Fear and Power
How is it that the Bush administration can wield so much power? How is it that they can do what they do?
Amy Tan said this, "You see what power is - holding someone's fear in you hand and showing it to them."
As I interpret this, this means scaring someone so much that they will hand over control of their life to you on your promise that you will protect them. What you will tend to ignore is that the immediate source of your fear is the very person to whom you are abdicating your power. That is to say, it is not Osama Bin Laden who is the immediate source of our fear, it it George Bush saying that Bin Laden is a threat that is the source of our fear. George Bush then says that if we do what he says, he will, in return, protect us from the threat.
What George Bush will do for us is to vastly increase the authority of the Exectutive Branch of the government. This expansion includes increasing the size of the military and the reach and authroity of domestic law enforcement. But the military has never been successful in fighting gurellia wars in foreign lands, and domestic law enforcement has always been more committed to reaction than prevention.
It is certain that domestic law enforcement could prevent some terrorists from carrying out their plots. But it is also certain that without the help of other sources in the community, other terrorists will carry out their mission. And it is also certain that in spite of the best efforts of everyone, some terrorists will succeed.
If these are the facts, if this is a valid prediction, then being afraid, simply giving in to our fear will not make us safer.
In spite of what people usually say, there are three (not two) responses to fear -- they are, fight, flight and freeze. Fight and flight are the responses people tend to cite: a creature will attack the percieved threat or flee from it. But a third response, becoming quiet and immobile, is also a response to a percieved threat. We see the freeze response usually in programs about baby animals in the wild. The baby becomes quiet and immobile when threatened by a predetor; reasonably because it is too weak to plausibly fight the predetor and too small and slow to flee from it. The best infant can hope for is that by their stillness and quiet, the predetor will overlook them. This sometimes works.
Even outside the predetory context, in social groups, animals have similar responses to threat. "Threat" in the social context has to do with dominance and social position. Analogous responses within this context are competition, submission and withdrawal. Competition is the struggle for a place in the dominance heirarchy, submission of one party of the struggle to the other is the result of the struggle, and withdrawal is absenting oneself from claiming a place in the heirarchy entirely. Chimpanzees who have withdrawn from the heirarchy live on the outskirts of the group, stealthly taking what benefits they can from it, but otherwise trying not to draw attention to themselves. If they do attract the attention of the dominant males, the dominants will usually chase the other away.
To cut to the chase, the American response to the terrorists attacks of 2001 is to flee or freeze. They flee the the percieved threat by piling all responsibility for their protection on the military and law enforcement, or they attempt to build a wall about themselves that will protect them from all possible threats.
Amy Tan said this, "You see what power is - holding someone's fear in you hand and showing it to them."
As I interpret this, this means scaring someone so much that they will hand over control of their life to you on your promise that you will protect them. What you will tend to ignore is that the immediate source of your fear is the very person to whom you are abdicating your power. That is to say, it is not Osama Bin Laden who is the immediate source of our fear, it it George Bush saying that Bin Laden is a threat that is the source of our fear. George Bush then says that if we do what he says, he will, in return, protect us from the threat.
What George Bush will do for us is to vastly increase the authority of the Exectutive Branch of the government. This expansion includes increasing the size of the military and the reach and authroity of domestic law enforcement. But the military has never been successful in fighting gurellia wars in foreign lands, and domestic law enforcement has always been more committed to reaction than prevention.
It is certain that domestic law enforcement could prevent some terrorists from carrying out their plots. But it is also certain that without the help of other sources in the community, other terrorists will carry out their mission. And it is also certain that in spite of the best efforts of everyone, some terrorists will succeed.
If these are the facts, if this is a valid prediction, then being afraid, simply giving in to our fear will not make us safer.
In spite of what people usually say, there are three (not two) responses to fear -- they are, fight, flight and freeze. Fight and flight are the responses people tend to cite: a creature will attack the percieved threat or flee from it. But a third response, becoming quiet and immobile, is also a response to a percieved threat. We see the freeze response usually in programs about baby animals in the wild. The baby becomes quiet and immobile when threatened by a predetor; reasonably because it is too weak to plausibly fight the predetor and too small and slow to flee from it. The best infant can hope for is that by their stillness and quiet, the predetor will overlook them. This sometimes works.
Even outside the predetory context, in social groups, animals have similar responses to threat. "Threat" in the social context has to do with dominance and social position. Analogous responses within this context are competition, submission and withdrawal. Competition is the struggle for a place in the dominance heirarchy, submission of one party of the struggle to the other is the result of the struggle, and withdrawal is absenting oneself from claiming a place in the heirarchy entirely. Chimpanzees who have withdrawn from the heirarchy live on the outskirts of the group, stealthly taking what benefits they can from it, but otherwise trying not to draw attention to themselves. If they do attract the attention of the dominant males, the dominants will usually chase the other away.
To cut to the chase, the American response to the terrorists attacks of 2001 is to flee or freeze. They flee the the percieved threat by piling all responsibility for their protection on the military and law enforcement, or they attempt to build a wall about themselves that will protect them from all possible threats.
posted by Godel at 8:39 PM
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