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frobzwiththingzI wont repeat the details of the Great Boston LED Fiasco. You all know them already. But i will talk about some things that are now churning around in my head after a not-so-restful night of sleep last night.
While driving home from Silks last night, i was listening to Steve Lovelli, a talk show on WBZ. Steve is generally reasonably sane about things, but in this case he was playing right in repeating the whole "hoax" lie, and a steady stream of callers were calling in and basically demanding perpetrators heads on platters. The repeated theme of the evening, for me, was how most people were totally willing to twist even the most obviously benign scenarios into "that would be exactly what a terrorist would do, to fool us into thinking it was safe." I heard several callers , one of whom was retired law enforcememnt, seriously suggest that the event could be a terrorist group like Al Qaeda, who both had infiltrated both the Cartoon Network, and set up a terror cell in charlestown, and this could just be a "Probe" in order to see how city officials react, in order to plan future attacks. He was very adamant that this was possible, and we must be "vigilant" and "take no chances". To me, this is just as silly as "God planted all the fossils to test our faith!"
But people would go right along, and buy right in to it. And, more importantly, judging from voice tone, and demeanor, these callers appeared to *enjoy* thinking about the world that way. How have we gotten to this state? And more importantly: Why do we stay there? The only thing i can come up with, is that somehow, as bizarre as it sounds, people *find comfort* in being afraid.
So thats my uncomfortable thought for the day.
Thesis: On the whole, humans find comfort in the state of being afraid. Discuss.
While driving home from Silks last night, i was listening to Steve Lovelli, a talk show on WBZ. Steve is generally reasonably sane about things, but in this case he was playing right in repeating the whole "hoax" lie, and a steady stream of callers were calling in and basically demanding perpetrators heads on platters. The repeated theme of the evening, for me, was how most people were totally willing to twist even the most obviously benign scenarios into "that would be exactly what a terrorist would do, to fool us into thinking it was safe." I heard several callers , one of whom was retired law enforcememnt, seriously suggest that the event could be a terrorist group like Al Qaeda, who both had infiltrated both the Cartoon Network, and set up a terror cell in charlestown, and this could just be a "Probe" in order to see how city officials react, in order to plan future attacks. He was very adamant that this was possible, and we must be "vigilant" and "take no chances". To me, this is just as silly as "God planted all the fossils to test our faith!"
But people would go right along, and buy right in to it. And, more importantly, judging from voice tone, and demeanor, these callers appeared to *enjoy* thinking about the world that way. How have we gotten to this state? And more importantly: Why do we stay there? The only thing i can come up with, is that somehow, as bizarre as it sounds, people *find comfort* in being afraid.
So thats my uncomfortable thought for the day.
Thesis: On the whole, humans find comfort in the state of being afraid. Discuss.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 08:47 pm (UTC)I recommend the book "Escape From Freedom" by Erich Fromm. I believe it hits on just the topics of which you speak.
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Date: 2007-02-01 09:04 pm (UTC)"What do I do without my Vietnam?"
When the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union imploded, George H.W. Bush declared a "New World Order", and immediately sought out a new enemy to defeat militarily.
We don't have commies under the bed anymore; we have turbanned terrorists.
We humans find comfort in the familiar. If you take away our life-long enemy, who could be any one of us infiltrating the rest, we replace this enemy with one just like it.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 08:15 am (UTC)they demand your cat.
let it out at night, and nobody gets hurt.
except the cat.
be afraid. the coyotes are WATCHING YOU.
#
no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 09:11 pm (UTC)Also facts can be warped to fit anyone's own personal opinions & agendas, whether that person be one of science, faith, family, or higher education.
But something else occurred to me today -- "Banned in Boston" is a theme that has NEVER gone away in the arts. This is the land of witchburning, bookburning, and art banning for centuries, but its also true that "Banned in Boston" is often worn as a badge of honor by the artists involved.
Though I am saddened that I only hear of the arts in MA news when a tragedy happens, and an art community is involved.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 09:25 pm (UTC)i was coming to post that it's not being afraid we like, it's being protected. from *something*(define an ememy, as feste_slyvain said) so we don't have space to wonder about all the other stuff we're not being protected from.
the weirdest thing i read on this so far is that there *was* a hoax pipe bomb on the Longfellow. completely unrelated to the LED aliens. just goes to show the media mess this was. we *still* don't have the facts straight, and yet people have already judged what happened.
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Date: 2007-02-01 09:49 pm (UTC)2, in fact, being found, if I understand correctly, at the same time as the Mooninites.
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Date: 2007-02-01 09:27 pm (UTC)(Watchmen was f'in brilliant.)
edumacated guessery ahead
Date: 2007-02-01 09:37 pm (UTC)Most people don't like details, and they don't like effort. Reduced to absurdity, this means most people want to spend their lives just sitting on a sofa believing everything happens because god said so, and politicians will run everything for them.
