http://www.brainwaving.com/2009/11/10/an-abdication-of-human-response/ Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:02:42 +0200 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.brainwaving.com/2009/11/10/an-abdication-of-human-response/comment-page-1/#comment-497 Brainwaving Admin Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:42:08 +0000 http://www.brainwaving.com/?p=367#comment-497 Do you think there is a more widespread and everyday parallel to what you're saying in the meat industry? After all most of us eat meat 2 to 3 times a day, but how many of us would be willing to slaughter, skin, gut, etc the animal that we are eating. I know that I wouldn't. Buying the meat all clean and ready to eat from the supermarket disconnects us from the violent and unseemly acts that preceded our meal. Our sympathy, and even our humanity, can be suspended because of the distance we feel from the act and its result, so yes I agree, that these drones could lead to even more horrifying results than traditional warfare has already resulted in. Do you think there is a more widespread and everyday parallel to what you’re saying in the meat industry? After all most of us eat meat 2 to 3 times a day, but how many of us would be willing to slaughter, skin, gut, etc the animal that we are eating. I know that I wouldn’t. Buying the meat all clean and ready to eat from the supermarket disconnects us from the violent and unseemly acts that preceded our meal. Our sympathy, and even our humanity, can be suspended because of the distance we feel from the act and its result, so yes I agree, that these drones could lead to even more horrifying results than traditional warfare has already resulted in.

]]> http://www.brainwaving.com/2009/11/10/an-abdication-of-human-response/comment-page-1/#comment-450 Tweets that mention An Abdication of Human Response | Brainwaving -- Topsy.com Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:14:47 +0000 http://www.brainwaving.com/?p=367#comment-450 [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by brainwaving and brainwaving, brainwaving. brainwaving said: @jsjr89 if you like the movie read this article - amazing! http://bit.ly/23kE1X [...] [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by brainwaving and brainwaving, brainwaving. brainwaving said: @jsjr89 if you like the movie read this article – amazing! http://bit.ly/23kE1X [...]

]]> http://www.brainwaving.com/2009/11/10/an-abdication-of-human-response/comment-page-1/#comment-449 fredarmesto Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:46:27 +0000 http://www.brainwaving.com/?p=367#comment-449 The objectified image found in Boaz's sniper's scope has been taken to further extremes by the US military's increasing reliance on unmanned drones. Today, there are over 200 armed drones buzzing in the skies over Waziristan, Pakistan's wild northwest. They are controlled by agents sitting in wheelie-chairs in the CIA's headquarters at Langley, West Virginia. These men and women fire Hellfire missiles at targets several thousand miles away, before clocking out in the evening and going home to eat lasagna. Some of them have no combat experience, no flight training, some of them put on a pilot's uniform at work to make it feel more real. The drones, called 'Predators' by the military and nicknamed 'wasps' by the people they surveil, are armed with Hellfire missiles. They carry out regular assassinations, unaccounted for by any official body, and though they aim primarily for Al-Qaeda targets, they rely on intelligence from local informants. Mistakes are made. On January 23rd a missfire supposedly killed the family of a pro-government tribal leader. The political repercussions of unmanned warfare are huge. On the one hand, voters like it, because they're not losing their own sons and daughters on god-forsaken battlefields. On the other, it looks weakens the apparent 'just cause' of war - if you're not willing to risk your own lives, people are less willing to take your side. More pertinent though, in the context of the article above, is the effect on the drone's controllers. To an ignorant spectator, they would look like they are playing a rather dull computer game. Theoretically, they could start carrying out the day's assasinations from a Nintendo DS on the way to work. The potential psychological effects of this sort of warfare are so far unclear. In the example of Waltz With Bashir, one feels that it is a combination of distance and proximity that creates the traumatic amnesia. The bloodshed is right there, as in the shocking final scene of the film, but the mind copes with it by distancing itself from the events before it. Boaz shoots the dogs through the scope, but moments later he sees the bodies lying in front of him. With unmanned drones the effect is quite different: there is no confrontation with hard fact from which the consciousness must hide. The amnesia of Ari Folman in Waltz With Bashir is not so different to that of Anthelme Mangin in World War I, or the Japanese soldiers who piled up Chinese corpses in Nanjing in 1937. The experience of extreme violence is seen to disconnect people from reality or from their consciousness of it. But for the CIA agents controlling Predators, they are already disconnected. We can understand Ari and Boaz for their inability to recognise their acts, but can we understand the new generation of technological warfare and its effects on the consciousness of its operators? The objectified image found in Boaz’s sniper’s scope has been taken to further extremes by the US military’s increasing reliance on unmanned drones. Today, there are over 200 armed drones buzzing in the skies over Waziristan, Pakistan’s wild northwest. They are controlled by agents sitting in wheelie-chairs in the CIA’s headquarters at Langley, West Virginia. These men and women fire Hellfire missiles at targets several thousand miles away, before clocking out in the evening and going home to eat lasagna. Some of them have no combat experience, no flight training, some of them put on a pilot’s uniform at work to make it feel more real. The drones, called ‘Predators’ by the military and nicknamed ‘wasps’ by the people they surveil, are armed with Hellfire missiles. They carry out regular assassinations, unaccounted for by any official body, and though they aim primarily for Al-Qaeda targets, they rely on intelligence from local informants. Mistakes are made. On January 23rd a missfire supposedly killed the family of a pro-government tribal leader.
The political repercussions of unmanned warfare are huge. On the one hand, voters like it, because they’re not losing their own sons and daughters on god-forsaken battlefields. On the other, it looks weakens the apparent ‘just cause’ of war – if you’re not willing to risk your own lives, people are less willing to take your side. More pertinent though, in the context of the article above, is the effect on the drone’s controllers. To an ignorant spectator, they would look like they are playing a rather dull computer game. Theoretically, they could start carrying out the day’s assasinations from a Nintendo DS on the way to work. The potential psychological effects of this sort of warfare are so far unclear. In the example of Waltz With Bashir, one feels that it is a combination of distance and proximity that creates the traumatic amnesia. The bloodshed is right there, as in the shocking final scene of the film, but the mind copes with it by distancing itself from the events before it. Boaz shoots the dogs through the scope, but moments later he sees the bodies lying in front of him. With unmanned drones the effect is quite different: there is no confrontation with hard fact from which the consciousness must hide.
The amnesia of Ari Folman in Waltz With Bashir is not so different to that of Anthelme Mangin in World War I, or the Japanese soldiers who piled up Chinese corpses in Nanjing in 1937. The experience of extreme violence is seen to disconnect people from reality or from their consciousness of it. But for the CIA agents controlling Predators, they are already disconnected. We can understand Ari and Boaz for their inability to recognise their acts, but can we understand the new generation of technological warfare and its effects on the consciousness of its operators?

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