Control, Power and Psychemocracy

Ijon Tichy's psychedelic journey is a strange and disturbing one to say the least. Tichy has virtually no control over his experiences and, being a defrostee, holds much contempt towards the psychem dominated future. We soon learn that Tichy's distrust for psychemistry is well placed, that is, the experience and perception produced by the psychem pharmaceuticals are idealized falsifications of the real world. This futuristic Psychemocracy is really a mechanism for control. Symington would have Tichy and I believe that he and the other soothseers are protecting the general public from their disturbing reality by controlling their perceptions via psychemistry. Though the soothseers without question hold a great deal of power over the public each individual is in some way responsible for his lack of control as described by Tichy, "The fiendishness of it all is that part of this mass deception is open and voluntary, letting people think they can draw the line between fiction and fact. And since no one any longer responds to things spontaneously -- you take drugs to study, drugs to love, drugs to rise up in revolt , drugs to forget -- the distinction between manipulated and natural feelings has ceased to exist" (p.120). Whats even more ironic about this world is that it isn't even real. The whole of Tichy's futurological experience is the product of a hallucinogen. So in a way the Psychemocracy was produced by a perception controlling drug, which I think, is a sort of warning or critique of our attitude towards drugs and false experience. Though the drugs today, or in several decades ago, aren't nearly as sophisticated as those in 2069, nor is the government or governing body as controlling, drugs and other technologies are used to coerce our behave and we let it happen.