Interesting ruminations by our philosopher-selves.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The following is rumination by our Lucifer Davison:
The idea that there could be people born multiple instantly means that for a small minority, the system (no pun intended) is wrong. They are not matching the identity of the common person on the street. They are instead:

A subculture of bodies with multiple inhabitants. The ramifications of this are big, especially where religion is concerned. If people are born with more than one soul, then to them the Biblical proscription of "One soul, one mind, one body" is not accurate. If so, this means that there is a full-fledged option to be different from the common culture. Multiplicity, if divorced from the doctrine of mental disorder would potentially be far more upsetting than Homosexuality. If people can have experiences of living in a body and can be proud of that fact, then there is a consequence for society. The consequence is that simplicity, that panacea of Fundamentalism and Social conservatism, is thrown out with the bath-water. The same is true for the natural multiples that weren't caused by trauma. Psychiatry does not recognize them and tries to suppress them with all the power of the State. Multiplicity, specifically the natural and born versions, is a potential death-blow to the infantilizing notions of mental health and extremist religion. Multiples have the ability to grasp far more of human potential, if only they choose to reach for it. They can reach for their potential in ways denied Singletons. The Singleton seeks relief in religion, in alcohol, in fruitless activities that are harmful to him or her and cannot escape the grim realities of this world. People in systems can, and that is what causes members of systems to be regarded as coping mechanisms and arrested development. We who are united in the simple fact that we are people who reside not in houses of steel or brick but of flesh. If people can be born multiple, then the world is far more complex than the average Fundamentalist of any religion or creed can stomach. That is my view on why the Establishment fights to keep the knowledge of healthy, normal multiplicity from being known. Thanks for playing!

Comments, anyone?

Comments

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Do you have any additional information on this? The wikipedia entry on MK-Ultra doesn't mention MPD or DID in any way, though it does mention schizophrenia in passing.

And sorry if I don't understand what you're trying to say... "wore plastic to try to protect herself from it." What is "it" here?

[catskillmarina.livejournal.com]

It was a code called 'Monarch' if i recall.

Claire wore plastic to protect herself from chemicals she
thought the gov was using to control her.

As far as i could get from her she was perhaps given LSD
in one of the tests back them.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

As far as we have been able to research there is no evidence that Monarch existed except as a conspiracy theory. MK-Ultra was the name of the actual project whose existence was documented. That said, there are many people who believe, for one reason or another, that they were subjected to Monarch -- many more than could actually have been involved in such a program without leaving a substantial amount of evidence.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

About MK-Ultra: (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070312/klein) "The manual was based on the findings of the agency's notorious MK Ultra program, which in the 1950s funneled about $25 million to scientists to research "unusual techniques of interrogation." One of the psychiatrists who received CIA funding was the infamous Ewen Cameron of Montreal's McGill University. Cameron subjected hundreds of psychiatric patients to large doses of electroshock and total sensory isolation and drugged them with LSD and PCP. In 1960 Cameron gave a lecture at the Brooks Airforce Base in Texas in which he stated that sensory deprivation "produces the primary symptoms of schizophrenia.""

Basically, on the mind control thing, what I've been able to get from the sources I consider believable amounts to this:

The CIA ran some programs during the 50s, 60s and 70s in which they tried to create Manchurian Candidate-like artificial selves in adult test subjects who were unaware of the purpose of the experiments. There were attempts to see if LSD could be used as a mind-control drug or a truth serum-- there were a lot of LSD experiments run by the CIA. The programs were eventually terminated because, basically, they couldn't achieve their goals-- to create perfectly mind-controlled implanted selves-- and they couldn't find a perfect mind-control drug or truth serum. These things work much better in science fiction than they do in reality, apparently.

That said, I can definitely believe that there are people still out there who remember participating in such experiments, either as a subject or as an experimenter. I don't generally go in for conspiracy theories, but there is some pretty strong, IMO, evidence that the government has actively worked to silence people who tried to speak up about being LSD test subjects, and similar. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Olson) And the US government is still doing some pretty damn heinous things, as described in the link above, regarding sensory deprivation and forced drugging, that have been well documented by people involved in them, and still using these techniques on prisoners.

However, on some of the more extreme claims I've heard from some people who said they were involved in government mind control experiments, I would really, really need to see more evidence. In all the cases I believed, there was at least SOMEONE who had observed or participated in the experiments, who was willing to speak up about them, and had always remembered it.

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

I'm not doubting that the MK-Ultra thing happened.

I'm doubting that it had anything to do with multiples. Implanting some kind of killer-robot ultimate post-hypnotic suggestion into somebody is not the same thing as creating an actual multiple.

And I still don't think the government knows, or cares, that the phenomenon of healthy multiplicity even exists.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

I don't think they know either. I wasn't addressing that issue in my post, however; I didn't say anything either way about whether they did or did not.

And no, I don't think that "implanted killer hypnotic personality" or whatever is the same as actual multiplicity. There have been claims that various government programs were used to create large and extensive multiple systems in previously singlet people, who were all perfectly mind-controlled to perform specific duties, though. Those are the cases where I say I would need to see a lot more evidence before I could buy that such things were going on.