Accompanying slideshow can be found here.
[video of rat experiment with rat screams and eerie music]
Scientist: This is Rat #0492, my sweet little rat, my baby baby rat. You know why I love him so much? Because he was the first rat to have his brain—no, his mind—opened up like a trapdoor. Beneath, we not only saw neurons but his thoughts, his feelings, his every little itsy bit of cognition that his paltry little brain can perform. And we also saw a piano to be played: a diminished c major 7th chord; an augmented seventh chord. We played those chords; and it was successful: this rat, trained to lick when vertical bars are displayed, was made to lick without the bars merely by activating a single neuron in his delicate little visual cortex!
And so, with this absolute success of an experiment, there was nothing left to do but to build a device that can control the HUMAN mind. Yes, the human mind! This seemingly unencroachable bastion of inner consciousness—this transcendent object seemingly untouchable by steel and silicon. No, the human mind is not this funky little homunculus sitting in our skulls, looking through our eyes as if they were windows; the human mind is not this transcendent being tethered to our bodies. No! Descartes was wrong! Kant was wrong! All of the Enlightenment thinkers were wrong! [laugh in exultation at finally proving them wrong] The brain is us and we are our brains.
Just look at what psychedelics—what just several milligrams of dimethyltryptamine—can do: it wraps your mind in an irresistible vortex until it is shattered like fragile china hurled to the ground, breaking into millions of shards flying everywhere—what is known as ego death, when everything you have known for your entire life vanishes [presentation slides turn black] into the foam of the universe.
If a mere material substance can do this to our minds, then why should a device that controls our minds be impossible? No, it is entirely possible, because I have just designed one: a sleek little machine that will fulfill your every desire—that will give you everything you could ever want in life. Seriously! Everything you could ever possibly want!—all wrapped neatly into this itsy bitsy little device.
Have you ever felt stupid? Have you ever felt the dread, the anguish, the feeling of trappedness as if every step you take in solving a problem, in answering a question, there could be a mine ready to explode you into a pile of ashes? Well, you don’t have to worry about it anymore, for this device shall free you from the claustrophobic limits of your minds. Let me demonstrate. YOU! GET OVER HERE!
[participant scrambles with fear and dread to the front]
What’s 6 + 7?
Participant: 67
Scientist: WRONG! [hit participant with the device on the head as if you were stabbing them; the participant convulses as if the machine were doing something to them before recovering]
Oh, and don’t worry about the convulsing; it’s just an innocuous side effect.
Now, what’s 9+10?
Participant: 21
Scientist: CORRECT! Now go back, shoo…
And it won’t just make you intelligent. Have you ever wanted to feel what it feels like to have ten thousand orgasms? Well, here it is! [use the device on self]
Oh that felt quite good… [clears throat]
But however good these uses might be; there’s still one use that trumps all of the others. what’s more is that you will have control—control over those things which humanity has never had control before—control over the seemingly uncontrollable: each other.
For millennia, humanity has sought desperately to control each other. From physical coercion manifested through war, through murder, through assault—where humans mutilate each others’ bodies, which stand as impassable obstacles to everything they believe is sweet and good.
To subliminal control manifested through propaganda, marketing, liberty mutual advertisements.
To verbal control manifested through rhetoric and persuasion.
For millennia, humanity has desperately sought to break into this last bastion of the uncontrollable—to finally consummate its millennium-aged purpose to control everything—to become GODS! And finally they have done it—finally they have become gods—with this device.
Finally, no more having to persuade your parents to give you a phone or a dog; No more having to persuade your teacher to give you an A+! Here is a device that will give each and every one of you your deepest, subconscious desires.
Finally, with this, there shall be no more bulky, clanky social contracts! [rip paper] There shall no longer be this tiring and exhausting equality in the state of nature!—this equality which causes us so much death and destruction and pain and suffering. No more equality! There shall be inequality—to the point where he who controls this device shall be the supreme God over all others!
Participant: Erm, ackshually, this violates Kant’s deontological conception of ends in and of itself–
Scientist: Sorry, what?
Participant: It violates Kant’s categorical imperative principle of “never treat humans as a mere means to
an end”
Scientist: [laugh] Funny you say that. [stab device at participant]
Participant: Hahaha, what was I even saying about this “deontological conception” bullcrap? Ahahah, I must’ve been so stupid. Of course! How could mind control be using anyone as a means to an end if they want to do what they are made to do! Hahahah, how stupid I was!
Scientist: There you have it. And perhaps you might spout out some bullshit like human rights or privacy—but who cares about these squibbles and squabbles—these mere idealistic scruples that have NOTHING to do with the real world? Who cares when you, yes YOU, can become intelligent, can feel ten thousand orgasms? Just throw out these cancerous outgrowths of modern ethical thinking—these mere burdens of too rational thought—and revel in the pleasures of technology!
Perhaps all of this might seem unnatural to you. Who are we humans to trample on the autonomy of the natural world—to trample on the natural laws of the world? Who are we humans to usurp the position of God? But, let me tell you, this was all God’s plan. This is all within the natural order of things.
Genesis 1:27-8
“So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”
There was never to be a second coming of Christ, for the second coming was always supposed to be ourselves. We were supposed to be the ones to create it. This is our destiny! And here you have it. We were meant to be the second coming. [throw out the device into the audience]