Philip K. Dick's Black Iron Subdermal Prison

Sat Dec 2 08:38:16 CST 2006

By Wade Inganamort

As we slingshot into the 21st Century, it is becoming
increasingly apparent that the governments and
institutions that mold our minds have implemented a
system from which we cannot escape. Are we really
trapped in a prison with no doors or walls?

Consider the following from Philip K. Dick's Divine
Interference, by Erik Davis:

In the excepts of the Exegesis reworked into the
"Tractates Crytptica Scriptura" that close the novel
VALIS, Dick expresses the MIT computer scientist
Edward Fredkin's view that the universe is composed of
information. The world we experience is a hologram, "a
hypostasis of information" that we, as nodes in the
true Mind, process. "We hypostasize information into
objects. Rearrangement of objects is change in the
content of information. This is the language we have
lost the ability to read." With this Adamic code
scrambled, both ourselves and the world as we know it
are "occluded," cut off from the brimming "Matrix" of
cosmic information.

Instead, we are under the sway of the "Black Iron
Prison," Dick's terms for the demiurgic worldly forces
of political tyranny and oppressive social control.
Rome is the eternal paragon of this "Empire," whose
archetypal lineaments the feverish Dick recognized in
the Nixon administration.

Demonstrating that prisons, mental institutions,
schools, and military establishments all share similar
organizations of space and time, Foucault argued that
a "technology of power" was distributed throughout
social space, enmeshing human subjects at every turn.
Foucault argued that liberal social reforms are only
cosmetic brush-ups of an underlying mechanism of
control. As Dick put it, "The Empire never ended."

I would like to assert the possibility that the prison
has always been under construction, and it gets closer
to view as it nears completion.

While the current administration continues to play
"The Grand Chessboard" under the Orwellian facade of
peace through war and freedom through slavery, we must
ask ourselves: to what end? While some have compared
Bush's tactics to those of Adolf Hitler, others
feverishly argue that this is necessary to protect
America's self interests. The prison-builders have
always strived to coerce the citizenry into
sacrificing liberty for pseudo-security.  As H.L.
Mencken observed:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the
populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to
safety) by menacing it with an endless series of
hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

So now as we embark on a lifelong irrational "War
against Terrorism", which comedian David Cross
concluded is as feasible to win as a "War against
Jealousy", and the CIA-ridden oil-soaked media
monopoly continues to parrot the current
Administration's macro-management of reality, some of
the true prison-builders begin to emerge.

Prison-building with fear

We, as humans, are scared of the unknown. The media
frenzy of kidnappings a few months back, which served
as a well-timed distraction to events that were
conveniently sidelined, also served the prison guards
and their prerogative: subdermal microchips.

Shortly after 9-11, in the wake of irrational
reactionism, Applied Digital Solutions, parent company
of Verichip, went on a flurry of an advertising
campaign, asking everyone the Simpson's tagline:
"Won't somebody please think about the children?".
Andy Rooney came out on 60 Minutes proclaiming; "I
wouldn't mind having something planted permanently in
my arm that would identify me.''

This market tactic was paired with their "Get
Chipped!" promotion, and the "Chipmobile", which is
touring Florida Senior centers, prowling for
Alzheimers patients who must get chipped "for their
own safety". Soon deals were made with China, Mexico,
and South Korea to perpetuate the meme that global
slavery equals global safety.

Just before the FDA ruled that Verichip is not a
regulated medical device, Microsoft MapPoint announced
a partnership with Verichip to "pinpoint the location
of almost anything you want to trackin real time. You
can even receive critical information about body
temperature, pulse, and more." The FDA then charged:
"ADS's conduct flagrantly disregards FDA's prior
comprehensive advice."

Then in November the tune changed, from a medical
device back to a location and tracking device, as a
Washington forum debated the benefits and hazards
posed by a new way of identifying people with a
microchip implanted under their skin to replace
conventional paper identification. Privacy advocates
argued the microchip could spell the end of anonymity
in the United States, particularly if authorities
began requiring people to wear them to meet conditions
of parole, employment or border crossings.

As the prison is beginning to emerge and the thoughts
and nightmares of writers of the past are birthed into
existence, we embark on a new millennium, a new day in
America.

"This is not a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse.
This is not a pseudo-millenium. This is the real thing
folks. This is not a test. This is the last chance
before things become so dissipated that there is no
chance for cohesiveness." -Terence McKenna (1946-2000)

I would agree that at the time of this quote, we may
have had a few more options. I believe that we have
surpassed that now and there may be no turning back,
no changing the direction of the ball once it has been
thrown, and individually we must decide, Das
Experiment-style, as Americans:

Do we want to be the prison guards, the prisoners, or
do we want to find a way off of the island?

It's not a prison if you never try the door.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_inganamort_121702_subdermal.html

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