"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
5 Replies to “The Appliance of Science”
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"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
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Ruins of Hiroshima on screen. Pull back to show the Techni- cian at a switchboard. Behind him, Robert Oppenheimer flanked by three middle-aged men in dark suits, with the cold dead look of heavy power.
The Technician twiddles his knobs. He gives the O.K. sign.
“All clear.”
“Are you sure?”
The Technician shrugs. “The instruments say so.”
Oppy says: “Thank God it wasn’t a dud.”
“Oh, uh, hurry with those printouts, Joe.”
“Yes, sir.” He looked after them sourly, thinking: Thank Joe it wasn’t a dud. God doesn’t know what buttons to push.
However, some very tough young souls, horribly maimed and very disgruntled, do survive Hiroshima and come back to endanger national security. So the scientists are put to work to devise a Super Soul-Killer. No job too dirty for a fucking scientist.
They start with animals. There are some laboratory accidents.
“Run for your lives, gentlemen! A purple-assed baboon has survived ’23 Skiddoo’!”
“It’s the most savage animal on earth!”
The incandescent baboon soul bursts through a steel door, it rips like wet paper. Had to vaporize the installation. Lost expensive equipment and personnel. Irreplaceable, some of them. Real soul-food chefs, you might say; cordon bleu.
Well, trial and error. We now have http://web.ukonline.co.uk/gary.leeming/burroughs/westernlands.htm">Soul-Killers</a> that don’t quit. State of the fart, sure, the Big Fart. We know how it’s all going to end. The first sound and the last sound. Meanwhile, all personnel on Planet Earth are confined to quarters. Convince them they got no souls, it’s more humane that way.
Scientists always said there is no such thing as a soul. Now they are in a position to prove it. Total Death. http://www.oszilla.de/private-home/imhoff/sevensouls.html">Soul Death. It’s what the Egyptians called the Second and Final Death. This awesome power to destroy souls forever is now vested in farsighted and responsible men in the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon.
Allen Ginsberg says you got no soul. The ancient Egyptians say you got seven of these bastards, and Pharaohs got fourteen, what they get for being Pharaohs. Like Kim Carsons, a Pharaoh in his little patch. Remember, a man with absolute power in one windblown piece of desert or one backwoods shantytown has more power than the President of the United States. He’s got the immediate power of Death.
Yes, I know there are other applications of science. For instance, some people may recognise the title of this entry as a slogan used in the television commercials of the company Zanussi, who sold washing machines. The commercial was chock-full of people in white coats – a great trick oft-used by advertisers to evoke an authority far beyond the understanding of the viewer, and therefore also beyond question.
Anyway, I look forward to you defence of science.
An apt statement. Oppenheimer was using a quotation from the Bhagavad Gita. Now, you and I both know -I suggest- that “The Appliance of Science”, both as a statement and as an action/descriptive term, pertains to a multitude of different and differing things, some innocuous, some -as in your journal’s subject -mortally harmful (I understate)and that it’s (the ‘phrase’) linkage -usage- cannot be only specific to the horrendous events of 1945.
Q.,
I am in complete agreement with your implied sentiments here, with these images in this, your latest journal. I salute and commend you. I suspect that the title, though erudite and absolutely fitting for the point you are making, is also linked to that general, wider matter we spoke of some time ago and which you also raised in your last journal as “the doing away with science” (I paraphrase of course). In there you may have ‘hinted’ at something I had written about, regarding all of this (the gentle rhyming parody I mentioned when we met last in London -see
Ruins of Hiroshima on screen. Pull back to show the Techni- cian at a switchboard. Behind him, Robert Oppenheimer flanked by three middle-aged men in dark suits, with the cold dead look of heavy power.
The Technician twiddles his knobs. He gives the O.K. sign.
“All clear.”
“Are you sure?”
The Technician shrugs. “The instruments say so.”
Oppy says: “Thank God it wasn’t a dud.”
“Oh, uh, hurry with those printouts, Joe.”
“Yes, sir.” He looked after them sourly, thinking: Thank Joe it wasn’t a dud. God doesn’t know what buttons to push.
However, some very tough young souls, horribly maimed and very disgruntled, do survive Hiroshima and come back to endanger national security. So the scientists are put to work to devise a Super Soul-Killer. No job too dirty for a fucking scientist.
They start with animals. There are some laboratory accidents.
“Run for your lives, gentlemen! A purple-assed baboon has survived ’23 Skiddoo’!”
“It’s the most savage animal on earth!”
The incandescent baboon soul bursts through a steel door, it rips like wet paper. Had to vaporize the installation. Lost expensive equipment and personnel. Irreplaceable, some of them. Real soul-food chefs, you might say; cordon bleu.
Well, trial and error. We now have http://web.ukonline.co.uk/gary.leeming/burroughs/westernlands.htm">Soul-Killers</a> that don’t quit. State of the fart, sure, the Big Fart. We know how it’s all going to end. The first sound and the last sound. Meanwhile, all personnel on Planet Earth are confined to quarters. Convince them they got no souls, it’s more humane that way.
Scientists always said there is no such thing as a soul. Now they are in a position to prove it. Total Death. http://www.oszilla.de/private-home/imhoff/sevensouls.html">Soul Death. It’s what the Egyptians called the Second and Final Death. This awesome power to destroy souls forever is now vested in farsighted and responsible men in the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon.
The President, with his toadies and familiars, is now five hun- dred feet down in solid rock with enough fine foods, wines and liqueurs to last two hundred years, and the longevity drugs to enjoy them all. (Held off the market, in the interests of national security.)
A teen-aged President appears on national TV, his well-cut suit hanging loose on his skinny frame, to pipe out in adolescent treble, alternately pompous and cracking:
“We categorically deny that there are any [crack] so-called Fountain-of-Youth drugs, procedures or treatments [crack] that are being held back from the American people [crack].” He flashes a boyish smile and runs a comb through his abundant, unruly hair. “And I categorically dismiss as without foundation rumors that I myself, the First Lady, my fag son and my col- leagues in the Cabinet are sustaining ourselves by state-of-the- art vampiric technology, drawing off from the American pimples [crack giggle] so-called ‘energy units’!”
His hair stands up and crackles, and he gives the American people the finger and barks out:
“I got mine, fuck you! Every crumb for himself.”
Allen Ginsberg says you got no soul. The ancient Egyptians say you got seven of these bastards, and Pharaohs got fourteen, what they get for being Pharaohs. Like Kim Carsons, a Pharaoh in his little patch. Remember, a man with absolute power in one windblown piece of desert or one backwoods shantytown has more power than the President of the United States. He’s got the immediate power of Death.
Anonymous writes:you should make it more apparent that this is the work of William S. Burroughs, not your own. it’s not entirely obvious, and I got here by searching for Burroughs quotes.