The Daddy State and its Enemy h/t maccabee

Well, I just quit banging the keyboard for part of a book I'm co-authoring. I quit because after 6 hours my brain was wandering and I was off-track. Long story short, I hop over to Kos and see maccabee's excellent Leash that slowly lightens. Wow. Again, wow. Excellent, Maccabee, and vuja-de-ish.

Why did I quit banging the keyboard? Cuz, while I should have been writing about Moonshots & Tsunamis and brain-stuff, I'd veered into spewing this Dystopian Disneyland: jump

Take what we've just covered and now try a practical exmample. Use the template of behaviours from that ever-twitchy R-Complex, and cross-reference. Try it on a very current and Visceral example: What many progressives and more and more conservatives are calling the repression of freedom and the emergence of the Daddy State, in post 9-11 America.

With the corralling of individuals into pre-screened experiences and over-protected environments, we can expect blow-back.

Look for the fetishization of risk and an increase in lower-grade lawlessness on, say, the higways.

Watch for the ways in which our brains will rebel against containment, probably with some very nasty manifestations. We will assert our individuality and "control" over our lives is some counterproductive but meaningful--subconsciously very meaningful--ways. The only ways we can: locally, immediately, furtively; on our jobs and in our homes.

Watch business productivity and quality levels take incremental and increasing hits in close parallel to the measures enacted to "assure social continuity."

Increases in alchohol consumption in previously off-limits or unacceptable circumstances, possibly at work. Expect the martini-lunch to reappear.

Add to that the requisite jump in alcoholism and related incidents.

Domestic disputes and violence will increase in proportion to the mandated outward civic orderlyness.

Expect increased discipline problems in education to spike further.

In an environment where too many "safety" choices are pre-ordained, our R-Complexes will wind themselves up and exert their understanding and desire. The result will be a reverse of the Fixing Broken Windows Theory of Law Enforcement (http://en.wikipedia.org/...).

On the exterior, things will be well-policed, neat and painfully sterile. Within the institutions of our Culture, however, the walls will be cracking and the curtains in flames.

This isn't really speculation. Much as we covered the cyclic ratcheting-up of sexual desire and covering of the objects of desire, we've just described the effects of Sharia Law in certain Islamic states. The ones with satellite dishes, Mercedes', cell phones and CD players. (Yes, even the alcohol part--another convenient myth, this time, for Muslims.)

And I've just described the Soviet Union, circa 1986.

But it keeps going.

Finally, with the mythology of the "protestant ethic" still in large sway, expect to see massive information campaigns on the order of WWII bond drives and propoganda efforts. These will probably make "this is your brain on Drugs" advertisements seem quaint. The newer ads won't work either. (Television comedian Bill Maher recently got quite a laugh on his HBO show, Real Time, by quoting a 2006 study: Americans 50+ are actually increasing their incidence of drug use.)

The result of the failures of these PR measures against an ignored and misunderestimated, hidden and recalcitrant enemy, our Brain and it's hard-wiring, will be an all-out assault. At this point, our faith in technology will push a narrow, concerned (and equally debauched by this point) Elite to mandate "Pre-monitoring", the placement in private homes of devices to "maintain and promote healthy domestic environments."

Of course, we'll be told to "Think of the children," and the vital need to "preserve and protect the American family and way of life" will as usual be he clarion call and somber justification.  

The irony of those words, and of the long train of moves and misperceptions that led to them being said, will be lost on no-one. That is, no-one except those doing the "preserving and protecting."

Those are the hypothetical but very predictable possibilities of an R-Complex pushed against the wall. Each, perfectly plain and symmetrical in its motivations and response, despite their obviously disastrous effects. Two equal and opposite, but intimately related reactions to the failure of one simple missed opportunity: mustering the sense and character to realize our irrationality and how it refracts our situational awareness. How it shackles our ability with those obsolete, narrowly aimed but still very active OODA loops.

As Geoff Price observes, albeit in less emotionally freighted terms,

As humans began engaging in increasingly complex behaviors, such as tool making, the benefit of strict imitation increased. With complex behaviors it became increasingly difficult to determine the intent of behaviors and difficult determine which behavior were necessary and which ones weren't.

As a result, those individuals who imitated others were able to learn more new techniques and be more successful.

This learning mechanism created a problem though, because humans began simply associating actions with outcomes instead of understanding cause and effect relationships. This mechanism is likely to be largely responsible for the development of superstition in humans beings.

And another term for superstition is flawed ideology, the modern weapon of our old-as-rocks Reptilian Brain.