[kochevnik]

I read this story yesterday : Link
and then this morning there was this : Link

And of course the fact that the THIRD anniversary of the Iraq Quagmire passed with only small demonstrations. I woke up in the middle of last night with one of those revelations - that these things were all related.

Since before the Iraq War started, I KNEW it was utter bulls***, I was one of the paltry 20 percent of Americans who felt so three years ago - yet even I am having a hard time dredging up much enthusiam for continually opposing an illegal war (now there's an oxymoron !).

I came to the conclusion that we are a nation of numb people, eager AS A NATION to kill anyone who (metaphorically) cuts us off on the freeway, or walks on our lawn. We're like the factory worker who can't stand up to his oppressive boss without losing his job, who gets on the freeway and goes insane with road rage (or takes it out on the neighbors) in compensation for being not allowed to attack the real source of his rage.

Why is this so ? I think there are myriad reasons for our repressed hostility, but probably a lot of it is a result of the increasing stultification of our lives and our nation as a whole. We are weak, and getting weaker by the minute. We 'elect' crooked politicians who along with corporate chieftains loot our country for their own personal gain, while at the same time passing ever more arcane, dysfunctional and repressive legislation (now estimated at 11 million pages for the feds alone) designed to crush our spirits on a daily basis.

Think for a second - when is the last time you can recall a law that was passed in line with the Constitution - supposedly the highest law in the land ? When was the last time American industry ( another oxymoron) provided jobs were designed to provide greater self-sufficiency for us as a nation and greater wages to us as workers. When was the last time you saw a small business flourish in this country instead of reading multiple headlines about small main streets collapsing as another corporate scumbag big box store crushes it's competition ?

Been a long, long time.

So as we watch things collapse around us, powerless to intervene, what do you think our primary emotions could be ? I would guess at the forefront, numb rage leads the pack. The rage is easy to understand, the numbness, perhaps a bit harder.

I remember in psych grad school reading about an experiment where two groups of rats were placed in cages with electrified floors designed to give periodic painful shocks to the occupants. In one cage the shocks were completely random, in the other, the rats could press a button to get the pain to stop. In the end both groups were give the same number of shocks of exactly the same duration, the difference being one group had some control in their lives, and the other did not.

The group with control continued to function as normal rats with no demostrable changes in their behaviors while the group with no control was reduced to a slobbering, depressed bunch huddled on the floors of their cages, with no interest in anything outside of when and how bad the next dose of pain would be.

In modern society we are the second group. We control almost nothing, and we are periodically forced to suffer shocks to our system at mostly random intervals. Between govt, business, and the 11 million pages of arcane technical legal statutes (which I would point out we are even powerless to to be allowed to interpret for ourselves without the 'help' of lawyers and judges - we are not only not permitted to follow the laws, we are not allowed to even understand them in the first place) we cower in rage and numbness.

Is it any wonder some of us snap like the two nuts above ? Is it any wonder that we have snapped as a nation many times over the last few decades, attacking other nations for the most trivial of infractions backed up by the most obvious of lies ?

Finally, consider extrapolating such behavior to a future of massive unemployment combined with a collapsing financial system. How long before you snap ? Or your neighbor ? Or your co-worker ?

Or the entire nation ?

[Rabid_aGnostic]

Geez...you may have hit upon something. Sadly.

EDIT: just my $.02 worth, but the decline in manufacturing/small biz destruction by MegaStore[sup]TM[/sup]/pending employment collapse is going to start affecting us before PO. I believe the destruction (or radical downsizing) of the "American Dream" will turn this country into a slobbering mess first; PO will just "finish the job".

[o2ny]

Good post... I believe our pent-up anger and rage could be evidenced by our reaction to 9/11. It reminds me of being on the playground when you see kids fighting- one kid hits another kid with a 'normal' type blow, and for whatever reason the kid who is punched just 'goes crazy'... the reaction doesn't match the 'action' because the kid who is punhced was carrying around some previous anger/sadness/stress etc. and being hit was a trigger. All the rage comes out. I see the US reaction to 9/11 as pretty much that type of 'over' reaction- wild flailing with no particular focus.

