The following essay was published in the Concord Monitor 2/18/15
 |
Wire protecting the perimeter:Danang Vietnam 1966
CC Jean Stimmell |
Psychological insights
into our culture of fear, love affair
with guns –& a modest proposal toward
a way forward
The Monitor recently featured a superb essay
by Jonathan Baird on how we as Americans have become enmeshed in a culture of
fear, spurred on by a “24/7 media spin cycle that thrives on sensationalism.”
He points out how this fear mongering has been toxic to our collective sense of
who we are as a people.
Fear in our
culture, in its current form, has been gathering strength since President Nixon
and Reagan ran for office on “law and order” platforms that exaggerated or,
even in some cases, manufactured fearful scenarios, while characterizing their
opponents as “weak” on the issue, in order to generate public support.
When the 9/11/01
attacks struck, this became a self-fulfilling prophecy: What did I tell you,
the world is a terribly dangerous place!
The Twin Towers
collapse also smashed our naïve belief that we are an exceptional people,
immune to such tragedy: it was only supposed to happen to other countries – not
us!
Then, rather
than being given space to grieve and heal, we were subjected to an endless loop
of rewinds – continuing to this day – of
the twin towers exploding and then collapsing with the attendant chaos and counting
the dead.
The end result
was extremely traumatic and not just to individuals. In fact, one can make a
good case that we were traumatized as a nation. The American Psychiatric
Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) tells us that
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) may result from “exposure to actual or
threatened death” followed by “experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to
aversive details of the traumatic event.”
Undisputedly,
America exhibits symptoms of PTSD post 9/11, as defined in the DSM-5: “recurrent
and intrusive memories of the event…persistent and exaggerated negative belief
about the world (e.g., “The world is completely dangerous)…persistent negative
emotional state (e.g., fear horror, anger)…angry outbursts (with little or not
provocation) typically expressed as verbal or physical aggression…reckless or
self-destructive behavior…hypervigilance,” paranoia, and the need to be
in control.
Psychologically,
as a result of the traumatized state of our nation, we feel an increased need
to be in control and protect ourselves; this in turn, has lead to more and more
citizens arming themselves with guns.
Baird points out
how counter productive this is: Despite the fact that the U.S. “has by far the
largest number of privately owned firearms in the developed world, we have more
gun-related killings than any other developed country.” He provides scientific
evidence that “a substantial number of murders, suicides and unintentional
firearm fatalities can be prevented with reasonable gun policies.
This rising
epidemic of gun ownership and increasing gun violence, Baird says, should be
considers a public health emergency. The problem is that a gun used against another
person, is extremely lethal compared to other forms of aggression.
A person can
kill another with a gun in a blink of eye. That is more problematic than most
people realize because we aren’t the rational beings we think we are. If placed under sufficient stress – which
varies person to person – we will react irrationally, falling prey to
primitive, instinctual forces.
If I am triggered by an immediate and
obvious threat (like a burglar in my home) or by a perceived threat (an ominous
looking dark shadow outside my door at night), my body automatically mobilizes.
At this point, my thinking is no longer driven by my rational neocortex but by
my primitive midbrain (as in “Me good, you bad!).
When an person’s
primal brain is triggered and gains control, it may take up to ten seconds for his
conscious self to be aware of what he is doing. For that first ten seconds, his
primal self “may
act, usually violently, on his or her impulses to the point that they may
attack until they themselves have been incapacitated or the source of their
rage has been destroyed.”1
In
that ten seconds, in a fit of rage, an individual with a handgun has ample time
to kill his beloved partner. However, if he only has his fists or a knife, his
rational brain will most likely regain control before the result becomes life threatening.
Therapy
with an emphasis on anger management can help prevent future occurrences.
Interestingly, people with PTSD can be prone to rage when triggered by a sudden
reminder of their original trauma, causing them to relive it through flashbacks
or intrusive thoughts.
That
brings us back to the argument I made at the beginning of this essay: that it
is not only possible for individuals to suffer PTSD but countries as well; and,
in fact, we as a nation were traumatized by 9/11. After an individual is
traumatized, it is important that calmer heads prevail and treatment started to
promote healing. So too it is with nations.
We
all remember how our nation responded to 9/11. Certainly, a robust response was
justified, but not an endless round of wars which continues to consume an
absurd amount of our national treasury, while promoting fevers of panic about
terrorism that has the effect of further traumatizing us.
This
staggering increase in our security apparatus on a collective level parallels
the increase in gun purchases at the individual level. The end result is a
frightening loss in our freedom as we become increasingly controlled,
surveilled, and militarized.
A
majority of Americans disapprove of the seemingly endless wars we have been
fighting at astronomical cost, along with the increasing restrictions on our
personal freedom at home, but acquiesce because they think we have no
choice. The good news is that we do have
a choice.
There
is an alternative and it works. We haven’t heard much about it from our
mainstream media and politicians who prosper short-term by fear-mongering and
crying wolf. The only caveat is having the courage and willpower to carry it
out because it flies in the face of business as usual.
The
case study I wish to present took place in Norway in 2011: in the worst
lone-wolf terrorist act in in modern history, a gunman murdered over 70 people,
most of them teenagers attending a youth camp.
Mathew
Harwood has written a terrific piece about what happened in the aftermath: “Norwegians, individually and en masse, chose not to panic or let their
world be altered by…[the gunman’s] horrific acts. They did not build a greater
counter-terror security structure; they did not change their laws or create
special terror legislation; they did not try…[the perpetrator] in some special
way; they did not even close their parliament and ring it with fortifications.
They were determined not to let…[terrorism] deprive them of the openness they
valued. They exhibited neither hysteria nor bloodlust. It was, in our world,
the bravest of collective acts, stunning in its restraint.” 2
On an individual level as well as the collective level, we must stand up
in a similar manner for our precious open democracy by confronting the fear
mongers who seek to inflame us for their own ends. Standing united, we must all
take a deep breath, regain rational control from our primal brain, and let the
healing begin.
XXX
Tagline: Jean
is not against having guns and hunting as the accompanying photo shows. And he
is not a pacifist. He spent 1-1/2 years in Vietnam in the navy, on the rivers
and along the coast. He is a semi-retired psychotherapist and blogs at:
jeanstimmell.blogspot.com
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1 DiGiuseppe & Tafrate., 2006.
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