The Fundamental Rights - Cognitive Liberty

Everyone should have the fundamental right to think for themselves and control their own consciousness. As long as a person is not harming another, we all have the right to Cognitive Liberty. If Neuroethics tells us anything, it's that:

• All people should be free to alter their own consciousness.
• No one should prevent anyone else from altering their own consciousness.
• No one should alter another person's consciousness against their will.

Everyday this fundamental right is threatened. We are constantly manipulated by the mass media, marketing and advertising, corporate opinion shapers, public education and our own government. It all starts when we are young, public education no longer teaches us how to think for ourselves but instead teaches us that we can't think, so we better ask an experts opinion. An increasing number of children are being forced against their will to take prescription drugs like Ritalin, so that they are allowed to attend school. Neuromarketing technologies give advertisers the ability to test sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. Advertising is everywhere, we grow up consuming our favorite brands. The news supports the artificial left-right political paradigm. We argue in talking points and sound bites. There is a narrow cognitive path set before us and we are herded in line.

We don't even have the right to alter our own consciousness with entheogens, like humans have done since the very beginning. The War on Drugs isn't just a war on the ingesting of physical substances but a War on consciousness itself. Its about controlling what mental states we are permitted to experience. They want to narrow the expectable range of conscious experience so that we are easily directed and molded into fine, unquestioning citizens. Entheogenic substances are thought to facilitate sacred and spiritual experiences, yet those in control demonize and restrict access to mental states that risk waking people up or at the very least, expanding their consciousness a little.

This is evolutionarily suicidal for the species. This War is a denial of our very nature. We all seek intoxication and altered states of consciousness because we intuitively know something is wrong with the way we have been programmed to think. It is there, in the invisible landscape, that we can most creatively shape our future. Whether we use entheogens, our dreams, psychology, yoga or meditation, we need to travel outside our ordinary consciousness to learn how we have been programmed and open our minds to the potential array of consciousness that is available to us. The fundamental problem with drugs is not that people are using them, it's that they aren't being used safely and more importantly, we aren't being taught how to induce altered states without the use of drugs. As a culture based on freedom, we need to change our approach to consciousness and spread the message that we should all have the fundamental right to cognitive liberty.