Mental health isn't football, so just leave it be

I hear you - you're right that's the essence of it. The thing that rubbed me the wrong way reading the article in the first place was the overall sense that I was being condescended to - we have no right to speculate or judge - and I just thought that seemed like a prescription for what was acceptable discourse and what was not. Plus at least one other person told me my point was 'bordering on the ridiculous' and that kinda piqued my indignant rage. I gather you feel like the term 'right' seems too lofty or that it doesn't extend to issues that ultimately don't really impact us personally and moreover could have a negative impact on the subject. On that particular point I think we'll have to agree to disagree because I sincerely believe it is my 'right' even if you think it's more accurately termed a 'privilege' or even just an unnecessary indulgence. But I think I've explained why I think that. Otherwise I'm all for patience and reasoned discourse. And I agree with you that it's necessary to examine why we engage in certain topics and we should avoid doing and saying things that harm other people as opposed to just going I'll do what I want coz I can and you can't stop me' which i fear is the attitude you feel I'm expressing. But I feel like the harm comes from false accusations of misinformation not from the discussion about what could or could not be going on. And so to approach this with Lyon's feelings in mind I would say it's not fair to wildly imagine the manner of his personal indiscretions with Brownless and his family or to pontificate without evidence what actually went on behind closed doors. But if he says he's suffering depression and I think that looks a bit like someone looking for an excuse for average behaviour I should have the right to discuss that. I don't have to wait till it's been proven one way or another to talk about that and simply swallow his claim as truth or ignore until someone confirms his claim. And I still believe that adheres to my principled stance on free speech and your call to be more compassionate or values driven with respect to what we talk discuss and who it effects. Ultimately we probably agree on a fair bit - But that R word probably tweaked us in opposite directions for different reasons.

Honestly, my only agenda agenda is to hopefully get people to think about it more deeply and beyond standard slogans or right/wrong categorisations, which really don't help deep thinking too often, but rather end it. I don't want to paint you in any way. Ideally what I try to do is, where I can at least, keep it to examining the actions, rather than labelling people (unless they've registered a pretty solid body of work). Happy for you to keep discussing whatever you want, I'd assume theoretically you'd be open to be challenged. BTW (At the risk of opening this up again) I'm not sure I haven't addressed your point, maybe it was just in a way you weren't expecting? Is the distillation of it: "it most certainly is our right to speculate about and judge whoever and whatever we want"? My biggest bone of contention, outside the utility of it and how those subsequent actions might accord with your values, would be with the (thinking killer) r-word. :P

Ha Righto- I still think I have the RIGHT to speculate about Lyon and the validity of his claims regarding mental Illness and for every part of your position that you think I missed I still don't the think you addressed the point I was making. You just wanna paint me as an ideologue getting jazzed about an issue that isnt there - that's fine coz I'm gonna keep talking about things that interest me whether you think those are beneficial or not. You know why? ..... Wait for it .... Because it's my... RRRII... Ah you know how this goes ;-)

Well yeah. I guess that's what happens when we get all het up on things like "rights". We miss stuff.

I thought the whole point of this discussion was that you and the author and Radford (wherever he got to) were establishing that certain topics should be 'off limits' - that's all I have issue with If all you're saying is we should consider the overall impact of particular issues on other people or the motives that drive us before we launch into talking about them - well, I agree with that...

I know you haven't gotten where I'm coming from here. Once again, I've never said anything should be banned. I repeat, I have never said anything should be banned. Banned, I've not said. No ban. Ban no. I haven't ranked any topic in terms of importance (harmful vs beneficial perhaps). People can decide that for themselves. I've never said what people "should" do or looked to legislate a topic to discuss (or not). I am happy to test out some assumptions though. What I am saying is that when you've got a personal decision to make and you're weighing up and action which is only beneficial for your own entertainment and it realistically may have harmful consequences, you could easily delay or avoid that particular action. Now that can get bypassed when we think we have a "right" (swallowing that whole because it feels good, without ever questioning it's validity to what we really hold as important) to do it. That's where I think the problem with assumed "rights" is, they shortcut thinking. Ultimately we can view it as there being two drivers of our actions, one is our emotions and the other is our values. I think it's worthwhile examining which one is behind our choices, especially when there may be some harmful consequences. So your value of "freedom of speech" is weighed up against the value of "avoiding unnecessary harm". Yes?

