Zbigniew Piekarski on Base instincts
"Now all Iraqis can taste liberty in their native land, and we will help make that freedom permanent by assisting them to establish an equitable criminal justice system based on the rule of law and standards of basic human rights."
- U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft
Throughout history we have sought peace through order. We have done so by believing that to control and shape our environment, is both necessary and sufficient to provide peace and stability. Advances in technology have been our dominant tool in re-shaping Mother Earth and in enabling us to combine into increasingly larger units that require increasingly larger bureaucracies.
To any bureaucracy, political ideology, religion or corporate mission statement are irrelevant. Its sole purpose is to implement the dictates of its masters. To do so, it has to create conformity with its procedures and uniformity in their application. It is, in essence, the embodiment of the 'rationality' of man.
Bureaucracies rely on manuals. This comes from one such manual, which reads: "The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy."
It goes on to say that: "The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. For example, the threat to inflict pain can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain." However, "if a subject refuses to comply after a threat has been made, it must be carried out. Otherwise, subsequent threats will also prove ineffective."
Moreover, the "pain that he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance. If he is required to maintain a rigid position, such as standing at attention or sitting on a stool for long periods, the immediate source of discomfort is not the questioner but the subject. After a while, the subject is likely to exhaust his internal motivational strength. Intense pain is likely to produce false confessions, fabricated to avoid additional punishment."
"Sexual humiliation is used because the effectiveness of most of the non-coercive techniques depends upon their unsettling effect. The interrogation situation is in itself disturbing to most people encountering it for the first time. The aim is to enhance this effect, to disrupt radically familiar emotional and psychological associations. When this aim is achieved, resistance is seriously impaired. There is an interval of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis. It is caused by a traumatic or sub-traumatic experience, which explodes, as it were, the world that is familiar to the subject, as well as his image of himself within that world. At this moment, the source is far likelier to comply."
The quotations above are from two CIA interrogation manuals that surfaced in 1997 after the Baltimore Sun obtained them under freedom of information laws. The techniques outlined are used extensively by military personnel of all nations and within most penal institutions. When public sensibility is offended by their disclosure, individuals are blamed and sacrificed in order for the system to survive. Cosmetic changes are made with a fanfare of publicity, but after a few weeks the system reverts back to its own internal dynamics.
One of the films often repeated on Polish TV outlines the dilemma that man's creations face. It's the 1952 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet, which tells the tale of a ship from Earth investigating a missing expedition. When it arrives the crew finds that most of the expedition died nearly two decades before, with only a scientist, Dr. Morbius, and his daughter, Altaira, still alive. They are assisted by Robby the Robot, built by Morbius and based on plans left by the Krell, an alien race a million years ahead of humans, both ethically and technologically, that managed to free their culture from sickness, insanity and crime, yet it became extinct virtually overnight.
As the crew prepares to relay their discoveries to Earth, a deadly force that had decimated the first expedition reawake, and key members of the team are murdered. The riddle is solved at the end. Dr. Morbius sincerely believed that the knowledge the Krell possessed should be kept by the elite few who are good enough to understand it - which excludes everyone but himself - and he summoned up the demons of his own subconscious, his primal instincts or "Monsters from the Id" in order to eliminate anyone who disagreed with him. The Krell had built their system in order to magnify their rational powers, but forgot, or were unable, to accommodate their repressed lower-level instincts, which were magnified by the machine to the point of destroying the entire civilization.
The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. It acquires its own internal logic and its own motive force and the desire to extend the territory of its jurisdiction. Unfortunately, the larger it grows and the more powerful it becomes, the greater the ramifications of the inevitable, unintended consequences of its actions. Nature protects itself through diversity and interdependence, while the current impetus in man is for homogeneity and dependence, a combination that will lead to a catastrophe.
The mind of man is a complex pattern-making machine. Most of the mind is visual. We see, we react and then we think. Visual images are not easily forgotten. Recall pictures of the Holocaust, of the girl in Vietnam and now of Iraqi prisoners. All constituted turning points.
The next strongest sense of order that we have is time. Both pattern structure and time are the major primordial influences in the financial markets. They are there because the market is a continual interplay of our primal impulses of fear and greed. Over the past few weeks, the patterns have indicated that we have reached a turning point. Chaos, if not already here, is on its way.
And yet there is hope for the future. It is illustrated by the prolific activity of Cmdr. John J Adams of Forbidden Planet, who went on to make 74 films; 30 TV films and 16 TV series. His most famous roles were as Dr. Rumack in Airplane and Lt. Frank Drebin in the Police Squad and the Naked Gun series. He has become the greatest philosopher of our age and his name is Leslie Nielsen. The time of Fred Nietzsche has returned. Cycles repeat.
