911 and 77 (21)
If you don't already know, experiments, going back to the 1960's, have shown clearly that humans will torture others without much effort to make them, as long as certain simple and easy conditions are put in place and certain rules followed.
The Nazi principle can therefore be said to be present in most of us, maybe all of us, and the idea that we would personally be different, we would not do such things, is really a failure to face up to our true selves and reality.
This failure, this ignorance makes us even more dangerous.
What has happened since 9/11 is that fear has been created, that fear is shared and has spread universally as yet another kind of new disease, manmade and deliberate.
One of the results, I have observed, both in the UK and in the USA, is the roboticisation of the police.
When the first Robocop film came out it was ostensibly about a human being brought back to life by implanting and splicing him with robot parts.
As a metaphor it can also be seen as the roboticisation of the police, a prophetic metaphoric warning. This is not about taking a human and incorporating robotic aspects to make him more human but the changing of what is in his mind so that he becomes more like a cruel machine. In this sense the story and the metaphor are juxtaposed as complimentary ideas.
The homogenized response will be to reply by dismissing any validity for all metaphor beyond it's surface meaning ie it has no meaning really and to emphasize that Robocop was meant as a work of fiction and is about just what it portrays itself as.
That attitude, which is what it is, is false because it makes no attempt to discover if metaphor has an extended meaning as I have described, and therefore there is no foundation for dismissing it and the dismissing of it as meaningful is done as an intellectually lazy and dishonest act in order to assert a cliche idea, the homogenized thought that there is no such aspect to any metaphor.
Furthermore, the work of fiction, any, is the result of aspects of the mind that are not entirely understood by educated people especially in the scientific world and to say that it is just a work of fiction is a failure to examine this phenomenon (which writing fiction is by the way).
The Robocop film presents us with a metaphor which warns us that we are allowing the police to de-humanize themselves and thus become more like robots and less like humans and the "Storyline" is the conscious means of expressing that unconscious warning. Got it?
Pay attention! Pay attention to your very own dreams and the metaphor dreams that you have in particular, pay great attention to them and soon you will realize what I am saying is blatantly obvious.
Knowing more about the function and origin of metaphor than most I believe that is real: The police have been roboticised.
What this means is a callous brutality is now ubiquitous, invisible and unchallenged among them and I would say it matches or exceeds that of the Nazis; indeed, is now a firm and strengthening Nazi-ish kind of state that they are now entrenched in, both in their behaviour and more importantly in their mentality.
Also, it means a loss of human quality, the ability, for example, to function in a more human way with a clear and active conscience; they are now much more psychopathic, with little or no conscience and a willingness if not an eagerness to "crack heads" and break bones and even to kill.
This is part of post 9/11 and 7/7 reality and it has been clear to me for long enough to observe that it is a new and established state that is here to stay.
In addition they have been militarized - not just in what you see when you look at them but something much worse and even more sinister that is now ubiquitously present in their minds.
On top of that, more money is thrown at them and increasing powers, in law and the public's wishes, are being given to them with no thought or discussion of the very likely consequences or what the inevitable cost will really be in the end.
It is obvious where all this must lead, the only question is if it will be halted along the way or not.
De-humanising a culture is the easiest and simplest thing to do, roboticising the police is just a part of it. It does not and can not lead to anything meritorious, good, improved or admirable and we, the people, are actively choosing this option because we are, effectively, insisting that we will not see any of this because we do not want to see any of it because we don't want to face the reality because we are cowed in fear by it.
That's the only real pity here because it reveals us to be cowards on the whole, too afraid to face the harsh facts, that is optional, the rest is an inevitable consequence.
If we chose, as a community, to face the reality we could at least do something intelligent about it instead of dealing with it by denial which is how the fear works - and that fear was generated deliberately so continuing to opt out of dealing with it is a priceless gift that we continue to willingly give to the perpetrators.
In cooperating so meekly and by being so cowed by them we justify, in their minds, their thinking and their evil actions and tacitly invite them to 'bring it on'.
It is difficult to see any sign of sanity prevailing.
By Paul E. Coughlin
SaneThinking.com
28 May 2008
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