Yes the war in Iraq wound up being launched for completely different purposes than beating terrorists. But the American people were easily led to support the actions taken without much debate our discourse. So we wind up killing tens of thousands of Iraqi civillians to quench our blood-lust before we even realize what we're doing.

[AmericanEmpire]

Sad to say, it can only get worse. The deterioration of our society and peoples morals has been going on for quiet some time now. Its all gonna come to a head and erupt into something terrible.

I'm predicting people will go nuts when the US economy collapses.

Think about those fools that go into their former workplace and blow everyone away when they are laid off from the factory. Now multiply that by how horrible the unemployment will be post crash.

People are not happy with the things they have now. The majority of folks take our way of life for granted and expect everything to more or less be the same.

They want more, more, more. What do you think is gonna happen when they realize the pursuit of material wealth is over, and their life is gonna be about less, less, less.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AmericanEmpire', 'S')ad to say, it can only get worse. The deterioration of our society and peoples morals has been going on for quiet some time now. Its all gonna come to a head and erupt into something terrible.

[TheTurtle]

Both of the old guys were 66 ... hmmmm ... I begin to see a pattern here ....

[Jack]

I think your analysis is spot-on. Great post!

I don't suppose you'd happen to remember a few more details of the study you quoted, would you? I'd love to read the original, and I'd be willing to spend some library time looking it up....

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TheTurtle', 'B')oth of the old guys were 66 ... hmmmm ... I begin to see a pattern here .... )

[cleatisman]

Hmmm....sounds like a certain movie that came out in the early nineties. What was that movie? Oh...yeah, Falling Down with Michael Douglas. Question is, does anybody care anymore? A few movies and many editorials have pointed this out, old middle class white man with rage. Not that white men should be special, or given special status, just that this whole syndrome is another sign of breakdown of an American empire.

[pigleg]

I think its the anonymity we can't handle well, if its a small & tight community, you need to get along. The car is uniquely frustrating because there's no penalty for being rude as you like, and no advantage to playing by the rules. Ok, the lawn is a bit weird but it didn't sound like they really knew the neighbor well. And males often kill for seemingly minor slights, they say because loss of social status has been important for fitness, evolution-wise.

[kochevnik]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jack', 'I') think your analysis is spot-on. Great post!
I don't suppose you'd happen to remember a few more details of the study you quoted, would you? I'd love to read the original, and I'd be willing to spend some library time looking it up....

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kochevnik', ' ')The first dog was simply put in the harness for a period of time and later released. The second dog was put in the harness, and given electric shocks, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. The third dog was wired in parallel with the second dog, receiving shocks of identical intensity and duration, but his lever didn't do anything. The first and second dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but the third dog learned to be helpless, and suffered chronic symptoms of clinical depression.

Psychology - understanding both yourself and those around you plays a HUGE role in survival.

[TheTurtle]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'T')homas Pynchon wrote about people who conduct cruel experiments on dogs in Gravity's Rainbow. A strange mindset, strange people that would do these things. They quantify despair.

[lateStarter]

I'm with PMs on this one! I know this has been going on for a long time. The results are both interesting and disturbing.. Can't we just extrapolate from thousands of years of human behavior and come to the same conclusion? And wouldn't that me more relevant anyway than concluding that because lower life forms behave a certain way that humans would do the same? It makes me wonder sometimes which is really the lower life form... And how do these 'observations' really help anyone?

[Specop_007]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kochevnik', 'T')hink for a second - when is the last time you can recall a law that was passed in line with the Constitution - supposedly the highest law in the land ? When was the last time American industry ( another oxymoron) provided jobs were designed to provide greater self-sufficiency for us as a nation and greater wages to us as workers. When was the last time you saw a small business flourish in this country instead of reading multiple headlines about small main streets collapsing as another corporate scumbag big box store crushes it's competition ?