniversary of
the liberation of Auschwitz and the focus on the shipment across europe
of human beings.

Lack of location knowledge is often used as part of torture, i.e.
prisoners are hooded (when flown from Afghanistan to Cuba) or masked and
taken to unknown locations. Migrant workers (illegal? workers) are
denied knowledge of where they are. Soldiers are often denied this
knowledge. Abused children often won't know. People are rendered to
foreign powers, flown across the world in the night.

Of course knowledge of location is only useful if it relates to
something you know - GPS reference is not much use to most people, but
then that somewhat misses the point.

Location is one of those things that you always have, but that you might
not know.

Julian Oliver suggested that 'one could argue albeit we have a right to
become lost, or be lost'.

I have no problem with that, it can go in a Bill of Locative Rights,
though that's probably more closely allied to the right to not be
restrained (unless you want to literally argue that we have the right
not to see landmark buildings …)

Jen H. said 'I don't think it (knowing where you are) has anything to
_do_ with rights.'. And went on to argue that we can all choose where we
are (at least I think that's what he was arguing).

Sure, there are many levels of location and we can all be in different
places in our heads, but I was talking about physical location and
having some knowledge of where you are - say, in relation to where you
started, or in relation to your country or whatever.

More in the morning.

Ivan


John Hopkins wrote:

>> >..I just had this thought that knowing where you are might be a
>> fundamental human right that is worth talking about.
>
>
> Knowing where you are is also a very personal internal function which
> is independent of the external social metastructure you are embedded
> in. It is such that when people are 'over-socialized' their internal
> sense of (who and) where they are gets over-written by the dominant
> social structures. This evolution to over-socialization is a general
> trend where people are more and more willing to allow external social
> structures to form their moral (or immoral) concepts, as well as their
> fundamental sense of reality (when talking about the mediating effects
> of simulated reality via technological innovation.) A problematic
> state of being to allow an Other to express your own
> state/place-of-being.
>
> Physically it is impossible to simultaneously share an Other's
> point-of-view: empathy is an extremely critical element of
> placement… the juxtaposition of self-and-other…
>
> the thought of which leads to a side note which has something to do
> with the absolute knowledge/placement of the Self: (Whenever I
> see/hear the word "Rights", I am reminded of the Simon Weil idea of
> 'Human obligations' – instead of complaining about a loss of rights
> (seizing from the Other my rights), what about the inverse, to become
> internally aware of what the Self might provide for the Other…)
> (another form of empathy)
>
> jh
>
> PS – any reason for the new "@2005.x-i.net" address? just curious…
>

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