Tuesday, August 29, 2006

This just keeps getting more and more fucked up.



These are two aerial satellite photos from Google earth showing the US Naval Base on Coronado, CA, the base where the SEALs train. If you look at just about dead center of the top picture you can see what is magnified in the bottom picture. Before I posted this I googled the fuck out of it myself. Those aren't fake pictures. Just googlemaps Coronado, CA, find the little peninsula knub that's just off the road-bridge part near the main island of Coronado and see for yourself.

So now the question is, is this significant? Does this matter, does it mean anything, or is it some completely fucked up coincidence? It's obviously a dormitory-type barracks purposefully constructed to resemble a swastika from the air. You can't build something like that and reasonably say "Oh my, I didn't realize it was a perfect swastika, the layout just really made sense for what we needed."

So WTF, US Navy, and by extension the Pentagon that gives it its construction budget.

5 comments:

Shein said...

interesting. maybe the architect was a big hinduism or buddhism follower. you guys probably already know this, but the swatsika is all over asia, marking buddhist temples and things of that nature.

Horse said...

here's a response from the navy

Walker said...

I saw the response from the navy. The arrogance of an entity, to say that it was "just an oversight" and expect people to accept. That's the thing though, for most people, that is all they need to hear; they want to trust the navy and are almost waiting to hear something that makes them trust.

When you think about it though, there really is no possible way that that structure was planned, designed, and constructed without anyone realizing that the buildings they designed formed a perfect swastika. Until after the groundbreaking? What, after they dug the foundation and were like, "oh...yup, that's a swastika. whoops." that would only be plausible if there were never any drawings done of what that block would look like after they contructed those buildings. ie, blueprints. but without blueprints, you can't build anything. That's even more unbelievable than some kind of rationalization for the design, like i alluded to in the original post.

Can you think of any reason as to why we should believe that it was just an oversight?

If that reason is something like "because it is too ridiculous to think that the American military would have any reason to build a structure and have it look like a swastika from the air," let's talk.

Mike said...

If the architecture wasn't an oversight and in fact planned, it's hard to imagine what the Navy, the Pentagon, or Neo-Nazis for that matter, would have to gain from a building shaped like a swastika, especially one that could only be seen from an airplane.

Walker said...

If you agree with the premise that it was not an oversight and that the military designed it that way intentionally, that conclusion dictates there be a reason for its intentional construction. So then we are left to wonder, basically, what the purpose was/is. No matter if we know the purpose or not, the point is that there was/is a purpose for it being constructed that way. If it were not such a conspicuous symbol, it wouldn't merit any further inquiry, but the nature of that symbol is very complex, and we can only speculate as to why it was built that way. I speculated some below, I guess at this point, one speculation is as good as the other considering that the significant fact is that some, albeit unknown, purpose for its construction has already been established.

++spoiler++ personal speculation below

A swastika is a symbol, and one of the most interesting things about the nature of symbols and how we are influenced by them is how, in terms of its environment and those that the symbol is impressed upon (those that are exposed to it daily), a symbol need not be obvious in order to exert influence of any kind, for any purpose.

this helps describe what I mean, from the wiki definition of symbol:

1.The nature of the symbol and the process of symbolization are deeply rooted in the human nervous system. The relationship of that system to consciousness, thought and subjectivity is not understood, although there are some theories of partial explanation.
2.The tokenization of objects may be conscious or unconscious. Perhaps the closest mechanism to it is to be found in the conditioned reflex of behavioral science. If the reward of a given response is coupled with another stimulus (the token) repeatedly, the other stimulus acquires the same power to elicit the response as the original reward.

So it's not so much that anything is gained directly from having that structure there, it's more an exercise in influence, a neuro-psychological sort of reinforcement of the meaning of the symbol while coupled with other, already imminently legitimized symbols, like the stars and stripes, the bald eagle, etc.

Sailors live in this building and carry out their military lives, continually reinforced by overt "trustworthy" symbolism such as rank insignia, flags, uniforms, colors, formations, etc. These symbols are not only inherently "true" to the soldiers, they also communicate specific ideas, like rank, or country, or unit, or "danger level," or what battles you've been part of. All of these symbols cohere to certain ideas that are core to the military mindset, and core to organizing and influencing sailors and soldiers in such a way so as to, essentially, induce them to do many different things, each thing falling somewhere on the abstract moral scale of "right" and "wrong," from the extreme "right" to the extreme "wrong," by definition.

In order to induce a group of people to do literally anything, they must believe it is "right" for some logical reason, even if the premise itself is flawed. As long as there is the appearance of logic, justification can be reasonably (albeit falsely), concluded. The main psychological mechanism in the military that accomplishes this is referred to as "the (unqualified) belief in the unified chain of command," whereby in order for any order to be carried out through the obeyance of soldiers, no matter how much of an atrocity it is, there must be a justification in the form of a psychological "get out of jail free card," allowing the soldier to logically (to him) allow himself to do anything.

Nothing in the military more than symbols aids in creating the environment in which a soldier is constantly reminded of certain inherently "trustworthy" ideals, and this induces obeyance and thus the "unqualified" aspect of the belief in the unified chain of command, and this is the principle by which militaries necesarrily operate upon. I would speculate, then, that the influence of this building-symbol swastika, in which sailors have lived and trained for 35 years, can possibly be reasonably measured in terms of incremental influence over time. Even if its influence on the minds of sailors is very little, over time the aggregate influence, by virtue of its subconscious impact on those that are exposed to it, however covertly, compounded over each sailors life through further reinforcement of coinciding ideals and principles through continued existence in the military and exposure to its symbols, might amount to quite a bit of psychological weight. Although not overt, the influence could be very little but it could also be very significant.

Another implication, based on the second paragraph of the wiki article i pasted describes another mechanism by which this building, with its design, would be useful to the military. It would, in some way, over time, associate its significance into the collective consciousness of the military, and become a symbol of it while incorporating its significance to the overall entity it has joined. The implications of this potentiality are vast and for another post but are partially covered in the above speculation.

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