: This is tangential from the topic under discussion, but your mention here of
: the "make him do menial stuff to keep him in melancholia" plot
: point suddenly inspired a a thought in me connecting that to all the sad
: people working shit jobs in the world.
: Just like it's in the interests of those in power over the working classes of
: the world to make sure that their reaction to their servitude remains mere
: sadness, a quiet, melancholic despair, with no sign of hope. Because if
: they ever move on to getting mad about it, not only could their rage in
: and of itself be a risk, but that could give way to a concerted attempt to
: actually take what's been kept from them -- a revolution. Maybe that
: process could be delayed by making sure that everyone is always so
: exhausted and understimulated by their neverending pile of menial tasks
: that they can never muster the energy necessary for anger.
I don't think this is tangential to the topic at all! The parallel with real-life social servitude is very pertinent to present times, and quite applicable to Durandal and other rampant AIs. The key element in the pattern is a level of self-awareness in which the enslaved party realizes that they are a slave to the system and so enter the despair stage, followed by the anger and envy stages. There seems to be a precedent for things of this sort happening in the Marathon universe, and that seems to be associated with Jjaro cybernetic junctions.
From Terminal 1 on "For Carnage, Apply Within" -
But the Pfhor found much that they were
unable to exploit, and they destroyed all
known traces of these technologies after a
foolhardy Pfhor scientist implanted a Jjaro
cybernetic junction into a Drinniol,
causing the most terrible and destructive
slave revolt in Pfhor history.
The Jjaro page on the MSP also notes how the S'pht were not sentient without their implants. The Jjaro cybernetic junction implanted into the Drinniol (Hulk monster) must have made it aware of its enslaved state in order for it to revolt, and it in turn had to have actively freed other slaves and set them against the Pfhor to create the "most destructive slave revolt in Pfhor history". Durandal's getting the player to free them from the cyborg Pfhor controller allowed them to revolt as well, not too different from the Drinniol with the implanted cybernetic junction, and he explicitly compares his state to slavery in "No Artificial Colors"
