Text message received from UCI’s text alert system
I just got these messages on my cellphone from UCI’s text alert system, just like everyone else enrolled at or otherwise affiliated with the university.
January 20th 2008, 20:48
6:30PM ARMED ROBBERY IN 4069 MESA CT 2 MALE ASIAN SUSPECTS 18-20 5’7’’ TO 5’9’’ W/BANDANAS, 1 W/BLK HANDGUN, FLED SCENE W/DUFFLE BAG STAY INSIDE LOCK DOORS
January 20th 2008, 23:37
*zotAlert* Update on armed robbery – no signs of suspects on campus, but appr. safety measures should be taken. If you have any info call UCIPD at 949-824-5223
“Especially for you, Mr. Gore: From my cold, dead hands!” Charlton Heston, then president of the National Rifles Association, arguably the institutional epitome of a culture of fear at the 129th convention at Charlotte, NC, shortly after the Columbine High School massacre. Longer, high quality version of the speech can be found here.
The question is, whether given our limited political attention span and conversely, the limited responsiveness of our political system, as well as our limited material resources, we are getting the most of it, when we let ourselves be guided by what we are afraid of. Again, I am not suggesting we should not try to build safe campus communities, be tough on national security or protect our children from abuse. These are all important issues, that require careful policy making and the allocation of substantial resources.
As so often in politics, we need to think in terms of opportunity costs. What are we getting for the costs incurred by the installation and maintenance of UCI’s text messaging alert system? What are the chances that this text message, usually sent with a substantial delay, will really make anyone safer? What else could we be doing for the community with that money and attention? Maybe that would allow us to really make our campuses better, not just safer places.
And what about that roadside information system, alerting drivers-by of recently abducted children – what are the chances this is going to safe a child, compared to the opportunities of putting the millions it costs to set up this infrastructure into our kindergartens, families and schools to make our children strong and into our prisons to allow meaningful reform and rehabilitation?
A map of convicted sex offenders in the UC Irvine neighborhood, provided by Family Watchdog.
But criticizing a culture and politics of fear demands more than just submitting our policies to a simple cost/benefit analysis. We have to ask ourselves what kind of representation of our social and political world we subscribe to, when we let fear cloud our vision and thinking. The politics and culture of fear in our societies are more than just a peculiar misbalance between costs and benefits of associated policies. They follow a highly dysfunctional dynamic, one which we need to understand and deconstruct. The politics and culture of fear deform our political discourse, provide veritable incentives to actors, who play along and play it well, and are, conversely reinforced and reconstituted by those actors.
US Homeland Security threat level indicators, displayed on airports, federal buildings, motorways ... .
Again, and I cannot say this with enough emphasis, I do not at all mean to belittle the suffering of victims of crime. But we have to ask ourselves what representation of reality we let, for example, UCI’s text alert system create in our minds. I cannot help it, but feel a sense of alertness, threat and, well, fear, when I read about the armed robbery that happened a few hundred feet from my home, just two hours ago.
But should I really let these feelings determine how I think of my surroundings here at UCI? Clearly, the answer is no. Not only does this disconcerting message bear very discomforting dangers of racial stereotyping (as so often, when it comes to feelings of fear), the sense of fear it so easily creates in the recipient’s mind is also a highly distorted presentation of reality. UC Irvine, luckily, and surely thanks to a very proactive campus safety regiment, is a very safe campus, and may just be one of the safest areas in one of the safest counties (OC) in all of the United States.
One the most abhorrent crimes that does plague this community, (attempted) rape, of which, according to some statistics, one in four college women are victims, cannot be prevented by a text alert system. “College rape”, like so many other acts of crime and violence, happen not out in the open, committed by the proverbial (often racially defined) stranger jumping out from the scrubs. Sexual abuse, for the most part, happens between acquaintances, friends or even lovers. We can best prevent it by making our communities and students stronger, by fostering mutual caring and respect and by fighting the dysfunctional attitudes to sexuality and the abusive relationships around us. UCI’s “One in Four” chapter is one such initiative, which is committed to this cause and which I admire very much for the work they are doing.
And yet, just a couple of days ago, I met with one of my students, who told me how she did not feel safe enough anymore to cycle to and from school, but is now taking the car and working out in the gym, as if indeed, as text alert suggests, danger would be a stranger, lurking in the dark.
