Ten poor men are trapped in individual metal cages. The cages barely allow these men to walk two paces. They defecate in a pot right next to them. They eat right next to the pot in which they defecate. They sleep curled in a ball. These ten cages are inside a vicinity, that could also be described as a cage. There is no natural light, but the prison is illumined pale white 24 hours a day by electricity. They are monitored and kept alive by a group of detached scientists, who appear simultaneously in homogeneous, ankle-length white coats and deflecting round glasses. Serco security guards pass food through the bars of the cage with elongated sticks and the scientists proceed to scrawl furiously on their clipboards.
Most of the prisoners have adjusted well to their new environment. They sleep eight hours a day. They perform their work task, knitting jumpers, for twelve hours a day. They receive an allowance so that they may stay in this vicinity which provides shelter, is relatively warm, and gives them two meals a day. They are allowed to leave the cage and 'commute' (walk) inside the vicinity for one hour a day. They have three hours of free time where they may choose to speak to their neighbours, watch the screen of silent images of faces across the vicinity, or read a selection of books provided. The well adjusted prisoners follow these rules.
Prisoner 1 however has been documented by the scientists to have an irregular sleep pattern, runs instead of walks, shouts frequently instead of talking, and refuses to knit. Often, he is tasered, and his knitting needles removed from him, as he attempts to conceal them and use them as a weapon against the security staff during his commute.
Prisoner 6 on the other hand sleeps profusely, often drifting off during his task, does not engage with the other prisoners, and often stares at the screen, even when it is off. On the commute he will regularly standstill, and only walk a few paces before leaning against a wall. Generally, he is despondent. Prisoner 9 is quite the antagonist. He is very talkative, night and day, and is constantly trying to persuade the other prisoners to rebel against, what he calls, 'psychtators'. This is a neologism Prisoner 9 created to describe the scientists as psychiatric dictators. Prisoner 9 has developed an elaborate theory of how the scientists are poisoning their food to make them docile so that they are forced to do slave labour. However, most of the other prisoners ignore Prisoner 9 from fear of removal of their eating privileges.
The scientists come to a consensus that Prisoner 1, 6 and 9, are ill. Prisoner 1 has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Prisoner 6 is depressed, and Prisoner 9 suffers with acute paranoia. Upon day 1236, all ten prisoners in turn are taken to a back room, where they are given a muscle relaxant, rendering them with severe muscle weakness, and place them lying on a table to undergo a FMRI scan of their brains.
Deficits in neural activity within fronto-striatal and fronto-parietal circuits are found in Prisoner 1, compared to the other prisoners, excluding Prisoner 6 and Prisoner 9. Prisoner 6 was found to have, overall reduced activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), diminished discrimination between emotional and neutral items in the amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus, and enhanced responses to negative versus positive stimuli in the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and right dorsolateral PFC. Finally, Prisoner 9 showed prefrontal deficit for “without-arousal” responses, compared to the other controls. The psychtators have now gathered evidence of the differential physiological underpinnings in order to qualify their claims that these prisoners are ill, and need to be medicated with neuro/mind altering drugs with 100 different possible side effects.
Now, what I hope the reader is now thinking is, that despite the differential neurological underpinnings, surely these people are not ill! That these people are merely responding to a harsh environment. It is quite plausible that Prisoner 9 is bang on the money, and they are poisoning them for cheap labour, and if I were in a cage all day I might feel a bit depressed like Prisoner 6, or go wild like Prisoner 1. Do the other prisoners following orders even have minds to differentiate from? Are they not mere knitting sheep?
The so-called 'ill' prisoners do not need mind altering drugs. Rather, what they need is a prisoner revolution. To break from those metaphysical and iron bars, smash the psyhtatorship and free themselves from a life of slavery.
But the other prisoners, I'm afraid, don't see it that way and fall for this codswallop about weird brains. They continue their life of servitude for scraps of food. In time, the other prisoners are chemically manipulated to produce the desired behavioural outcomes to achieve maximum efficiency and maximum profit. This profit is made by selling 'designer' jumpers to the other prisoners. But these other prisoners don't have iron bars. Their metaphysical bars are so well established, that they can leave their iron cages, and roam the streets. They are the self-disciplined prisoners, who whip themselves, and consume jumpers and other prisoner produce, turning the turnstyles of the psychtatorship and enriching the psychtators!
Are you ill? Maybe you are indeed!
Ellese Elliott
