A thot on dominance

Dear diary,

I’ve heard that all the wealthy computer nerds are trying to invent a way to plant a microchip inside our brain, so that they can read our thoughts and control our bodies directly. I’ve always been fascinated by the debate about free will: do we have it or not? No matter how you answer the question, I’m left puzzled. If we do indeed possess volition, then why does this freedom feel so predetermined? On the other hand, if we are all just miserable slaves to nature, and our actions are but the result of natural laws playing out as they must, then why do I feel like I’m always choosing to behave so ignobly?

I notice that, in each case, I used the word “feel.” Life feels at once predestined and freewheeling. This could be good news: for if the computer nerds do end up chipping our brains, we might like this new shackled mind-life even more than our current “unplugged” existence; all they’d need to do is program us to emote deep joy for our enslavement. Like Hamlet reported about his good friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, when he sent them off on a mission to get themselves executed: “They do make love to this employment.” It matters not who’s pulling our strings and for what end, as long as we like the dance that we are doing.

Our computer-nerd overlords don’t have the same problem with us that the god Yahweh had with his human slaves in the pleasure garden. For he, the priests assure us, desired for humankind to have the freedom to choose whether to obey or disobey their maker: Yahweh did not want their fealty to be forced. But our computer-nerd overlords are free from such compunctions: if they had been in Yahweh God’s place, they would simply have made it impossible for humans to sin.

Now the chink in the armor of my optimism is that I’m assuming our computer-nerd overlords will care enough to make us feel blissful about obeying them. This is naive of me. Why would a parasite that suffers no remorse when usurping volition care how its host feels about being conquered? These computer-nerd overlords of ours seem, on the contrary, far more likely to preset our feelings to “endless unpleasure.”

The question is: Can you truly take over the mind of another being without yourself feeling that being’s feelings? How can you achieve total mind control without “becoming what you behold,” as it were, since emotions are an integral part of the mind? The answer will probably be that they don’t care if their control is absolute: they only require enough access to our will so that they may compel us to do all their dirty work.

Yes, that’s the rub. They’re not trying to be us; they only wish to move us around. It’s the same relationship that mankind has always established with other animals. A cowboy is not interested in what his horse dreamt about last night; he just needs the beast to trot him to the saloon. And does any keeper care for the wise counsel that his bees are conveying to him through their dancing? No: beekeepers simply grab the honey and run.

Also, think about which came first: the chicken or the egg. (Instead of asking WHY, maybe we should be questioning exactly WHAT crossed the road. And recall that “the other side” is a euphemism for the afterlife.)

Perhaps we already are commandeered by computer-folk. We might not know it, because we’ve been programmed to misremember. But even if this is not the case, one point is certain: Something is operating us, and it ain’t altogether ourselves. To err is human; it is also irreconcilable with intention. Think of anyone, after performing a shameful act, exclaiming “I don’t know what got into me.”

Is this the evidence of a wireless remote control having been employed? No, it just means that volition is incommensurate with reality. If one’s arrow fails to hit the target, it doesn’t necessarily prove that a counterforce willed the shot astray; it could just mean that our aim is off. Nevertheless, as John’s Jesus says, the wind is God, blowing wherever he desires, and constantly at odds with our hopes and dreams.

Why is God such a trickster? That’s a question that I should tackle in a future lecture.