“But let’s forget unpleasant things. Let’s think about more pleasant probabilities. Let’s daydream a little, give ourselves over to imagination. Could our biological evolution help end our humiliation? I mean the biological evolution of the police. Not technical evolution, —you’re not listening to me again. I said biological. To illustrate this, let’s compare ourselves to animals. In the majority of cases, the essential tools of a living being are integral parts of its organism. They harmonize with its nature and purpose. A beaver doesn’t have pincers but strong teeth and a powerful tail. A tiger doesn’t defend itself with ink like a cuttlefish. The ootheca of a praying mantis is constructed on the same principle as a thermos. The catapult systems that some animals use are miniature pieces of artillery, built into the organism by the evolutionary process, just as in an ideal world every soldier would be able to shoot directly from his mouth. You can see what I’m getting at. Snares, traps, nets, nooses, springs, adhesives, all the decoys nature uses to lure victims and then kill them, including hooks, spurs, barbs, pincers, probosces, etc.—all of this, which we’ve taken from animals, we’ve been forced to mass produce in considerably less perfect form. Concerning the Service, I mean instruments of torture and liquidation, as well as dictaphones and other technical devices. The drawback of this practice is obvious. Despite the imperfections and the costs we have to deal with, as well as the problems we have concealing them from the public, we often don’t have them at hand. Imagine now that by heredity, through the course of a series of torturers, his hand, as a consequence of its constant use to beat people, evolved into a pizzle whip, an iron bar, or some other investigative device. We would have a subspecies of human called the police, and within it the torturer variety, with an inborn club. A direct consequence would be a so-called ‘hereditary police,’ which is what all human functions are striving for by their very nature. They would be technically perfect, and would be much less of a burden on the state budget. But in my view the most important consequence would be the fact that this would in some way biologically inaugurate the police into our lives. It would become just as natural as any other organ with its specialized function! What do you think of that?” Steinbrecher daydreming, from How to Quiet a Vampire by Borislav Pekić.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 13:16:26 +0000
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