Regarding Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange there seems often a subtle misapprehension of our faithful narrator, or Alex's fateful second encounter with the dissident writer (F. Alexander). This encounter occurring after a similarly fateful prior encounter with his former droogs turned "peace officers" when, having been severely beaten by the latter, he winds up at the mercies of the former. This bears no small degree of not-so-subtle irony for his chance benefactor to have unwittingly numbered among his victims, and no less still upon the benefactor's eventual realization of this fact, particularly after having expressed no small amount of concern and sympathy for his plight, even so far as intending to instrumentalize that plight politically against the state which had so recklessly rendered Alex powerless to oppose any crime against his person. Yet these ironies are deceivingly obtuse, and in them hides a less appreciated but all the more resonant irony: that it was the state's own "Ludovico Technique" which had rendered for the dissident writer and his comrades so suitably a pitiable, however deplorable poster-child for their cause, by very benefit of his having been rendered harmless, or certainly seeming so.

This is made all-the-more clear only when upon the realization that Alex had indeed already done the writer harm (never mind those of his victims already known or assumed) the writer ultimately subjects Alex to his tortuous wrath, a vengeance to which even his comrades themselves become complicit, if for no other reason than their greater sympathy for their comrade than the wretch who had only so lately commanded such. This irony reflects one perhaps even earlier in the book wherein the prison chaplain vociferously reviles Ludovico Technique when Alex asks after the matter, deploring its removal of choice or free will to a young man imprisoned by the very state the chaplain serves, a young man who seeks the chaplain's own guidance by no credible degree of willfulness so much as desperate device. And does this impulse and tendency not resonate well through our own context and likely no less than that under which this book was written?

Indeed is it only after those most dejected have been thoroughly pacified or defanged, if not outright killed, that they seem as though finally worthy of significant moral support and hardly ever before and when they may yet have a fighting chance to stave off the circumstances of utter defeat. This logic extends also well beyond people or persons, as the preeminent rubric for assessing the value of anything as worthy of significant concern other than revulsion is the degree to which it seem comparatively harmless or harm reducing, but harmless to what? other than some obdurate enjoyment? It is against this that we might say, and here do say, "weaponize!" but we should brook no illusions as to what that means; what it means to be dangerous or to no small degree capable of doing harm--indeed to be harmful in some way worthy or necessary for a goal equally so worthy or necessary (and what such goal under any circumstance sufficiently dire would not command such capacity?).

Was Alex really ever so harmful as have earned his would-be benefactors' ire such as to compromise their cause? Were not they in the end harmless to all but their own cause? and not in spite of any will to punish wrongdoing but because of it? unable, as it were, to pose any meaningful threat at all. This particular irony would seem double to consider that the brazenly stated purpose of the Ludovico Technique was to make room in the prisons for political prisoners, which is to say that the state not only regards violent and petty offenders such as Alex to be mostly a harmless trifle to be merely corrected, but that it regards political dissidents simultaneously more useful to imprison while also not-so-harmful as to themselves warrant the technique. This particular irony comes full-circle in a way foreshadowed by the fact of Alex's former droogs having been enlisted into the police when in the end, the technique is reversed and Alex ultimately becomes complicit in the state's own machinations with all his predatory tendencies back intact. It takes no stretch of the imagination to find this lesson as resonant today as ever it had been or failed to be when first committed to type and, more famously, to celluloid.

Regarding Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange there seems often a subtle misapprehension of our faithful narrator, or Alex's fateful second encounter with the dissident writer (F. Alexander). This encounter occurring after a similarly fateful prior encounter with his former droogs turned "peace officers" when, having been severely beaten by the latter, he winds up at the mercies of the former. This bears no small degree of not-so-subtle irony for his chance benefactor to have unwittingly numbered among his victims, and no less still upon the benefactor's eventual realization of this fact, particularly after having expressed no small amount of concern and sympathy for his plight, even so far as intending to instrumentalize that plight politically against the state which had so recklessly rendered Alex powerless to oppose any crime against his person. Yet these ironies are deceivingly obtuse, and in them hides a less appreciated but all the more resonant irony: that it was the state's own "Ludovico Technique" which had rendered for the dissident writer and his comrades so suitably a pitiable, however deplorable poster-child for their cause, by very benefit of his having been rendered harmless, or certainly seeming so.

This is made all-the-more clear only when upon the realization that Alex had indeed already done the writer harm (never mind those of his victims already known or assumed) the writer ultimately subjects Alex to his tortuous wrath, a vengeance to which even his comrades themselves become complicit, if for no other reason than their greater sympathy for their comrade than the wretch who had only so lately commanded such. This irony reflects one perhaps even earlier in the book wherein the prison chaplain vociferously reviles Ludovico Technique when Alex asks after the matter, deploring its removal of choice or free will to a young man imprisoned by the very state the chaplain serves, a young man who seeks the chaplain's own guidance by no credible degree of willfulness so much as desperate device. And does this impulse and tendency not resonate well through our own context and likely no less than that under which this book was written?

Indeed is it only after those most dejected have been thoroughly pacified or defanged, if not outright killed, that they seem as though finally worthy of significant moral support and hardly ever before and when they may yet have a fighting chance to stave off the circumstances of utter defeat. This logic extends also well beyond people or persons, as the preeminent rubric for assessing the value of anything as worthy of significant concern other than revulsion is the degree to which it seem comparatively harmless or harm reducing, but harmless to what? other than some obdurate enjoyment? It is against this that we might say, and here do say, "weaponize!" but we should brook no illusions as to what that means; what it means to be dangerous or to no small degree capable of doing harm--indeed to be harmful in some way worthy or necessary for a goal equally so worthy or necessary (and what such goal under any circumstance sufficiently dire would not command such capacity?).

Was Alex really ever so harmful as have earned his would-be benefactors' ire such as to compromise their cause? Were not they in the end harmless to all but their own cause? and not in spite of any will to punish wrongdoing but because of it? unable, as it were, to pose any meaningful threat at all. This particular irony would seem double to consider that the brazenly stated purpose of the Ludovico Technique was to make room in the prisons for political prisoners, which is to say that the state not only regards violent and petty offenders such as Alex to be mostly a harmless trifle to be merely corrected, but that it regards political dissidents simultaneously more useful to imprison while also not-so-harmful as to themselves warrant the technique. This particular irony comes full-circle in a way foreshadowed by the fact of Alex's former droogs having been enlisted into the police when in the end, the technique is reversed and Alex ultimately becomes complicit in the state's own machinations with all his predatory tendencies back intact. It takes no stretch of the imagination to find this lesson as resonant today as ever it had been or failed to be when first committed to type and, more famously, to celluloid.