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Comments
Oh it’s certainly a security risk, but the citizens of the U.E are so socialised and neutered that next to no one would even think of tampering with their brain machine interface, big brother is always watching. Plus it takes an extreme amount of skill and expertise to even achieve this and the knowledge of how to do so isn’t so easy to come by. The centralised government of the U.E long ago had measured the risk/reward ratio of mass BMI implantation in their populous and found that the risk would be so negligible it wasn’t really worth considering. The lightning rod of control BMIs would grant them was too great an opportunity not to seize. Not to mention many of the mod and separatist movements are state funded and controlled, the U.E have feds in almost every organisation and most movements function as little more than controlled opposition or traps for non-compliants. They can allure dissidents into their traps and then crush them once they’re in. The U.E’s control is so absolute, so all encompassing, so holistic to the point that the individual will never get a job again. They could just as easily be “disappeared”. The individual will be paraded as a point of public mockery by the news, they will be made an example of. “Look, here is an extremist that wishes to unset the social order!”. There is the facade of a market, of separate businesses, but the “public private partnerships” as they call them, are so interlinked with the U.E that everything is basically a tentacle of the all powerful state. I’m reminded of a quote by Aldous Huxley. “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” I’m also reminded of the Nietzschean concept of the Last man. The last man is the archetypal passive nihilist. This is what the U.E has bred the mass to be and seeks to remove any individuals who do not conform to this archetype. The last man is tired of life, takes no risks, and seeks only comfort and security. Therefore, The Last Man is unable to build and act upon a self-actualized ethos. ‘Lo! I show you the Last Man. "What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?" -- so asks the Last Man, and blinks. The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest. "We have discovered happiness" -- say the Last Men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him; for one needs warmth. Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or men! A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end for a pleasant death. One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one. One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome. No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse. "Formerly all the world was insane," -- say the subtlest of them, and they blink. They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their derision. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled -- otherwise it upsets their stomachs. They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. "We have discovered happiness," -- say the Last Men, and they blink.’ Now that might seem a little cryptic but Nietzsche talks of a contemptible man, the last man, a man without ambition, without autonomy. He is content with his unearned comfort and a life without hardship. The state provides this for everyone and so the state is absolute. The last man is a pet. This also makes me think of Yuval Noah Harari, he wrote the best selling book Sapiens and Homo Deus. Yuval is a lead advisor for Klaus Schwab. Klaus Schwab is the author of The Great Reset and is the founder of The World Economic Forum. “You’ll own nothing and be happy” is literally the catchphrase of the WEF. Yuval talks of the advantages of hacking humans, forming a centralised global government and that pleasure is the ultimate goal of human existence. To be continually be sated and pleasured, sounds an awful lot like the last man and the citizens of New London from a brave new world. Happiness and pleasure are not the same thing, happiness is a lasting state of existence caused by events in ones life and fulfilling the power process, whereas pleasure is a temporary hit to the bodies pleasure nodes, they are not the same. In a brave new world the population of the world are quelled through the constant use of state supplied drugs called Soma. In Humanity lost, the U.E achieves this through peoples brain machine interfaces among other things. Once you establish this kind of all-encompassing complex system such as the U.E with this kind of social control, knowledge and information on every single member of its society. There is absolutely no way to destroy the system from within. If you look at the history of the Soviet Union, you’ll find that they killed millions of their most intelligent citizens because they wanted a dulled down base to rule over, intelligence was seen as a threat to their rulership. Theres a similar case with the Democratic Kampuchea party that ruled over Cambodia, unfortunately for the people of Cambodia they fell prey to the “tall poppy syndrome” of their communist elite class and it resulted in the Cambodian genocide. “Tall poppy syndrome” refers to those in power who remove persons who could pose a threat to their position of power. A similar saying is "cutting down the tall poppy" which is used to describe those who deliberately put down another for their success and achievements, in the case of Cambodia the “putting down” was unfortunately literal. "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down" is another saying that came out of imperial japan. The point being that the U.E rewards political correctness and obedience and punishes genuine dissent. Anyway, sorry about the long rant but I was kind of riffing off your question there, hopefully this provided an answer to your question.
Callum Diggle
2022-08-18 09:02:03 +0000 UTCAw thanks so much Richard, I’m glad you’re enjoying the direction I’m taking it in, volume one will be coming to a head soon! Yeah it is a big of a coincidental “grand plan” kind of narrative, but I wanted to show a bit of the past but I needed the connective tissue there to make it make narrative sense. I think you might be right 😉
Callum Diggle
2022-08-18 07:48:49 +0000 UTCI'm really enjoying this segue from the main storyline. Really fleshing out Loste's story. I still find it coincidental that he of all humans heard of Project AM AND just happens to be the last human ever, 400 years from that time. I keep thinking to myself, this is by design. There's something deeper goin' on here maaan.
Richard Skinner
2022-08-18 00:30:15 +0000 UTCThat BMI filter idea seems like a ludicrous and obvious security risk. Why would anybody get a computer installed in their head that straight up overrides what their body tells them? It's just asking to be abused. Like seriously those things should have some sort of warning system in the event of machine-body incongruity of data and include both manual and emergency shutdowns to so they never get people killed in the event of false data interpretation. Like the whole concept is fucked and remarkably dangerous, real cyberpunk shit.
Elijah Overland
2022-08-16 21:50:22 +0000 UTC