Yeh I mean I think we've exhausted where this can go - and I'm not totally sure you've really addressed my central argument. I know we regulate things all the time - I'm not advocating a libertarian free-for-all, in fact I said I can see how creating limits or restrictions can be achieved in a democratic consensus driven manner. Bottom line: you and Josh the author think grubby little discussions about personal affairs should be off limits. You haven't articulated how you would decide what is actually off limits in a broader sense other than to say because this issue has nothing to do with Lyon's job that it's none of our business. You haven't really even told me how questioning the validity of Lyon's claim is harmful to anyone? I think you jump from 'I can talk about this if I want' to 'well you don't have a right to know about his private life' and these are two different arguments. I don't think I deserve to know everything about him - but if there's information in the public domain surely I can discuss it? Maybe not with you because you don't think it's all that interesting but that's how this gets regulated right? I want to talk about it but no one engages me and so it dies. Not with some random arbiter of taste and value going - well if you want to talk about his leaving Channel 9 thats fine, thats his job but this affair business or his mental state that's not up for discussion. I'm simply telling you that however you rank topics in terms of importance you can't feasibly call discussion of anything 'off limits' without fundamentally impinging on freedom of speech. As I keep saying I get your queasyness over these type of topics but what I want to know from you is how do you propose to define what is and is not off limits? Other than to say this has to do with his private life, doesn't feel right to you so don't talk about it. And to address this notion of 'peeling back the layers' I mean you can use all the gentle analogous language you want 'peeling back layers' sounds a lot like 'let's have a look here and see what is and is not ok to say/talk about' It's fine to look at aspects of public discourse and think about how it affects us but the essential thing we were talking about is how do you establish anything is 'off limits' without restricting freedom of speech? if you A) don't actually propose to define what is off limits, then you basically agree with me but with the caveat that celebrity gossip is a bit meaningless or B) You do propose to define things that are off limits (because some discourse and media consumption can be harmful) and therefore fundamentally do not believe in freedom of speech or press I keep coming back to the line in Josh's article that bugs me the most "It’s not our right to speculate or cast judgements about Lyon’s personal life" Wrong - it most certainly is our right to speculate about and judge whoever and whatever we want

Whoa, you need to pull the reins on that horsey there Nick, who said anything about bans? I've just talked about peeling back the layers on what it is, the potential affects it might have, and then about the personal choices we make in light of that. But as a society we do restrict and ban things all the time. That's based on a number of factors, depending what it is and why (it also can be done on ill-defined concepts and perceptions and without peeling back the layers). We learn about what affects different things (that we once just took as read) have on us all the time. When you think of it, it is a large component of what a society actually is. (I also think over regulation by banning lots of things has nonideal affects on our mindset and added likelihood of unintended consequences too) And I'm just saying "rights" aren't an actual thing. Essentially they're something we've constructed either through our own experiences and/or what the relevant authorities have allowed us to have. Hence in we can feel a "right" to a decent wifi connection, whereas someone elsewhere can't get clean drinking water let alone survivable amount of calories. So it can be very useful for us to put some thought into what defines a "right" and why.

