Philip K. Dick's Black Iron Subdermal Prison

Philip K. Dick's Black Iron Subdermal Prison

By Wade Inganamort (valis) 12/17/02

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 track—in 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.

Awoken Research Group
http://valis.cjb.cc/