From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Wed Feb 26 2003 - 20:02:55 MST
I'm going to do something that is perhaps ill advised, and take this post at
face value...
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Steve writes
>
> > Amara [wrote]
> >
> > > Apparently, I'm not 'getting the message' that many of you are
> > > getting, because I find myself more and more frustrated and sad to
> > > see people's obsession with fearful thoughts. This is
> *your life*.
> > > Do you really want to spend it this way?
> > >
> > > I won't change my life for the latest government / media report of
> > > the scare-of-the-week, because it looks like more Paranoia-Ville.
> > > and I refuse to buy into that.
> >
> > I can't express how strongly I agree with this. Like Amara
> I am both amazed
> > and disturbed by the obsession so many people have with an
> unattainable
> > ideal of "safety", to the point that they are prepared to sacrifice
> > everything else to it.
>
> I am frankly bewildered by this. Am I not watching enough television
> or something? The people at work and on this list seem rather normal,
> and I'm not hearing of untoward incidents in the Bay Area (that is,
> California). I did hear one report of a guy back east who wrapped
> his entire house in plastic, but I thought that this was an
> aberration.
I think both Steve and Amara are talking about a more general propensity in
people toward letting fear dominate their thinking, and thus behaviour.
They're not talking specifically about mad survivalism.
The problem is with a general trend toward a focus on safety and security,
rising from fear, in the west. It comes out in all kinds of funny little
ways, like people buying really big stupid cars (because they feel safer),
or people deciding they need guns under their pillows, or even people taking
a boring but career oriented job instead of doing what they really want to
do with their lives.
It also comes out in more sinister ways. Our government (here I might
restrict myself to talking about Australia, but much of it applies to the
US) absolutely preys on the fears of middle australia, and has done since it
came into office (a lot of years ago, help me google!).
A very specific example to Australia is the ongoing public illegal immigrant
freakout that has occured here particularly in the last few years. Our
government (specifically federal, most specifically the PM) has gone to
extraordinary lengths to make us fearful of illegal immigrants turning up
here in massive numbers (in boats! sheesh) and swamping us or eating all our
hamburgers or something (it was never clear what the terrible consequences
would be I think). And people lapped it up. So what do we have as a result?
Concentration camps full of "illegals" (if you ask the govt) or
"refugees"(if you ask the people themselves), locked up for years as if they
were criminals. Turning away unseaworthy vessels from our waters (with at
least one mass drowning as a result). Internment of refugees on little
islands in the specific (Nauru? wtf?) in the middle of the specific, away
from nosy media (poor buggers).
We have been soundly critisized for these practices, and rightly so imo, by
many humanitarian groups, including the UN (a human rights bit of the UN?).
Other examples include the early demonisation of youth in Australia by our
current government, with many media reports of home invasions, lots of focus
of lazy dole bludging young people, etc. The result? Massive reduction in
social services for young people from the government, including effective
dismantlement of welfare for people under 23 (25?), and an increase in fear
among middle australia.
And now, we've had the growing example of the mother of all scare campaigns,
beginning just after September 11 and continuing, with increased frenzy, at
the present moment. The War of Terror is a war on a concept. "Terror" is a
difficult enemy to pin down, but it scares the willies out of simple folk
(seemingly about 80% of the population). Now we're about to go to war with
Iraq, which I wont go into here, suffice it to say that the fear tactics
being used by the government are constant, and fairly unsubtle. There is a
campaign asking us to look out for terrorists in our midst, and report on
them to the government, with the slogan "Be alert, not alarmed" (which
invokes thought processes like "Not alarmed? Why? Is there something I might
be alarmed about? Is it really that bad? Oh shit!").
The result of these things combined, in this country, is a slow cultural
change, away from what has been a relatively open, accepting, friendly kind
of place (with its quirks, admittedly), and toward a fearful, closed,
suspicious mentality that results in us doing things as a nation that most
of us would be horrified to be personally involved with (like turning away
or incarcerating refugees, like putting young people on the streets, like
seriously considering attacking countries on the other side of the world
just in case). We have moved from a high trust society in the direction of a
low trust society.
