Science and the Religion of Scientism, Part One

RFIDs, Human Trafficking and The Limits of Technology

“Berlin! The very name like two sharp bells of glory. Capital of science, seat of the Führer, nursery to Einstein, Staudinger, Bayer. Somewhere in these streets, plastic was invented, X-rays were discovered, continental drift was identified. What marvels does science cultivate here now? Superman soldiers, Dr. Hauptmann says, and weather-making machines and missiles that can be steered by men a thousand miles away.” All The Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr

A tiny Radio Frequency Identification tag pairs with a Global Positioning System tracker all in a package about the size of a grain of rice. Inject it just below the skin of your expensive Black Lab, a three-thousand-dollar investment with vet fees. If your dog runs off and gets lost or is dognapped for sale in another state, with your cellphone application or the police, you can find her and bring her home safely. Not cheap, but worth it. You love that mutt.

Much has been learned through RFID GPS tracking to manage wildlife populations, even endangered wildlife, to help them thrive or to survive with little damage done during the insertion of the miniature device. Migration habits, size of territories and travel within territories, familial and group/herd relationships, feeding patterns, mating and other behaviors can be tracked, analyzed in computers and used to plan to help or hinder a species depending upon the habitat management objectives.

All good, right? What could go wrong? There are RFID/GPS trackers inserted into razor sharp arrows, so bow hunters can more easily track deer shot through only one lung from a tree stand; deer pierced like that can run a long way in terror and pain before lying down to bleed out. And worse. A lot worse.

“Human progress, though it is a great blessing for man, brings with it a great temptation. When the scale of values is disturbed and evil becomes mixed with good, individuals and groups consider only their own interests, not those of others. “Gaudium et spes,” (“Joy and Hope”), Vatican II documents.

A young emergency room resident in Boston heard a twenty-year-old patient tell him confidentially that she had a RFID/ [i] GPS tag inserted in her thigh against her will. At first the ER staff was incredulous and were making eye contact as though they had someone on their hands akin to a crazy claiming they had been injected with mutant genes during an alien abduction, but within a few minutes they realized that a prosaic local source of evil was at work. Like the branding of indentured Irish servant/slaves and the hobbling of runaway African slaves, more advanced technology had been introduced into the human trafficking industry.

The sex trade bosses have enhanced their surveillance and control capability; these devices have been used in the United States, injected into workers in industry and domestic service as well.[ii] The majority of the prey so subjected are native born Americans; it is not the exclusive province of exploited undocumented immigrants. Subdued in the domain of enslavement, the subjects are those with the fewest options. After they are tagged, their options further diminish.

“The process of going mad is dull, for the simple reason that it is going on. Routine and literalism and a certain dry-throated earnestness and mental thirst, these are the very atmosphere of morbidity… This slow and awful self-hypnotism of error is a process that can occur not only with individuals, but also with whole societies. It is hard to pick out and prove; that is why it is hard to cure.” From A Miscellany of Men, G.K. Chesterton, 1912

This is hardly a new phenomenon – evil uses of science and technology. Zyklon nerve gas to lower the cost per person of killing “undesirable” human beings in the showers of Auschwitz comes to mind. Or perhaps Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood and eugenics nexus, where she advocated deceitful or even forced sterilization of “undesirable” breeders to bring about a more perfect human race.[iii] I could tell you of a co-worker, who suffered such a fate, but that is a tale for another time.

More recently, we see the alarming hastening of the demise of organ donors, especially for those “undesirables” with mental illness or long term illnesses who have expressed an interest in such a hastening. Already happening in the euthanasia friendly climes of Belgium and the Netherlands. Why wait for lethal injection to take effect? Anesthetize the patient, wheel them into the operating room and yank out the most desirable or profitable parts.[iv]

If we don’t understand how we arrived at this ethics of utility, where things are loved and people are used, there are some gaps to fill in. For a couple of thousand years of what is loosely described as Western Civilization we held that ‘reason’ or ‘wisdom’ encompassed science. Science was part of, but far from all of what was considered to be true. Truth and reason were humankind’s efforts to understand the reality of things, and that search involved other and greater aspects of truth than merely empirical observation, hypothesis and experiment. Like a sort of collective macular degeneration, our vision first occluded at the center then faded into an increasing myopia. Metaphysics, art, poetry, religion and philosophy were slowly blinkered as sources of truth.

This will require a part two – how we devolved from a more human wisdom to a new ethos, and how we grotesquely distorted science into a new faith, ‘Scientism.”

“Parts are not to be examined until the whole has been surveyed.” Samuel Johnson

[i] http://www.marketplace.org/2016/03/02/health-care/health-care-takes-fight-against-trafficking

[ii] https://polarisproject.org/sites/default/files/2015-Statistics.pdf

[iii] Maggie, Part Two. Quo Vadis Blog, June 2, 2013

[iv] Euthanasia by Organ Harvesting, Dr. Wesley Smith, First Things, March 31,2016