- U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft
Throughout history we have sought peace through order. We have done so by believing that to control and shape our environment, is both necessary and sufficient to provide peace and stability. Advances in technology have been our dominant tool in re-shaping Mother Earth and in enabling us to combine into increasingly larger units that require increasingly larger bureaucracies.
To any bureaucracy, political ideology, religion or corporate mission statement are irrelevant. Its sole purpose is to implement the dictates of its masters. To do so, it has to create conformity with its procedures and uniformity in their application. It is, in essence, the embodiment of the 'rationality' of man.
Bureaucracies rely on manuals. This comes from one such manual, which reads: "The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy."
It goes on to say that: "The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. For example, the threat to inflict pain can trigger fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain." However, "if a subject refuses to comply after a threat has been made, it must be carried out. Otherwise, subsequent threats will also prove ineffective."
Moreover, the "pain that he feels he is inflicting upon himself is more likely to sap his resistance. If he is required to maintain a rigid position, such as standing at attention or sitting on a stool for long periods, the immediate source of discomfort is not the questioner but the subject. After a while, the subject is likely to exhaust his internal motivational strength. Intense pain is likely to produce false confessions, fabricated to avoid additional punishment."
"Sexual humiliation is used because the effectiveness of most of the non-coercive techniques depends upon their unsettling effect. The interrogation situation is in itself disturbing to most people encountering it for the first time. The aim is to enhance this effect, to disrupt radically familiar emotional and psychological associations. When this aim is achieved, resistance is seriously impaired. There is an interval of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or paralysis. It is caused by a traumatic or sub-traumatic experience, which explodes, as it were, the world that is familiar to the subject, as well as his image of himself within that world. At this moment, the source is far likelier to comply."
The quotations above are from two CIA interrogation manuals that surfaced in 1997 after the Baltimore Sun obtained them under freedom of information laws. The techniques outlined are used extensively by military personnel of all nations and within most penal institutions. When public sensibility is offended by their disclosure, individuals are blamed and sacrificed in order for the system to survive. Cosmetic changes are made with a fanfare of publicity, but after a few weeks the system reverts back to its own internal dynamics.
One of the films often repeated on Polish TV outlines the dilemma that man's creations face. It's the 1952 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet, which tells the tale of a ship from Earth investigating a missing expedition. When it arrives the crew finds that most of the expedition died nearly two decades before, with only a scientist, Dr. Morbius, and his daughter, Altaira, still alive. They are assisted by Robby the Robot, built by Morbius and based on plans left by the Krell, an alien race a million years ahead of humans, both ethically and technologically, that managed to free their culture from sickness, insanity and crime, yet it became extinct virtually overnight.
As the crew prepares to relay their discoveries to Earth, a deadly force that had decimated the first expedition reawake, and key members of the team are murdered. The riddle is solved at the end. Dr. Morbius sincerely believed that the knowledge the Krell possessed should be kept by the elite few who are good enough to understand it - which excludes everyone but himself - and he summoned up the demons of his own subconscious, his primal instincts or "Monsters from the Id" in order to eliminate anyone who disagreed with him. The Krell had built their system in order to magnify their rational powers, but forgot, or were unable, to accommodate their repressed lower-level instincts, which were magnified by the machine to the point of destroying the entire civilization.
The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. It acquires its own internal logic and its own motive force and the desire to extend the territory of its jurisdiction. Unfortunately, the larger it grows and the more powerful it becomes, the greater the ramifications of the inevitable, unintended consequences of its actions. Nature protects itself through diversity and interdependence, while the current impetus in man is for homogeneity and dependence, a combination that will lead to a catastrophe.
The mind of man is a complex pattern-making machine. Most of the mind is visual. We see, we react and then we think. Visual images are not easily forgotten. Recall pictures of the Holocaust, of the girl in Vietnam and now of Iraqi prisoners. All constituted turning points.
The next strongest sense of order that we have is time. Both pattern structure and time are the major primordial influences in the financial markets. They are there because the market is a continual interplay of our primal impulses of fear and greed. Over the past few weeks, the patterns have indicated that we have reached a turning point. Chaos, if not already here, is on its way.
And yet there is hope for the future. It is illustrated by the prolific activity of Cmdr. John J Adams of Forbidden Planet, who went on to make 74 films; 30 TV films and 16 TV series. His most famous roles were as Dr. Rumack in Airplane and Lt. Frank Drebin in the Police Squad and the Naked Gun series. He has become the greatest philosopher of our age and his name is Leslie Nielsen. The time of Fred Nietzsche has returned. Cycles repeat.
