Re: <nettime> Fwd: [postanarchism] Parigi: "The Undesireables"

[Carl Guderian <carlg@vermilion-sands.com>]

"dr.woooo" wrote:

> ***
> 
> The Undesireables
> 
> By Pont St. Martin Parigi
> 
> There are ever increasing numbers of undesirables in
> the world. There are too many men and women for whom
> this society has not provided any role except that of
> croaking in order to make everyone else function. Dead
> to the world or to themselves: this is the only way
> society wants them.

Good essay, but this idea has been around since the very first rebel's
head was stuck on a pole for all to see. Rulers have always needed
enemies, especially internal ones, to justify their harsher policies; if
rebels couldn't serve in life, they served in death. The Dutch of the
Golden Era (1600s), as good Calvinists, went them one better. On the
Nieuwmarkt, in Amsterdam, is the castle-like Waag, built in the 1400s as
city gate, weighing-house and guild hall. The resident Surgeon's Guild,
immortalized in Rembrandt's "The Anatomy Lesson of Professor Tulip,"
dissected the criminal dead there. This was illegal, but tolerated for
its enormous benefit to medical science. In the operating theater, along
the walls, is an admonition, in Latin and Dutch, from the cadavers
paraphrased thus: You, the pious living, let my example serve doubly--to
not live as I have and to let my eyes, bones, fingers brains and kidneys
provide scientific benefit."

Further innovation in the extension of social control to the corpse is
courtesy of the Chinese government, which profits by harvesting organs
from the freshly executed.

Carl

-- 
Games are very educational. Scrabble teaches us vocabulary, Monopoly 
teaches us cash-flow management, and D&D teaches us to loot the bodies. 
-- Steve Jackson

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