Learned helplessness

Current Editorials: Thanksgiving wishes...
Posted by worried Aurelia Westlake on Nov. 29, 2002

[...]  Now, the people are almost resigned. Apathetic. There is a pervasive greyness in the nation that has not been caused only by the tryptophan in the turkey we're collectively partaking of tonight. A lackluster election full of races with two equally distasteful candidates, a year of having our privacy taken away - mostly because we have given it away, steady economic contraction and months of being told of an imminent war has created a state of helplessness. [...]

In psychology classes, they teach about a condition called "learned helplessness", which occurs when a person has been repeatedly subjected to situations that induce pain or fear and there is no way to get away from it.  Eventually, even if a means of escape becomes available, the person has become so used to being afraid or hurt that it's as if the means of escape doesn't exist.  They won't even try to get away.

The experience of the last 15 months here in America seems to be producing a nation suffering from learned helplessness.  Fear is induced through the constant, but oh-so-vague, warnings eminating from the government.  Another attack is imminent, we are told, they may be coming to blow up our banks, our hotels, our apartments, our holiday celebrations.  They may be coming in hidden on boats, or scuba-diving to our shores.  They may already be here, hidden among us, and we don't even know it. They may use suicide bombers or shoulder-mounted surface-to-air misses can knock planes from the sky.  Crop dusters may be used to spread biological agents, or they may load a conventional bomb with nuclear waste to spread radiation throughout a large city.  May... may... may... may. The list of horrors is nearly endless, as is the imagination of those whose job it is to come up with new warnings, it seems. We see no escape from this fear, and are told our only hope is to sacrifice our freedoms, our cherished liberties, our very way of life, on the altar of security, so we do - willlingly, it seems - and never realizing that maybe, we should be afraid of our government, too.

The thing is, all of those threats existed before 9/11 - we just didn't let those concerns be the primary focus of our government or our lives. We knew the threat was out there, but because nothing serious had happened yet (and for some reason, we never seemed to consider the first bombing of the World Trade Center to be terribly "serious"), it didn't seem so real.  Once the plans crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon, however, we suddenly saw just how real it was. And the fear began.

If you look at all the measures the government is trying to put into place, how many of them would have helped catch the 9/11 terrorists before the attack?  From what I've read, they were spread out throughout the country, so it is unlikely that any religious or political groups they were a part of would have had planning for the attacks as a major topic of discussion.  They seem to have had little contact with each other prior to the attacks themselves, so monitoring their phone calls probably would have revealed little. They didn't have any need to purchase much in the way of "how to" books or materials for executing their plans - they had boxcutters, but built no bombs - so examining their reading lists or purchases would have revealed little to be concerned about. Would wiretaps have helped?  Maybe, if we'd had any way to know that it might be worthwhile to listen in.  I've not heard about any e-mail trails they might have left, so reading e-mail probably wouldn't have done any good.  In fact, I have yet to hear of any of the new powers the government is granting itself that would have done anything to help prevent the 9/11 attacks.  Yet we sit by and watch the government take away more of our rights and give itself more and more power, and we do nothing. 

So, what can we do?  As Ms. Westlake suggests:

[...] Instead of writing to your Congressman this holiday season, remember that he doesn't read his mail anyway, and his secretary has seen your letter in some form a thousand times before. Instead of trying to work up a legal furor, work up a local furor. Talk to PEOPLE. Hold demonstrations, if you can find enough people that'll hold up signs in the cold of winter. Talk to your friends, your family, about the things that will affect us all in the coming years.  [...]

Other ideas?  Write letters to the editor of your local papers.  Try to call into to talk shows - especially those run by people who hold a different view than your own. Write about it in your blog or journal and then publicize your site as part of your sig line on any e-mails you write or message board postings you make. If you are a part of a religious community that gives members a chance to make open prayer requests, stand and ask that the community pray for citizens of this country to snap out of their collective stupor and have the courage to stand up for themselves and their rights. If you've got some money, take out even a small ad in your local paper.  Don't be afraid that your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers or complete stranges may think you're a bit nutty or that you're going to drive them nutty in the process.  As is too often said about the death penalty - if this case doesn't call for it, then what does?

Fighting against the government may not sound like a logical way to increase our security - but what we're being sold right now is nothing more than some pretty smell hot air wrapped up in a bow.  What the government wants to do won't make us safer.  In fact, it puts each of us at greater risk - not from being the victims of a terrorist attack - but from the government deciding that we're worth a closer examination or that we may even be a dreaded "enemy combatant".  [ Remember, Jose Padilla has been being held for months now as an "enemy combatant" and all we know that he did was talk to some people about possibly arranging an attack and fly into Chicago.  The government claims he was coming here to scout for a possible attack location, but because they arrested him as he stepped off the plane, we don't even know if that's really why he was here.  So, there was no actual "combat" involved, but he's still an "enemy combatant."  ]

The best way to make this country safer is not to cut back on our freedoms and make it easier for the government to arrest and hold someone indefinately with out charging them with a crime.  The best way is to make the government hold itself accountable for the failures and lapses that let the 9/11 terrorists fall through the cracks.  As we've learned during these last several months, there were many mistakes, many missed opportunities, and many times when better communication between the FBI, CIA and local law enforcement could have helped put pieces of the puzzle together.  That is our escape from the fear, and that is where the government's focus needs to be placed. 

We may have learned to think we are helpless.  We may have learned that it's better to just lie still and let them hurt us than to try and find an escape where none exists.  But what we may have learned is wrong.  We are not helpess and there are ways to escape - to make this country what it once was and can be again. Any behaviour that has been learned can be unlearned.  We need to re-educate ourselves, and then we need to re-educate the government, and remind them that is it We, the People who really run this country through our voices and our votes.