In my previous
diary, I discussed the article
How to Get Out Alive describing how people react in disasters and what that means for their chances of survival. It struck me that how people react to extreme danger on an individual level may also have relevance to how they react as a nation.
Right now a significant number of Americans seem frozen into inaction in the face of sudden and extreme threats to our democracy. This seems to include many people who should know better including journalists, politicians, and government officials. Obviously some have deep motivation to turn a blind eye to the damage being done to our country, but perhaps others refuse to act for no better reason than that they don't function well in emergency mode.
If we think about things from this different angle, perhaps we can come up with some new strategies to wake up the country from its trance and evacuate it off the plane before George has a chance to crash it.
More below.
First of all, here's a summary of the findings reported in the article:
- When faced with disaster, most people do not respond by fighting or fleeing. Their first response is to disbelieve.
- To overcome this stage of disbelief, people seek advice from others nearby, especially people they trust.
- Even when disbelief has been overcome, most people do not flee, they FREEZE.
- This sort of "trance" reaction is surprisingly common. In one study, 45% of people "shut down," when asked under pressure to perform unfamiliar but basic tasks. Unfortunately, this inability to act can mean the difference between life and death.
- People are more likely to act if they have previous experience with disaster or are properly informed.
- People can escape their "trances" if helped by others -- either by being told what to do or by being helped to act.
I'd like to tackle each of this points in turn, see how they may apply to the current political situation, and offer suggestions as to where to go from here.
When faced with disaster, most people do not respond by fighting or fleeing. Their first response is to disbelieve.
This country has been battered by two remarkable, and more importantly, unprecedented upheavals in the past five years -- the 9/11 attacks and the spectacular rise to power of George W. Bush and the neocons as a result of two questionable elections. I'm not going to rehash events of which we are all lamentably aware. I just want to make the point that America experienced not one but two shocks to the system in a relatively short period of time. One unfortunately re-enforced the other, much as two unremarkable patterns of motion may occasionally add together to cause the catastrophic collapse of a bridge.
So it is perhaps not surprising that many Americans are still in a state of denial, not of the first event, which is undeniable and burned into our collective psyches, but that the rise of the neocons may prove an even greater catastrophe for our country when the hindsight of history provides us with clearer vision.
Still, what can be done to convince fellow Americans that the neocon agenda is actually as grave a threat to our democracy and the peace of the world as we suspect it to be? I think the beginning of an answer lies in our second point.
To overcome this stage of disbelief, people seek advice from others nearby, especially people they trust.
So at first blush the answer seems simple. If we want to persuade people that there is a threat, we simply convince them that they can trust us, and then tell them the facts of the situation. That's a lot of what was attempted during the election, but whoever you think truly won in November, it is clear that a significant number of Americans didn't buy the message. They were not moved out of their disbelief, despite overwhelming factual evidence to the contrary. Why? Let's look a little closer.
Note that it says that people seek advice from others nearby. It doesn't say how people react if the advice isn't sought. If someone comes up to you and yells that there's a fire, are you as likely to listen as if you've already smelled the smoke? People have to have some concrete signs of trouble before they are willing to accept something's wrong. In 2004, we had plenty of signs to pick from, but perhaps we didn't do a good enough job making the alarm bells concrete enough and personal enough to matter.
Which brings us to the second point. Those faced with catastrophe seek advice from someone nearby, preferably someone they trust. This seems to reenforce Dean's strategy to emphasize the local. It's a lot easier to believe the sky is falling if your neighbor tells you it is than if a stranger does.
But a great deal of our current problem can stem over the question of who people trust to tell them the truth. Is it their family, their pastor, their friends, their news sources? In the article, it mentioned that many people require four or five confirmations from trusted advisers before they accept that a crisis is real. If your family sees no problem with Bush, and neither do your friends, your pastor or your trusted news sources, it is perhaps not surprising that you will not see a problem either. In fact, this search for multiple sources can be a boon, but it also points out that when there are multiple voices and multiple viewpoints, if one voice holds that there's a problem and the rest say there's not, it is entirely understandable that that one voice can get drowned out.
Similarly, if people have a sense that something is wrong (as I think many Americans do), those multiple voices can also mischaracterize or even misidentify the threat. Someone could sense something was seriously wrong in the country, but mistakenly be convinced that the threat comes from Muslims, judges, Democrats, Saddam Hussein, ____ (fill in the blank).
So what do we do to provide that truthful advice? I think we think globally, but act locally. We focus on small, concrete alarms (why can't you afford healthcare? how are you going to retire with reduced social security? why can't we secure our ports? why are they cutting police? why don't the troops have armor? why is the economy so bad? why are churches kicking people out because of how they voted?) and we earn trust. We exert as much persuasive influence on those we are closest too -- our local media, our churches, our coworkers, our neighbors -- hoping that the message will radiate outward and intesect with other waves of truth. Eventually, the disbelief will fade. In truth, little by little, I think it is beginning to already.
Even when disbelief has been overcome, most people do not flee, they FREEZE.
Once we have persuaded people that there is a problem, however, it is not necessarily a given that people will act. Depending on how overwhelming they find the news, there is a strong possibility that the very haranguing we have done to convince people that the sky is falling may either lead them to despair or freeze them into inaction. Somehow we have to walk the delicate tightrope between sounding an alarm and triggering such a sense of doom and despair that noone acts and nothing changes. During the election, Republicans dismissed Dean as too angry and too alarmist. Yet what drew people to be such fervent supporters was that he actually gave people the feeling that they had the power to effect change. He assured them that they had the means and ability to help the country reverse course and escape catastrophe.
So how do we do give the rest of America this feeling? I think we start by making our suggested acts concrete, simple, and meaningful to those involved. We also need to give people the sense that they are not alone -- that there are others standing toe to toe with them ready to face down disaster and help the country survive.
People are more likely to act if they have previous experience with disaster or are properly informed.
I don't think it's a coincidence that several of the church members that were kicked out of their church in N.C. were in their 70's. Older Americans and those who have had experience with previous political upheavals in this country are more likely to have had experiences that make them alert to the hazardous road we're starting down. Those who remember Watergate understand abuses of power. Those who experienced Vietnam understand the dangers of fighting a war of insurgency. Those who are knowledgeable of the McCarthy era can see the parallels to today's fundamentalist litmus test. Those who remember World War II understand the dangers of fascism and the cult of personality. We must utilize this generational knowledge by encouraging those who remember to tell their stories and to share their learned lessons with the rest of us.
Finally, people can escape their "trances" if helped by others -- either by being told what to do or by being helped to act.
The neocons are in the business of telling people what to do. Their response to 9/11 is to claim ascendancy for their agenda and the right to tell people to "stay the course" as the ship of state heads for the icebergs. We have to speak up and make sure our voices are heard as we help others to act: to escape their trance and begin taking their country back before it is too late.