We cannot neglect the effects that these ever-present messages of threat will have on our collective representation of reality. Whether it is the fivefold threat level indicators of the homeland security advisory system at the airport, the readily available (and, to my mind, morally and legally very problematic) maps of sex offenders in our neighborhood, the flashing message about an abducted child on our morning commute or the NRA promoting firearm ownership as a civic duty of self-protection, these cues will be consequential for how we view the world we live in and for the political decisions we make.
This distorted, fear-ridden view of reality is of course, chiefly promoted in local cable news, featuring life coverage of police chases, and a selection of only the most bizarre and abhorrent sex and crime “stories” from your local neighborhood and the nation. But even the mainstream, supposedly higher quality media, such as the “first-name-in-news” CNN is participating in this reality distortion project, such as in its evening newscast “Situation Room”, where host Wolf Blitzer guides viewers through a kaleidoscope of always current, and often breaking news, accompanied by simultaneous live (?) video feeds on eight flat-panel displays.
“I am Wolf Blitzer, and you are in the Situation Room”.
Opening to CNN’s Situation Room, anchored by Wolf Blitzer.
What is it, that gets us to buy into this reality warp of ever-present fear in public discourse and policy and, more abstractly, cult of fierce urgency, the “if it bleeds, it leads”, the “new and now” mantra of mainstream media? For once, we are conditioned to respond to threatening cues, and that, in itself, is a very healthy response. It gets problematic only because we are being overloaded with carefully crafted, often visually or narratively dramatized, fundamentally distorted cues. And of course, fear, drama and urgency are entertaining; we like and believe it, because “we’ve seen this movie before” (Gabler 2001).
This of course, nicely ties in with the arguments of policy makers and activists (“people want to be protected”) and media producers (“people want to be entertained”) engaged in the politics and culture of fear and urgency. We need to move beyond these seemingly hermetic justifications of a deeply dysfunctional system.
First of all, social and political reality is not a melodrama, happening exclusively (or even majorly) through fundamentally inexplicable “breaking news”. Politics and history do not spontaneously unfold in CNN’s Situation Room, they are determined, often in the long run, through motivated actions of individuals, shaped and structured through institutions. For a functional public discourse, we need our media to render intelligible events and long-term trends as embedded, causal processes, thereby enabling a fundamentally enlightened perspective: that the social and political world in which we live is shaped, and thereby can be changed by human will.
Secondly, we have to recognize the politics and culture of fear as what it is; a profoundly impoverished view on social and political progress as the reduction or absence of threats (something that, of course, we never will be able to achieve). Social and political agendas in this spirit are thereby negatively defined, in terms of what we do not want and what we fear rather then in positive terms of what we want and wish to be.
Thirdly, we have to expose the politics and culture of fear and urgency as an hegemonic construct that serves the material interests of those who wish to maintain the status quo.
A cult of urgency and breaking news, for once, effectively depresses our ability to think of change as something that we can affect as participants, rather as stories that we can ABC-“eye-witness” unfold as CNN-Situation Room-spectators.
The culture and politics of fear support the status quo, by promoting a negatively defined view on progress, instituting an essentially neoliberal (in the economic sense), minimalist perspective on the role of the state as limited to providing the institutions for a perfect market (property rights, basic infrastructure) and concentrating on the absence of disruptions and externalities (such as crime). In that way, social and political agendas responsive to the culture and politics of fear can effectively suppress more fundamentally progressive perspectives.
To overcome its inertia and impoverishment, we therefore need to complement and challenge the politics and culture of fear and urgency through positively defined agendas, that address the constraints (and, yes, threats) of the real world, but focus on opportunities for empowerment, progress and positive development that lie ahead.
After all, as presidential candidate Barack Obama recently said, “America [- like any other country - ] is at it’s best not when it’s fearful” (Town Hall Meeting in Ohio, March 04 2008).
Max, you’re just amazing. I agree with each and every word. tell me more about the “One in Four” initiative!
I see interesting phone conversations coming up!