> > [The] powerful feed and stimulate panic and paranoia. They
> at least have
> > ascribable motives but why has this mania got such a hold
> on the general
> > public, particularly (I have to say) in Anglo-Saxon countries?
>
> What mania is this? People seem about as unconcerned as all during
> the sixties when the chances of personal injury (due to atomic war)
> were actually much greater. Yes, starting in the eighties, there
> was a certain amount of "panic", but mostly in intellectual circles,
> about the nuclear overkill, nuclear winter, and so on, and that has
> indeed been replaced by worries about global warming, genetically
> modified foods, alien abductions and so on; but the people who I
> know that are worried about the latter seem to be affected in only
> a superficial matter---almost as though some part of them regarded
> it merely as entertainment. In short, they didn't exhibit real
> symptoms of worry and anxiety.
The mania in question is an obsession with personal safety. More
insidiously, it is a negative obsession with the self which goes beyond the
rational into nasty, low trust thoughts and behaviour. I say its insidious,
because it is the unspoken motivator behind all the little collective
"defector" actions that end up making our social environment very much
degraded and dangerous for us all.
Very importantly, I must here assert that I am indeed a transhumanist, and
an individualist. I have come to the position over many years that
individualism is an important conerstone of the future that I'd like to be a
part of. So I do believe in a focus on the individual, in a decentralised
approach to decentralised problems, in favouring innovation and
experimentation over supposed safety and control.
However, I do believe that the individual focus encouraged by our government
is an extremely negative one, because the context in which it is placed is
that of central control. We are encouraged to fear for our security, our
material positions, and our social status (ye gods!). The kicker is that the
solution to our ills is in oppressive centralised controls - incarceration,
increased police powers, increased surveillance, increased military action,
increased censorship. In short, the solution to our fears about personal
safety is to relinquish our personal freedoms to the central authority.
This slow creep toward what can only be thought of as democratic
totalitarianism also seems evident in the US, and I think it is a shared
problem. Indeed, the current generation of our governing party has always
modelled the US in its policies (they just aren't very creative).
Hopefully it makes sense when I say that I think this trend to low trust,
fearful, self serving behaviour is only superficially individualistic; it is
when analysed more closely an extremely successful tactic employed by the
worst kind of central authoritarians. Extropianism in particular, founded on
dynamic optimism (remember dynamic optimism??) should recoil in horror
(though not in fear :-) ) from regressive modern social trends.
Transhumanism and extropianism comprise a vision of a vastly different
different world from what is being created today by our politicians. For me,
this is the heart of why I get so riled up about this war on Iraq, as a
specific example; its because I see it as a really nasty symptom of the
underlying problem. This really taxes my dynamic optimism, I must tell you!
> > I find myself more and more frustrated and sad to
> > see people's obsession with fearful thoughts.
>
> If I were to speculate, I might wonder if some of us are more
> sensitive
> than others, and if that were somehow at the base of it. But
> I'm quite
> willing to entertain any kind of explanation, so bemused am I.
>
> I haven't noticed whatever it is Amara and Steve are talking about,
> unless we've got a communication problem/misunderstanding at work.
>
> Lee
>
This is my alternative explanation... some of us disagree fundamentally with
the defacto idealogy of the modern west, that being a culture of fear and a
negative individual obsession with unachievable personal goals like (total)
safety and security. We disagree with these because they run counter to the
fundamentals of true individualistic philosophies, transhumanism in
particular. I was utterly stunned when, post Sept 11, many people who had
formerly been raving libertarians, became raving statists and warmongers.
Preposterous! How can you reconcile an ideology of individualism, optimism,
and freedom, with networks of civilian spies, massive military mobilisation,
and the general and ongoing degradation of freedoms that have come in the
ensuing years?
I've been accused of being a socialist on this list enough times over the
years that I can't quite grok the fact that I even have to post this.
Remember who we are.
Emlyn
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