From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Feb 26 2003 - 21:42:45 MST
Emlyn writes
> I'm going to do something that is perhaps ill advised, and take this post at
> face value...
>
> Lee Corbin wrote:
Why, I do thank you, Emlyn. It is definitely a step in the right
direction to take my posts at face value.
> 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.
Okay, thanks. This is perhaps something that quite a few of
us do agree on, after all, even though we approach it differently
and attend to different symptoms. In my view, obsession with
safety surely must have always characterized some subset of the
bell curve, and the very recent exhibitions of it---at a time
when truly we as individuals face fewer risks than ever before
---is simply caused by people not having enough ordinary things
to worry about. My mother is perfect example. She'll find
something to worry about, up to a level, as if meeting an
internal need.
> 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.
You see, I look at exactly the other side of the coin. To
some extent I have been guilty of all these examples you
posit. Take cars, for example. After I became a cryonicist,
I become somewhat more cautious---but not to the degree that
many cryonicists do. I began, for another example, to begin
wearing my seat belt. Who can really say with any authority
which risks are worth taking and which are not?
What we can do is observe general tendencies.
The remainder of your examples are more typical of those
people of your ideological persuasion, whereas, were I
to detail them, my examples might typify mine.
To take just one,
> 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...
Perhaps you meant "War on Terror?". No matter. From
the perspective opposite to yours, there are these
people (who we call "terrorists") who crash planes
into buildings, blow up ships, and would probably love
to detonate an A-bomb in one of our Western cities.
A lot of other people naturally resent this a great
deal, and even hate them. Sounds natural and predictable
to me.
> 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!").
True. But I'm not convinced that this has made people
be much more fearful than they would anyway. The day
after 9-11, children (obviously studying how their parents
were taking this in) would ask, "Are we going to die?".
People overreact to tragedy due to innumeracy, at least
in the sense that too many really believe they're next.
Perhaps this is part of what Amara and Steve were criticizing.
(Many other thoughtful points elided.)
> This is my alternative explanation... some of us disagree fundamentally with
> the defacto ideology of the modern west, that being a culture of fear and a
> negative individual obsession with unachievable personal goals like (total)
> safety and security.
I had the above explanation for the focus on total safety:
in a word, because we've never had it so good. But I would
characterize the "defacto ideology" of the modern west as
an emphasis on individual benefit, a respect for property
(to the rejection of community ownership), and towards
secularism. "Culture of fear"? When did that start,
would you say? 1920? 1960? 1700?
Thanks for your thoughtful and courteous post.
Lee
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