In post 5468, Annadog40 wrote:Walk me through how a Utopian would capture and re-educate a rebel, step by step in full detail.
The Utopian would arrest the rebel for being an ideological dissident. After that, the Utopian would bring the rebel to a re-education center. The rebel would then be placed in the facility and subject to a battery of tests designed to sway him towards utopia. For example, human beings tend to mimic the ideologies of those around them. So the rebel would be placed in a group of Utopians who would be nice to them while they are in a strange and unfamiliar environment. This tends to create bonding and makes the rebel want to please their new friends by adopting the ideology. Pavlovian stimulus may also be applied in order to create incentives. For example, in a group of rebels undergoing re-education, one idea is to give them all basic but unfulfilling living conditions. However, those who show promise in Utopia may be elevated to a higher level and treated in luxury. This will incentivize rebels to "out-do" each other in terms of how zealously they can follow the correct path. Sedatives or other mind altering drugs may be mixed into the food and drink in order to discourage critical thought. Do not be alarmed at this. We are not going to drug them into a stupor. Even something like giving them plenty of sugar (orange juice, soda, sweet desserts and so forth with perhaps physical exercise to encourage more consumption of the orange juice and soda) is enough to give them a "buzz" and make them not want to think too much about rebelling. This is an actual tactic used by cults that we have adapted for the forces of good, so we know it works.
Rebels are free to walk around the compound and mingle with other rebels or with the Utopians assigned to the re-education center. Their conversations with other rebels will be closely monitored. If it is suspicious, we will separate the rebels and punish them in some way, for example by giving them a more basic standard of living. They are encouraged to mingle with Utopians as this will create more social pressure and allow dissemination of ideals. They are also free to participate in recreational activities. The center will provide recreational activities thought to be compatible with Utopian thought. Of course in the greater Utopia people can read whatever they want, even if it has seditious themes, since they will be Utopians who will know it is fiction and so on. But for the rebels they are in a critical stage of growth and cannot be disrupted by such things. For example, I expect that the library will stock mostly high fantasy books encouraging a good vs evil black and white, hero defeats villain view of morality. For science fiction, transhumanist fiction will be strongly encouraged. Works like 1984 that might make people think a unified government is bad will of course not be present. Video games that encourage lawlessness like Grand Theft Auto will not be included, but other forms of video games might be. For example, a "neutral" book or game that doesn't really go against Utopia would likely be allowed. We want rebels to feel comfortable, safe and secure. They must associate these feelings with their time in the compound, and only feel bad when they have erred.
If a rebel is being strongly recalcitrant, more extreme methods might be used. I dunno whether saying them will get me banned again. Let us simply say that it is not a good idea to be a recalcitrant rebel. You should strive to improve yourself within the center.
At all times, the goal of the center is not to punish rebellion. Rather, we seek to mold and shape impressionable minds. Rebels that are extremely young will be given extra attention as they are at a critical stage of their development. I myself developed my idea of the correct path when I was around that age. Positive reinforcement is regarded to be superior to negative reinforcement. Although rebels will be free to do whatever they want most of their day, there will likely be a mandatory 2 or 3 hour training course per day in which key concepts of the correct path are explained, like paraconsistent thinking, societal roles, universal functions, moral imperatives and moral justification, the self-evidency of moral truths and so on and so forth.
This is not a finalized model. I'm sure that as more and more people accept utopia, we will have some brilliant thinkers who will be able to come up with far better ideas than I. Perhaps it will turn out to be a very simple outcome, like a new drug that lets people see the self evident truths of the world when taken. In that case our job is easy! But barring such developments, I think these are some good, humane ideas to start off with.
There's nothing that says that a fake can't beat the real thing.
You must not imagine that for beings like you and us there can be laughter. The low men laugh, and we envy them. But for us, the higher ones, there is no laughter, only an unending vigil, purely serious, stretching on into the night.
