Duped again

Listening to the news I heard a Syrian man complaining about having to wear a wrist band so he could be recognised when he went for his 'free meal'. The terms he used were dehumanised, stigmatised, and of course that catch all abused.
Looking at the mayhem in his own country Syria it is difficult to understand where his resentment came from, unless he had been programmed to say what he said.

We are all programmed from birth of course but the political programming starts in our teens and continues throughout our lives. 

One of the issues which we in this country were influenced to reject was the question of whether everyone should be required to carry an Identity Card. The question around the issue of identification was the scope of the information the authorities wished to hold on each person. 

Eventually the people in this country fought against ID cards, it was deemed too totalitarian.
Of course this was a back in 2006 and pre-dates the rise of ISIS, the turbulence in the Middle East and the attacks in the West. 

Perhaps the time for ID cards has now arrived and wrist band would be a thing of the past. 

It would answer the question of who is here and give the authorities the opportunity to check on us but there lies the snag. Instinctively we often reject the power of the state. We do not trust the bureaucrats to play fair with our information. Councils and quasi governmental organisations routinely sell our information on to private enterprise were it is used as a marketing tool. 

Unless we have a sea change in our view on our civil liberties, the need to carry a Dompas, as it was called in South Africa, when we set out from home is still some way a way.  

Conversely, in some ways it would be no great deal since we would feel undressed without our wallet when we go out. If I collect my parcel from the Post Office I have to take some method of recognition otherwise they won't release the parcel. Is there merely some sort of psychological hurdle which has been inculcated in me, which requires dis-inculcating,  it would be pretty painless to re-educate me. But if the authorities began to over classify people through the information held in their records then we are all at risk. The true reason for the Dompas in South Africa was a method of not only identifying a section of the demographic but controlling and  hindering their movement, particularly at night.

As always power in the wrong hands is destructive and gathering more power into the hands of the State trades a tremendous amount of good will and optimism on the part of the electorate which, history tells us, in the end, we are usually duped !!!