Monday, March 19, 2018

Why Is Everything Being Weaponized ???

In the 1950s, we weaponized uranium to make nuclear warheads. Today, we weaponize safe spaces at campus protests. What happened? The history of this word weaponize reveals the shifting anxieties of the past half-century.

You can read the rest @
http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/08/30/how_weaponize_became_a_political_cultural_and_internet_term_du_jour.html

Here are some other things which have been "weaponized":

(1) The Internet of Things:

http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2016/10/someone-weaponized-internet-things/132553/

(2) Political correctness:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/14/magazine/if-everything-can-be-weaponized-what-should-we-fear.html

(3) Race:

https://www.stanforddaily.com/2017/04/26/disrupting-whiteness-and-weaponizing-race/

(4) Gender:

https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/discoveringgenderinushistory/2017/01/30/weaponizing-gender-in-the-borderlands/

(5) Social media:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rohingya-refugee-crisis-myanmar-weaponizing-social-media-main/

And, of course, nearly everything else - "women, architecture, black suffering, anthropology, the facts, texting, femininity, marketing, secularism, religion, ideology, traditional forms of dress, virtue, sadness, social constructions, iWatches, and fictional experiences in video games", just to name a few (source - http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/08/30/how_weaponize_became_a_political_cultural_and_internet_term_du_jour.html).

Do you think something "peaceful" is afoot, as suggested by the author in the link listed above? I don't.

We came into this life with a few rather ineffectual weapons - teeth, nails, fists. We spent much of our existence creating more powerful weapons - clubs, swords, guns, etc. But that didn't allow us to kill as many people as we wanted, so we invented WMDs.

That satisfied us for a while, but (you guessed it) we wanted even better, more effective weapons with GLOBAL impact - so we invented the Internet and preached its goodness to the whole world, all the while knowing that its false gospel would cause far more harm than good.

Surrounded by so many weapons, most of which we're not allowed to use ourselves, how does that make us feel? I would guess anxious and hopeless.

And why would the powers that be want us to feel anxious and hopeless? To create a more peaceful world? Perhaps. But sheep are not bred solely for their allegedly peaceful disposition - it's wool and flesh their owners are after. Why else bother feeding them?

No comments:

Post a Comment