Yeh your analogy sounds good but it just don't think access to food that is bad for us is the same as access to entertainment that you think is useless and unproductive. If for no other reason than the very central point of my argument, which is how do you decide which stuff is harmful? In the case of a sugary drink we can isolate that product or component of that product and say 'ok this hurts us so we are going to limit/restrict/ban'. In the case of information or types of entertainment its just harder to make that distinction and whoever you give authority to make that distinction then has a type of power and influence that I think is unjust. You may well be right about types of entertainment having negative impacts on brain composition. It's certainly worthy of research, but then how do you pinpoint what qualifies as harmful or unnecessary and how do you go about banning that without trending down a path that leads all manner of information open to censorship? You seem to have issue with the notion of a 'right' - as though 'rights' only extend to things you've decided are truly important. The right to drink a sugary drink IS a right just like the right to practice whatever religion I want. I don't think one individual has the right to tell me what I can and can't drink just like one person can't tell me what I can and can't be interested in. The difference is that if a majority of people democratically come to a consensus that limiting a harmful substance is a good idea then it is just to limit that substance. If people came together to say 'alright lets ban celebrity gossip' then I think that could be justified. But i would still come back to my original point that banning this particular type of thing is near on impossible without encroaching on other rights or at least exposing ourselves to even stricter and more prohibitive interpretations of 'where the line is'. With respect to your notion that this is a 'First World' issue I disagree on the basis that a) freedom of speech and press is an issue for all people b) just because there are people and nations that do not have the same rights as us we should not minimise or take for granted the fact the we have those rights. Your distinction between right and privilege is meaningless. I have the right to vote, but the privilege to of engaging in celebrity gossip? No I have the right to say and think whatever I want irrespective of the content. I know you have a problem with elevating trivial matters to the status of 'rights' and I agree certain things are more important than others but unfortunately if you believe in free speech you simply have extend that freedom to all speech otherwise you don't actually believe in free speech you believe in drawing boundaries around acceptable content - a process which I've stated I think is either impossible (objectively) or immoral. Libel laws are in place to stop people making things up (essentially) and as I've stated I don't believe you should be able to claim fact as fiction but you should be able to talk about issues or speculate on what the truth of a matter is even if that matter is trivial. Your point about the concentrations of power in the media (I gather that's what you're getting at?) is valid to the extent that we should be wary of how much power and influence they have and the fact that we probably only see and talk about a very limited range of topics that are dictated to us by a relative minority of media owners. And I gather when you say 'it's probably not what it's cracked up to be' you mean 'we probably don't have as much freedom as we think' - If thats what you mean I agree we don't have true freedom like I would envisage it. If what you mean is 'having freedom of speech isn't that important (not what it's cracked up to be' then I think it's clear that I 100% disagree with that and i think you would only need to look at countries that truly restrict speech and press to understand why freedom of speech is so important and to imagine what life could be like without it. To be fair I'm not trying to shut down people who question rampant voyeurism - I'm chatting with you about it and I like that you feel differently about it (well sort of ;-)) - You are certainly right to acknowledge that there is a way of wallowing in the affairs of celebrities personal lives, a type of cultural schadenfreude, that seems unhealthy and as you point out potentially harmful (both to the consumer and the subject). If you were asking me would I encourage people to engage in celebrity gossip then I would say no. And if you were asking me do I think oligopolistic media conglomerates pay outsized attention to trivial matters to consciously direct our attention away from things that really matter then I would say yes. I just think the way to combat it if you really have a problem with it is to ignore it or walk away rather than dictating what constitutes valid or important topics of discussion.

Elevating celebrity gossip to a right, that’s getting a bit carried away. It’s a bit like saying fizzy sugary drinks are a “right”. Getting access to sustenance may be a “right”. Open access to information may be a “right”, but fizzy drinks and celebrity gossip are hardly necessary let alone a “right”, although they do generate huge profits. Given the huge profits involved it is fair to ask what is driving our choices with these sorts of things. “Rights” is an interesting one and we often claim things as rights, which are actually privileges. They are “First World” options really and so we can examine them more closely as to where we want to go with them. And given they aren’t necessary, it's fair to ask are they harmless? As we are beginning to understand about sugar intake, we are likewise discovering the ways in which our brains change in their interaction with the world. I would question whether celebrity gossip, particularly in these sorts of instances is as harmless as it would seem. Research has shown how we think can change brain structure in as little as 8 weeks. We also know that watching pornography can change brain structure and I would argue celebrity gossip shares many similarities with pornography in a more socially acceptable way (i.e. objectifying people and reducing them to lowest common denominators). So in the way cola can corrode a 5c coin, the form of online interaction and gossip, snap judgements, insta-outrage, can corrode our ability to relate to each other in a humane way. There are always limits to our freedoms, especially when they impact negatively on others. It’s why there are libel laws, even in countries that prize free speech. Freedom of the press is another interesting concept, given the broad ownership of moguls with diverse vested interests and the much more free form info available on the interwebs. It’s probably not what it’s cracked up to be. Questioning it is fair enough and it’s equally perilous in trying to shut down people who would question the rampant voyeurism particularly when: a) It’s really only satisfies a want for entertainment; b) There’s a realistic chance of harm to others involved.

Or the author.... ? I mean I'm genuinely interested in the alternate view - just coz I think I'm write doesn't mean I don't like a good debate :-)

Where's this Radford character - I wrote him a bloody thesis! ;-)

To prolong our discussion.... A) I don't think, if you look at the history of the struggle for freedom of press and speech that the right is cheaply earned at all. And well you may think that having the right to talk about a public figure's personal affairs should not be conflated with the right to criticise political figures but I think if you accept freedom of speech is a right you have to accept it for all things. Drawing any line for what is off limits compromises that belief even if you think people are too interested in unproductive discourse. B) It's not so much that I think their private lives are ours too. I would not say I deserve to know everything about his life. To that end I would draw the line in terms of how far journalists are allowed to go to discover certain information. But I also think thats a separate argument. It's not so much that 'I have the right to know everything about him personal and professional' its 'I have the right to talk about him however I want (provided I'm not making things up) - so do I deserve to know if he really suffers depression or not? No he can reveal whatever he wants and keep whatever he wants to himself. But if says he suffers depression can I speculate on whether he's telling the truth or not? Of course I can.