I’m sure you will be interested in the forthcoming publications (unfortunately in 2009 only..) of one of my professors …
The Geopolitics of Emotion
Dominique Moisi
Verlag: Random House Uk Ltd
Voraussichtlich lieferbar Januar 2009
ISBN: 0224082094
In the first book to explore the emotional impact of globalization, a leading authority on international affairs provides a new way of understanding and dealing with the complexities of world relations now and in the future. Europe and the United States are dominated by a fear of the ‘other’ and of the loss of their national identity and purpose. For Muslims and Arabs, the combination of historical grievances, civil and religious warfare extending from their homelands to the Muslim diaspora is quickly devolving into a culture of hatred. As the West and the Muslim world lock horns, Asia, able to concentrate on building a better future, has become ‘the culture of hope’. By understanding the driving emotions behind our cultural differences, The Geopolitics of Emotion offers a better understanding of the world we live in and perhaps a more peaceful solution to the ignorance and differences that plague us
here’s a summary article of his arguments in Foreign Affairs: Dominique Moïsi, The Clash of Emotions, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101facomment86102/dominique-mo-si/the-clash-of-emotions.html
cheers and hugs,
Anja
Hi Max,
brilliant article! I couldn’t be more impressed
The only detail that irritated me was your presentation of the “one in four” statistics. The fact that attempted rapes are included in this statistic shouldn’t be neglected. If 25 % of all college women were actual “rape survivors”, that would be outrageous. And, consequently, American women would actually be right to consider staying at home and not studying at all, as the risk of a serious emotional damage due to rape during your time at college would be too high. Reading this passage for the first time actually scared me, which was probably not in your interest.
Anyway, the initiative itself is a great thing, especially as it doesn’t treat men as insensitive, emotionally retarded cavemen, which sadly is the case quite often.
And thanks again for this eye-opening article, I hope many of the students at OC get to read it, there seems to be a need to put some things into perspective.
Hey Henrike, thanks for your comment and for pointing out that glitch concerning the 1 in 4 statistic. I fixed that. I guess as all statistics, this one can be questioned – apparently what is measured is the percentage of college women who have ever in their lives been coerced to or attempted to be coerced into sex. Either way; the statistic is in fact quite scary and gruesome.
And yes, the men’s program of the 1 in 4 initiative is great!
Thanks so much, Max.
Talking about this issue with Henrike yesterday on Skype, I just wanted to add to this that of course, despite my choice of examples, the culture and politics of fear is not something essentially American, but something that is probably plaguing many societies, and certainly – albeit to an arguably lower extend – Germany. The conservative Hessian prime minister Roland Koch’ recent attempt to bank on the fear of voters by making “young, criminal foreigners” an issue in his election campaign is just one example
While I am still planning on writing something useful here, this will have to make do in the meantime
Max, you seriously need to watch this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993807/
Not only for the “sueing the Democratic Party” storyline but also for the extremely silly guest character appearance of “Wolfgang Blitzkrieg”.
Control of the masses by fear.
Manchurian candidates create it.
Satanist direct it.
This the new world order proclaimed from the White House.
I disagree with batguano101’s previous comment for two reasons:
First of all, while I would agree that there is such a thing as an agency behind the culture of fear, individuals and institutions who may, for material or other reasons promote and benefit from such a culture, it is primarily a mindset, a way of misconstruing reality that we all may or may not subscribe too. The culture of fear and urgency is not something that is imposed on me from “above” (let alone the White House), it is something that I and all the other voters and viewers create and sustain. The picture is a lot more complicated than the staple White House conspiracy theory (a genre, which, ironically does little to empower voters and viewers draw their attention to positive change).
Secondly, I do not think invoking the concept of “Satan” will ever do us any good, and certainly not in this context. Empirically, as I said in the above, there is not one, monolithic actor who creates this culture of fear. From a political point of view, fighting a culture of fear and urgency by invoking another (the other, in fact) quintessentially evil is illogical and bound to fail.
I we are to overcome a politics paralyzed in fear and the urgency of the news cycle, we have to resist the temptation of creating new, dangerous simplifications. Rather, we will only be able to focus our political process on opportunities for empowerment, progress and positive development if we take the more difficult route: through thorough analysis, nuanced criticism and ceaseless, but respectful engaging of one another.
While I was, and still am outraged by our politics being hijacked by entrepreneurs (and viewers, too) of fear and urgency, I do hope that in my above article on this matter I did not simplify the issue too much. I certainly do not want to help create yet new demons
Batguano101 has submitted another comment, further elaborating on his “satanist” conspiracy thesis.
I have rejected the new comment.
As I wrote earlier, I don’t want to contribute any new demonizing or over-simplification, in whatever disguise it comes. There will be no place for such comments here.
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