I don't like most people.
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Date: 2007-02-01 09:57 pm (UTC)Laughter is a good antidote. Were in not for the possibility that a friend was going through shit over it, I might even find some comic relief here.
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Date: 2007-02-01 10:21 pm (UTC)i didn't find out about the big scare until today on lj, because i stopped listening to the voices of fear a long time ago, and slowly they wore out of my head. now i just go ride the pony or walk the dog. i've got enough discordance inside my head already. but the folks at the call-in show -- which is to say, folks who listen to call-in radio -- they've been listening to the voices of fear for a long, long time.
i went to see the idan raichel project last night. aside from the scary security (and yes, my pocket knife, pill box, and metal lip balm container all passed right through) it was a fine experience for joy over fear. i'm really glad i went to listen to that instead.
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Date: 2007-02-01 10:40 pm (UTC):)
It's even people not in Boston.
Date: 2007-02-02 01:26 am (UTC)O well.
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Date: 2007-02-01 11:50 pm (UTC)yes. in particular, there's a certain appeal to spinning up to the most paranoid worries possible. it's much more appealing to worry about spectacular but incredibly unlikely movie-plot scenarios than something far more likely (smoking-related illnesses, being hit by a car while crossing the street, etc). people minimize perceived risk with regard to things they do that are routine.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 12:42 am (UTC)The explanation thus far is 'an awful lot of people would much, much rather believe that there are nameable actors, working in concert, trying to do unspeakable things, than believe that random shit just happens for petty, unpredictable, disconnected reasons. The world Makes More Sense if there are conspiracies than it does if Things Just Happen.' And I think that's what you're seeing around Boston now - it's much, much less scary to go looking for the turbanned baddie under the bed than to look at the possibility that the Mayor and the police really are not so quick on the uptake.
Much like for a lot of the country, for the last six years, it's been much less scary to believe that the only reason we weren't being bombed back into the stone age right now was that we were being protected by our fearless leaders, than to believe that they were leading us down a rat hole from which they had no clear handle on how to get out.
Because that would be really terrifying.
People are stupid. Sometimes I'm one of them.
Date: 2007-02-02 02:21 am (UTC)Bad things happen, we look for patterns and causes (or make them up), then tell ourselves stories like "$badthing happened because of x, y, and z. If I avoid x, y, and z, $badthing won't happen to me." Then we embellish the story by adding rituals a through n that will supposedly prevent x, y, and z and thus keep us "safe" from $badthing. What you're seeing is people defending their rituals (no matter how ineffective), because those are visible and controllable, unlike all the $badthings out there.
For more evidence, I'll point you at this glob story (which was published before the LED spoo). Note the header: "T's searches turn up only false alarms. But officials say antiterror effort is a deterrent." I expect there will be even more T searches and security theatre after the current debacle.
Fear as diversive tatic
Date: 2007-02-02 03:00 pm (UTC)But, yeah, even those in power seem to find some comfort in having a reliable fear to fall back on. A good Christian is "God fearing," with preachers predicting eternal pain and suffering (unless you contribute an appropriate amount, of course.) A good US citizen is, apparently, supposed to fear terrorists. The "Respect my authority" meme that is so prevalent in the police forces of the US is based in the assumption you should fear someone who can arbitrarily disrupt, and possibly destroy, your life. We fear the IRS for it's ability to scour our financial records and impose penalties for mistakes, omissions, or even arbitrary rule interpretations.
There have been efforts to remove the fear -- the end of the Cold War, such as it was, was a great relief for many. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" were some of the greatest words ever spoken, yet, still, we cling to fear, and put into power those who instill it in us.
Maybe this will change some day. I certainly hope so.
--doug
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Date: 2007-02-03 09:03 pm (UTC)It's comforting to be able to group as many of those fears as possible into a single basket and say, "there! It's their fault, and we can do something about it!"
As someone else commented, it has a lot in common with religiosity - it's more comforting to think that there's an order to the universe that factors you into its plans, even an absurd one that doesn't bear much scrutiny when compared to facts, than to think that all of that stuff out there is essentially random and entirely outside our ability to influence.
use this if nessesary!
Date: 2007-02-04 10:15 am (UTC)Dont forget!
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Date: 2007-02-05 05:05 am (UTC)I think the actual explanation is that people find comfort in being relieved. People are right to be afraid; if the terrorists aren't out to get us, the weather is. It comforts people to have the idea that, if there's an emergency of some sort, chances are that nobody will be hurt, and people will be only moderately inconvenienced for a little while. In order for this to be at all plausible, trivial things have to be counted as emergencies.
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Date: 2007-02-21 03:03 am (UTC)cool eh?
#
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Date: 2007-03-07 10:21 am (UTC)