*** Now talking in #suburbansenshi*** Topic is '-= =-' .
The DARPA "war fighter enhancement" programs--an acceleration of bipartisan biotinkering that's been going on for years--will involve injecting young men and women with hormonal, neurological and genetic concoctions; implanting microchips and electrodes in their bodies to control their internal organs and brain functions; and plying them with drugs that deaden some of their normal human tendencies: the need for sleep, the fear of death, the reluctance to kill their fellow human beings.
<FireFly_9>
Now this may be all well and good (as if there is such a thing) on the battlefield; but what I want to know is, what will happen when these young people come home again? Will their reluctance to kill be brainwashed back into them, or will they be left to their own ultra-violent devices? Right now
regular soldiers (by regular, I mean presumably unenhanced) have been
killing their family members on military bases in record number. We already know the
consequences of forcing air force pilots to fly doped up with amphetamines.
<FireFly_9>
<FireFly_9> Is it really worth it to send our sons and daughters into a system that completely destroys their humanity, not only mentally, but now physically as well? Is
this the price of freedom and security?
<FireFly_9>
<FireFly_9> With each passing day I think Thoreau was completely correct when he said:
Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts -- a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing...
The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.
<FireFly_9>
Never has this been more true. DARPA intends to treat the soldier as nothing more than a machine to be tuned to maximum efficency for the purpose of killing. Inconvenient human traits such as kindness, compassion and a conscience will be discarded... and then what?
<FireFly_9>
<FireFly_9>
This whole scenario reminds me of the Star Trek: The Next Generation
episode, "The Hunted", where a genetically enhanced super soldier is created, then jailed after his usefulness was ended because his creators could not return him to normal, and of course as an instinctual killing machine he was too dangerous for interaction with normal society.
<FireFly_9>
<FireFly_9>
Will that be the fate of our noble veterans, who signed up to preserve freedom, only to have their freedoms, both spiritual and civil, taken away from them? Surely I am not the only one who sees something wrong with this...
*** Disconnected