Soma and other retro tyrannies

Many libertarian (and even a few conservative) writers have pointed out more than once that the novels 1984 and Brave New World seem to be treated more as “how-to” manuals than the dire warnings their authors intended them to be. Constantly we are being told that government “needs to do this” – which just happens to be something Huxley or Orwell described in one of their distopian science fiction novels.

We’ve just added a new instance of that. In Michigan.

A Professor of Medical Ethics at Western Michigan University has suggested that people who refuse to obey dictatorial decrees regarding the Pandemic Panic and Lockdown should be medicated. (Heaven knows how many such tyrannical decrees have been issued by the former governor (now dictator) of Michigan in the last six months.)

Not just medication for COVID-19, but a “morality pill” to make the doped-up person more cooperative and “pro-social” in their behavior. You can read more about it in a paper on “bio[anti]ethics.” Does that not indeed sound like the “soma” used to keep the proles docile and make them easier, in Brave New World? Especially when the “bioethics” gurus say it should be administered covertly?

Of course many other “stupid government tricks” found in those two novels are already present in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, California, New York, and many other states. For instance, in Massachusetts, public school teachers are encourage (if not actually required) to spy on their students’ homes and families. This is to be done via the two-way audio-visual internet connection. This AV link is replacing in-person teaching but trying to replicate the complete classroom experience. Institutional setting, discipline, “teacher-may-I” all the time and stick to a very strict schedule for classes and more.

In a previous commentary I’ve already discussed the Tennessee school that is trying to ban “parental interference” in their online “education.” There are many more examples, including doorbell “Ring” cameras for police surveillence of your front yard and street, tracking and tracing software, and businesses enlisted as spies for local health departments.

Again, none of this comes as a surprise in a world (and Fifty States) where the permanent bureaucracy (the deep state) and the constant occupation of the nation by millions of police – a police state in all but name – is with us. Our “modern” society in 2020 and beyond seems more and more like the dystopia of those novels: we are in a retro-techno world.

Modern technology – not just information technology but many other facets – have given us freedom unparalleled in the world’s history. We can travel the Fifty States – and the world – with relative ease. Even with the restrictions imposed by the Pandemic Panic, but especially before the Lockdown. We can learn more, study more, share more. We can not only grow in knowledge, but we can learn wisdom from people around the world and virtually all of mankind’s history.

But instead, we use that knowledge, that technology, that freedom to do what? To strengthen the tyranny of the elites and their thuggish minions over us – and over our neighbors. To give more power to those who would enslave us – and (like the thugs suggested with the social medication) more covertly than ever before.

Although we have the wisdom of the ages literally at our fingertips, too many of us refuse to study it, to learn, and to grow in anyway (except maybe at the waistline).

What can we do?

Recognize that these powers-that-be are completely without concern for the lives of individual people – or indeed, the lives of MOST people. I think this is borne out by the results of the Pandemic and the Lockdown. For example, in Colorado (reported by the Colorado Sun), the Lockdown resulted in a massive increase in at-home deaths from cardiac disease. Indeed, it seems that the increase in deaths due to TREATABLE and PREVENTABLE diseases and even accidents is far greater here in the Fifty States than the 180,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19. Because people were denied routine treatment and were terrified to seek out medical care. All actions promoted by the new tyrants who rule with a carefully padded chrome-steel fist, courtesy of the technology which we have today.

God has given us all things necessary to life and liberty and happiness, and may He forgive us, as we have converted those things into supporting death and tyranny and fearfulness.

The powers that be – the people that we have surrendered control of our lives to – take our lives away at will. They have substituted their warped idea of “liberty” for a perverted form of slavery. And with the “morality pill” they will steal away real happiness and joy and replace it with an ersatz chemically-based fake.

If we let them – if we do not revolt. Do we have any choice?