Living with someone with crippling PTSD and anxiety disorders, I'm thrilled to hear about this study.
As someone who's dealt with an oppressive government (which is where the PTSD and anxiety came from), I wonder if this therapy can be weaponized by the powerful to oppress the powerless. The rise of the warrior cop is bad enough, but what about a crack squad that has been chemically desensitized to killing in cold blood, taking orders from corrupt officials? Great for the warrior cop's medical prognosis, not so great if you're his target.
I believe many people in prison got there through some form of fear. Fear they'd get found out, fear they'd lose something, fear for their life, fear from their childhood they lost the ability to deal with, fear they self-medicated leading to a crime. If this technology makes it out of the proverbial Petri dish, I'm hoping we as a society could substitute a session for 10+ years of incarceration. We'd end up safer, less poor, and more just.
That worry feels like a stretch, because right now, the many oppressive governments of the world are not in the least suffering logistical difficulties due to their stormtroopers getting PTSD.
There are I think 2 main reasons why not:
- Stormtroopers are people who have non functioning empathy, by nature or nurture, they don't experience killing in cold blood as horrific.
- Stormtroopers are a cheap commodity. The oppressive government doesn't mind using them up.
On the other hand the people who are subject to crippling PTSD are victims of stormtroopers, directly and via losing friends. And a few doses of this stuff smuggled in might effectively reignite the fire in a resistance movement.
A Black Mirror episode considers a flip side of that coin: the threat of PTSD as a blackmail device. Granted, alongside some other far-fetched circumstances.
I'm sorry you're living in a world where the first thing you think of when hearing about something that will help anxiety is that it will be used to turn police into remorseless killers.
> The rise of the warrior cop is bad enough, but what about a crack squad that has been chemically desensitized to killing in cold blood, taking orders from corrupt officials?
I read Eichmann in Jerusalem recently. One of the main arguments of the book is that people don't need to be extraordinary (i.e. lacking a conscience or particularly fanatical) in order to do terrible things.
The book is controversial but I think that argument is correct. The problem with Nazi Germany was not a generation of Germans who happened to be born without consciences. And, horrifyingly, we've seen this pattern repeat across time and space. It just isn't necessary to chemically alter people to get them to perform actions that we would describe as evil.
I expect weaponization of drugs from malicious governments will come in a far more effective fashion. There's no need for oppressive cops if you can simply drug your population. Not only wipe away their anxiety, but any concept of fight or flight (the root of anxiety disorders) whatsoever. Pair it with increasingly endless entertainment, plummeting testosterone levels, and a general effeminization of society and you'd never need concern yourself with losing your grasp on power.
In Brave New World, this was soma. "A gram is better than a damn."
As someone who's dealt with an oppressive government (which is where the PTSD and anxiety came from), I wonder if this therapy can be weaponized by the powerful to oppress the powerless. The rise of the warrior cop is bad enough, but what about a crack squad that has been chemically desensitized to killing in cold blood, taking orders from corrupt officials? Great for the warrior cop's medical prognosis, not so great if you're his target.
I believe many people in prison got there through some form of fear. Fear they'd get found out, fear they'd lose something, fear for their life, fear from their childhood they lost the ability to deal with, fear they self-medicated leading to a crime. If this technology makes it out of the proverbial Petri dish, I'm hoping we as a society could substitute a session for 10+ years of incarceration. We'd end up safer, less poor, and more just.