Written in dyslexic/dyspraxic

Imagine yourself sitting in a plain room at a desk. Your hand honking of frogspawn, the man in the white jacket enters carrying a rat and a scalpel. The man demands that you cut off the head of the animal.

Without any training as to how to end the life of the poor creature humanely, he demands you complete the test regardless. You say no, but the man in the white coat persists. He breates you, demands it of you, makes you. Dispite your swearing and protests he continues to apply pressure, the thumb of authority pushing down on your neck. The pink eyes of the rat beading up at you uncomprending but fearfull none the less in its very nature. You plead and beg to end the experiment, you swear into the air. Pick up the furniture in the room and fling it, smashing it in your frustration, in your anger at the unfair authority.

The man keeps pushing and pushing “you will ruin the whole experiment!” he rages. “your letting everyone down!” “ you must complete the experiment, your wasting everyone’s time”. It’s important they tell you, and the white coat becomes the authority you need, “I must do this thing” the brain rants “I’m letting them down if I don’t, I’m being foolish, I’m being weak and they know best”.

Finally, shakely, you grab the scalpel and turn your thoughts to the poor beast on the desk. “It must be done” your brain humms, it’s not your fault and it’s science, it’s OK, you got this” you tell yourself as you cut into its flesh.

Among psychologys many mad scientists, Carney Landis stands out to me as one of the creepiest. Relatively unknown, is his facial expression experiment. It was a failure and is remembered for the moral implications of his repugnant practice. What can be gleaned from his horrifying test? How pliant can the human brain be in the face of authority? Landy drove the line off a cliff in 1924, he did not alude to his subjects what would be involved in the experiments or consider the implications of the mental scars he was about to leave on their brains. He introduced various stimuli and photographed his victims as they experienced the unpleasant to the nightmarish in his quest to understand discust.

A Cork was burnt and lines drawn on each subjects face, the unfortunate was then exposed to various stimuli. A series of shocks, and sticking their hand in a bucket of frogs among them. Two thirds of the people chosen for Carney Landis’s experiment decapitated the rat, the remaining braves who resisted to the last were forced to watch Landis or his compadre snatch up the rat and cut out its last tiny breath.

This experiment was jarring to read about, I read the paragraph over and over, the sentence and then the four words that stood out strongest; “two thirds of people”.

When pushed we are so malleable, so pliant in the face of a white coat. The image of a Youtube clip flickered into my mind as I read, a young man in a high vis vest. “arms out please” they said, and the person going into the bank assumes the position, whilst a lint roller pretends to scan for weapons. And it does well to convince almost each person, for most only saw the vests authority. A very few glance suspiciously at the lint roller, their arms flinch as they almost assume the Jeasus pose. But something in them makes them check themselfs in this. “Why?” they ask.

Nature creates what is needed in society, it creates such diffrent people from the artist to the office worker because both tempers are needed to run the system. Though the creative is a small percentage of the population they are the first to point at the Emperors new clothes. Exposeing truths to all the rest, as they question and jest.

If it were not for the insomniac dry eyed at 3am whilst the rest slumber in the deep shades of unconsciousness, homes and people would burn far more often. For he who sits awake cursing his head who smells the smoke, sees the flash of flame and runs for the fire bell already dressed. Alerts the town and cuts through the darkness like the flame “FIRE, quick now, everyone awake!”

The artist, the comidian, and the writer have the same necciary job, to see, to question and to expose. Most of us trust authority, it’s safer for them to leave some things in the hands of those who know best. Recently I saw the UK PM state “ the covid vaccination is safe!” Those of us who understand the medical laws cringe to this, we know, its not true.

No medication can be considered as safe, hence even the simple paracetamol has a list of adverse reactions and warnings. But what would a politician know of such things? Still the majority sigh in relief at this phrase “phew its OK, it’s all safe, didnt you hear the man in the know? He knows bestest”.

There have always been those who question, resist and rebel pointing out the Emporors swinging genitalia laughing, exposing all the rest. And the ripple they make is so vast, the laugh as the crowd starts to titter, for they see what is right there before them then. Be it a lint roller. A man in a white coat or a politician exclaiming that a radically new type of vaccination, one that missed the usual 5 year testing processes, is definitely, unquestionably and 100% “safe”.