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Rikard's avatar

This has been discussed on the principle-level since the 1960s, I have to point out.

Always with a rephrased eugenicist agenda.

Tracking chips to find lost people and fugitives. Enhancers and monitors of different kinds, f.e. for diabetics and epileptics. Thought-controlled machinery (already semi-possible).

And ne'er a thought from the modernist-futurist technophiliacs about the sad Iron Law of technology:

Any and all technology will always be pushed to its technical limitations, before human limitations are applied to it.

As I've used an example when in class: first, the car came. Then modern roads. Then traffic wardens/lights and crossings. Then rules for cars and driving. The licenses. And so on. Young people are often stunned to learn that it is within living memory that drunk driving was up to the intercepting officer to decide, and that a set limit in parts per thousand is in many nations a 1980s invention, or even later than that.

Now then, a species who takes a century to come around to realising that driving a 60-ton logging truck while inebriated is a Bad Thing(tm), is such a species to be trusted with hooking their brains up to machinery?

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epimetheus's avatar

Oh, it's one thing to be DUI, and, yes, that's stupid and dangerous to yourself and others--but to participate in the roll-out and administration of a mass-vaccination campaign only works if you're under some kind of spell, or mass-formation psychosis, to use Matthias Desmet's term.

There needs to be a balance between security and liberty, and I do think that the IoMT is a lot of things, but it's neither providing more security nor protecting liberty.

If this per se has a positive or negative, let alone a eugenicist, touch is, in my view, not even the core issue once we compare this with the case that bears the most relevance here:

Gun control in the US.

Every time a shooting happens, gun manufacturers hold that 'it's people, not guns, that kill'.

If we now apply the same 'logic' to Big Pharma's products and applicants--which, in the US, is the third-leading cause of death--what would be get in terms of culpability?

What is the most strange aspect here is--the arbitrary application of the law, weaponised by legacy media and paid shills (lobbyists), in one instance (guns) differs completely from how the other issue (iatrogenic deaths) is treated.

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Rikard's avatar

Arbitrary application of laws surprises me less (i.e. not at all, that's standard practice and always has been) than arbitrary application of logic as logic pertains to ethics and morals and principles.

As your comparison of firearms/pharmacological products shows, it's not no. of deaths which matters neither legally nor logically.

But to use drug-peddling as a parallel: all smugglers and dealers 'cut' their product. The clean stuff they keep for personal use. With a seven-figure salary, options, stocks and so on you can afford real food, clean water and real doctors who actually treat you using safe and tried practices and medicines.

Why should you care if the proles are stuck with McFood, subsistence wages and no benefits (plenty other meat-robots to fill their shoes), polluted water and "don't ask - don't tell"-doctors just following protocol, the latter being the medical profession's eq. to "just following orders"?

That's where I arrive again and again: Why should those up above care about those below?

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epimetheus's avatar

That last sentence is the essence of the conundrum, I think: the short answer might be--because they have to pretend we're a 'democracy™'.

Add to that the post-1945 'we're not fascists/national socialists' as a reflex to virtually any problems (the reductio ad Hitlerum) and you can clearly see, in analytical terms, the problem at-hand.

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Green Fields's avatar

"Remember the dystopian movies of yesteryear, from ‘The Matrix’ to ‘The Network’ to ‘Terminator’. "

Let's also not forget 'Idiocracy'.

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Rikard's avatar

'Rollerball' (the '70s one)

'Logan's Run'

'THX 1138'

'Stalker' (Tarkovsky)

'Sexmission' (1984, Polish, it's not porn despite the title)

There are many more, of course, but these are often forgotten despite all of them being quite spot-on, each in their own way, when it comes to having predicted elements of our present.

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Green Fields's avatar

Ooh more for me to watch. Not heard of any of these other than perhaps rollerball but no idea of content and couldn't even hazard a guess!

It does beg the question - Are these really predictions, predictive programming or limited hangouts?

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Rikard's avatar

Difficult to answer - it can just as easily be a case of a film-maker (or other story-teller) taking one or two ideas bandied about in his/her present, and then extending the tangent as far as they can withing the realm of possibility.

Sci-fi/dystopian fiction (or pretty much any fiction) from behind the Iron Curtain tended to have obvious tones of criticising or critiquing authoritarian and totalitarian communism, especially the corruption inherent to that -ism as practiced in the East, so it would be quite the stretch to imagine that a Czech dystopian fictional story from the 1960s would be predictive programming for our present.

On the other hand, some themes are eternal it seems: "The Time Machine" by Wells being a prime example of the "effete and ennui-ridden ignorant upper class" (the Eloi) living in fear of the "masculine aggressive and predatory working class" (the Morlocks). It was Wells extending the tangent of the ever-more debauched and decadent British upper classes and the equally ever-more downtrodden factory-slaves serving their overlords despite being the holders of real power that gave us one of the most persistent images used in science fiction, and it stands out together with Verne's books about Robur (the futurist/modernist "engineer hero"-archetype) as the portal pillars separating older heroic or prophetic literature to later works.

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epimetheus's avatar

Apart from that, have you seen 'Brazil' by Terry Gilliam?

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Rikard's avatar

Oh yes, both versions. Plenty of times too.

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epimetheus's avatar

True, but ‘Idiocracy’ is alread a reality, I’d add.

Change my mind ^_^

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Green Fields's avatar

I sought out and watched 'Network'.

Most went over my head and I couldn't understand a lot of it.

I have never had TV.

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epimetheus's avatar

Good for you.

I merely included it as it was one of the early 'computers are gonna kill us all' flicks. It's a bad movie with C-rate 'actors', but it's about the theme.

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Green Fields's avatar

Idiocracy - Yes, that's indeed true... apart from the smoking doctors ;)

I've heard of the terminator, not seen it, and not even heard of 'The Neywork'- guessing it's not an office drama.then.

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