That's a pretty cheaply earned right. But I'm not about telling people what to do. Here I'm interested in the idea that gets thrown around a lot along the lines of "If they're famous their private lives are ours too" or "they signed up for it". Now of course there's going to be interest, people are a snoopy lot, but I question where it went from a morbid curiosity to a right and a thing that goes unquestioned, to the point of indignity when you do. I don't necessarily think it's to do with taste more like choosing to think about what it actually means more.

Cheers Gordon ;-)

Dalgety - I suppose the distinction here is the way you are sort of separating his profession as 'public entertainer' which just so happens to be in the public eye from his personal life and then saying it's odd or not ok that people are interested in both. If you're asking me 'haven't we got to a weird place where Garry Lyon's personal life is a publicly discussed issue' then I think yes. I mean i don't think that this particular issue necessarily advances public discourse. But unfortunately the nature of having a public profile these days is such that if you do choose to have a career with a high level of exposure you might get talked about negatively. I mean do I think that it's worthwhile trolling people on twitter or writing hateful messages to celebrities for a laugh? No I don't but I don't think you can expose yourself to the public and then go 'hey people are only allowed to say good things about me!' or 'people are only allowed to talk about my job not my wife/kids/personal beliefs etc'. Incidentally I don't think we are 'entitled to know everything about their personal lives'. If they want to be private they can a) take jobs away from the public eye b) choose not to release statements to the press regarding their mental illness. But you simply can't live bask in the rewards associated with being a high profile media figure and then be surprised or upset when people don't talk about the thing you want them to talk about - or worse yet imply that they should not talk about you publicly because this issue is no longer solely a professional one (the domain you are supposedly allowed to be interested in) but rather is now a sensitive personal one regarding your psychological health (the domain that is off limits) But I didn't really respond to Josh's article to argue if Garry Lyon is a good bloke or not. I just read it and thought - you don't really get the right to dictate what it is ok for people to talk about. From Josh's article It’s not our right to speculate or cast judgements about Lyon’s personal life. That is his private domain and does not concern us. This line I fundamentally disagree with - it is our right to talk about whatever and whoever we want. Now there is a difference between coming on here and say making false claims about what Lyon did or did not do. I don't abide claiming fiction as fact. But if people want to be cynical about his claim that he's actually suffering from a mental illness I do believe that's their right. And to double down on the word I also believe it's their responsibility. If Lyon is lying about it to cover up a personal indiscretion that could be very insulting and detrimental to many actual sufferers of mental illness. We do have a duty to question everything we read and hear because accepting anything as gospel could lead to all manner of negative consequences. If you're asking is this the biggest issue with respect to the public interest then I'd have to say no it's not. But I do think you simply have to accept that exposing yourself publicly leaves you open to public discussion and that dictating what the public is and isn't allowed to be interested in with respect to those public figures is a) impossible to achieve in an objective fashion and b) is frankly immoral. I understand that many people's initial response to 'gossip' is to think that's a bit low brow or a bit crass. I think too there's an element of snobbishness involved 'I would never pay any attention to Kanye-Swift spat on twitter, I'm much too busy reading about global affairs!' But I think the only way to combat that - if you really think it's not worth talking about or in fact somehow detrimental to talk about trivial matters - is to just not engage with it. Otherwise you are by definition making a judgement call about what people can and can't be interested in and that to me is much worse than engaging in a little scurrilous gossip.

Well given you are part of the "public" in one way shape or form, it does have some bearing on what the "public" is interested in.

I think in the end the public decides what it is interested in and whether I think it is weird or not has no bearing on that.

I would term it a "you are embuing my original observation with judgements it never made and therefore you arguments against it are irrelevant to my observation, on top of which you key points are not as key as you believe and it is much more fun to watch you choose self righteous pomposity over simply letting it be."

I thought you said you were going to get serious Macca? So...essentially that's a "No, I'm not capable of addressing them" from you.