BEING BLIND TO WHAT?

BEING BLIND TO WHAT?

(Lakshay Raja)

Andrew is eighteen and has been kept in a dark room for almost a month. He vaguely remembers him being the star in his high school, before he was brought into the room he is in now.

The room resides sixty others. Andrew is not physically tortured, he has barely been touched. But what he says or how he thinks or behaves is contradicted by the others every single time. Andrew doubts if he has ever been right. Andrew struggles to live. 

In the early 1950’s began CIA’s illegal mind control program, ‘Project MKUltra’ that went on for more than twenty years before being halted. 

Ted Kaczynski (sounds familiar?), a child prodigy was among twenty two students of Howard who were the research subject for the experiment. The subjects were shown some images and were asked to write down their thoughts of how they see the picture. The subjects were also to write their beliefs and aspirations. And as the experimentalists had predicted, Kaczynski was close to the best.

Later, Kaczynski was called for the test results. His ideas were read and laughed out. Ted was belittled based on his report. The experiment on Kaczynski went on for three more years. 

Ted Kaczynski is serving an eight year sentence in a maximum security prison.Soon after graduating from Harvard, Ted settled down for a simple life, away from the access to even electricity. Between 1978 and 1995, he engaged in a nationwide bombing campaign, ultimately killing a total of three people and injuring 23 others.

Project MKUltra was more of a dummy scenario of what happens in most of the classrooms and workplaces. Andrew’s dark room is a corner in his classroom where he sits.

Contradicting on what a person says every single time, just to get the taste of dominance or discarding ‘his’ beliefs for you feel your ideas are more refined is like taking away a possible discovery or an idol from the world. 

There’s an Andrew around you, being dragged into the dark room. Guess who should be the firewall? If there’s something in a person that bothers you, well, do I need to say more?