American Politics and Frankenstein
Peter Schultz
Attached is
an article from the Guardian that is
an excerpt from a book by Stephen Kinzer just published entitled Poisoner in Chief: Sidney
Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. And it reminded me of Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein and here’s why.
As everyone knows, in Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein obsesses over his ability, by
means of modern science, to create life. As I read and taught this book, a
question eventually occurred to me: Frankenstein already possessed the ability
to create life, as do most human beings, via reproduction. So why was
Frankenstein so obsessed with creating life scientifically? Why not just create
life “the old fashioned way?”
The answer Shelley provides is that
Frankenstein wanted to create life so he would be considered god-like; that is,
having powers that until then were only possessed by the gods or by God.
Frankenstein craved, lusted after immortality and this craving displaced the
more common form of lust that, in the best of cases, fuels reproduction, the
creation of new life.
The same impulses are visible in the
CIA’s experiments trying to “perfect” mind control. As Kinzer put it: “During this period, there was
an obsession at the CIA: there is a way to control the human mind, and if it
can be found, the prize will be nothing less than global mastery.” What Kinzer
might have written to be more precise is that the CIA was obsessed with
controlling the human mind scientifically, that is, with the use of drugs.
Controlling the human mind is not all that difficult and, as every
semi-intelligent politician or shyster knows, it can be done “the old fashioned
say,” through propaganda or spectacles that occupy or overpower the minds of
ordinary human beings and make them malleable. As admen like to say: “You can
sell shit if it’s packaged properly.” And, of course, they and politicians do
that every day in every way.
But why isn’t the old fashioned way
sufficient? Well, because it does not guarantee, as Kinzer puts it, mastery.
It’s mastery that the men in the CIA were seeking, just as it was mastery that
the US government was seeking while claiming it was seeking “national
security.” This is what underlay modern science and modern politics, a craving
for mastery that would make its practitioners god-like or immortal. For our
ambitious and hubristic politicians, the goal is mastery, global mastery and
sacrificing lives, both human and non-human lives even in great numbers, is
the price that must be paid to achieve such “immortality.”
Kinzer recounts the price that Olson
had to pay if he wanted to achieve the kind of mastery he and the CIA wanted to
achieve.
“Olson also saw human beings suffer. Although not a torturer himself, he observed and monitored torture sessions in several countries.
“In CIA safe-houses
in Germany,” according to one study, “Olson witnessed horrific brutal
interrogations on a regular basis. Detainees who were deemed ‘expendable’ –
suspected spies or moles, security leaks, etc. – were literally interrogated to
death in experimental methods combining drugs, hypnosis and torture, to attempt
to master brainwashing techniques and memory erasing.”
As Mary Shelley
realized so long ago, when she was still a teenager, was that the desire for
mastery, a desire that underlay modern science and modern politics, leads to
dehumanization, leads to a spiritual crisis that would, if left unchecked,
devastate humankind, turning us into monsters ala’ Dr. Frankenstein. For in the
end, as even Dr. Frankenstein comes to realize, his creature and he are both
monsters. It would seem as if Dr. Olson became aware of the same phenomenon. The
troubling thing is, though, that our elites have not come to the same
realization.
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