We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day “When Hollywood shows you an earthquake, an eruption, or a towering inferno, you see mass panic, stampeding crowds, maybe a looting spree. When sociologists study real-life disasters, they see calm, resourceful people evacuating buildings, rescuing strangers, and cooperating nonviolently.”
– Jesse Walker, on how Japanese people are responding to the terrible events to have hit that country over the past week. (H/T, Instapundit).
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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That’s because Hollywood’s disasters don’t take place in monoracial, monocultural, high IQ countries. They take place in America.
So the heroism and stoicism displayed by New Yorkers of all stripes on and after 9/11 does not count, then? Race has nothing to do with it. Culture, which is a product of a rugged, self responsible ethic still in evidence in much of the US, does. Haiti was a “monoracial” country, and it has not fared that well in the face of natural disasters.
Correlation is not causation. That is a basic law of logic that people with high IQs should understand.
‘Monoracial’ – nonsense, ‘high IQ’ – ditto, ‘moncultural’ – true, to the extent of what specific culture we are dealing with*. Jonathan is correct about the 9/11 example, the US being by no-means monoracial (or low-IQ… – please!), but to a great extent monocultural.
*The Japanese culture is obviously quite different from the Western one as far as public order is concerned, as well as in its deference to authority – which I’m not sure is such a good thing overall, but there they are. In any case, at least where I live I know I would see something quite different from both Japan now and NYC on 9/11. Not necessarily in an all-bad way, just different.
As to movies: as I was just telling my son who recently saw The Road, it is a useful metal exercise to consider extreme scenarios, no matter how far-fetched overall. That’s because in plausibly extreme scenarios, people who surround us in our everyday relatively calm and civilized life, are capable of both extreme good and extreme evil (as well as anything in-between), and it is useful to at least mentally be prepared for the latter, just in case.
‘Monora…l’ – nonsense, ‘high IQ’ – ditto, ‘monocultural’ – true, to the extent of what specific culture we are dealing with*. Jonathan is correct about the 9/11 example, the US being by no-means mono-ra…l (or low-IQ… – please!), but to a great extent mono-cultural.
*The Japanese culture is obviously quite different from the Western one as far as public order is concerned, as well as in its deference to authority – which I’m not sure is such a good thing overall, but there they are. In any case, at least where I live, I know I would see something quite different from both Japan now and NYC on 9/11. Not necessarily in an all-bad way, but different.
As to movies: as I was just telling my son who recently saw The Road, it is a useful metal exercise to consider extreme scenarios, no matter how far-fetched overall. That’s because in plausibly extreme scenarios, people who surround us in our everyday relatively calm and civilized life, are capable of both extreme good and extreme evil (as well as anything in-between), and it is useful to at least mentally be prepared for the latter, just in case.
Smited.
What a perceptive bloke Jesse Walker is. He’s realised that Hollywood films are not like real life and what’s more he’s kindly told everyone else as they probably haven’t noticed for themselves.
No doubt he’ll be off to his grandma’s house tonight to give her an egg-sucking leson.
Some comment, comparable to the “entertainment” presentation of disasters should also be noted in respect to “news” (esp. TV) reporting.
Of course the objective is to “keep people glued to the broadcaster;” thus, “hyper” everything, from “protests” to “potential meltdowns.”
What occurs amongst the viewer/listeners has been documented in the lowered reactions to publicized famines.
Soon, everything will be modeled as a “game” on one of those game systems that rely on crime, war or other violence to engage an audience and gather coins.
I’ve actually been through a number of earthquakes – starting with a sizable one (Sylmar California – 1971) and those which constantly rattled Northern Japan when I was stationed at Misawa AB from 1977-1980. That was the one thing that I did notice – that people (Japanese OR American) didn’t really waste time screaming hysterically and running pointlessly. People actually were rather quiet, save for calling to others to get under cover, or hustling themselves out of a rattletrap building. I’ve taken the usual disaster-movie mindlessly-panicky-crowd scene with a large handful of salt ever since. In real life, people tend to behave quite well.
Walker’s argument is a bit more nuanced than Simon (and pete) seems to realize. His point (one of them, anyway) isn’t that Hollywood sensationalizes disasters for dramatic effect (that’s pretty obvious), but rather that mindless rioting in a disaster is not the norm, but rather an aberration. He points out that when such rioting does occur, it’s due to exogenous conditions (“severe class distinctions, a serious pre-existing crime problem, a police department that’s especially corrupt”) predisposing the people to riot.
A comparison of the general reactions of the NY populace on 9/11 to that of New Orleans residents in Hurricane Katrina is left as an exercise for the reader.
I am impressed by the lack of looting, though. And I did smile when I saw an elderly Japanese lady outside her completely destroyed house, impeccably dressed. I’m wondering what it would take to make them look scruffy.
Pete, Walker is well aware that film-makers jazz things up, but he also knows that for a lot of people, reacting hysterically to a situation is often how things are potrayed in the MSM, and it sometimes comes as a shock to find out how different things are in reality.
So no cigar for you, I am afraid.
And I did smile when I saw an elderly Japanese lady outside her completely destroyed house, impeccably dressed.
I once saw a Japanese woman come out of a tent, beautifully dressed and in perfect makeup, in a camp at 5500m above sea level in the Himalayas.
An interesting question is what the demise of the MSM will mean for the reporting of these large scale public interest stories.
On the upside, people might have to search for news actively rather than having it thrust upon them. Hopefully more specialist news sources will be better news sources, although there is far from a guarantee on this. At least there will be less reliance on a single source of news.
On the downside, maybe people’s main source of news will be the free commuter papers, which are arguably of a lower quality than even the BBC. And they may not put as much effort into fact checking etc.
Sgt. Mom’s comment is exactly correct. Simon’s is callow. Check Loma Prieta, 1989. We lost a house, but we were able eventually, over a period of years, to rebuild it completely. There was major property damage and some deaths, although because of fairly good building codes and enforcement things turned out much better than might have been expected. So far as I can recall, I neither heard nor read of panic, looting or other misbehavior. Certainly, I saw none. Why denigrate the US?
Oh come on, it’s fairly simple, if a society is fucked up before a disaster it will be fucked when a disaster hits. New Orleans was one of the worst managed, most corrupt, and crime-ridden cities before Katrina hit. To expect those same people that turned their city into an urban hell-hole to act any different after a disaster is ludicrous. Don’t forget that New Orleans annually vied for the title of Murder Capitol USA. That it was miles and miles of shitty crime-ridden slums, that everyone from dog-catcher to governor was a fucking crook, and that it was about the most mismanaged city in America. And it was their society, from top to bottom, that was fucked up.
Compare that to what happened in Grand Forks, North Dakota after the huge floods in 1997. A good portion of the city looked just like New Orleans. But there was no looting, no one acting like rats in a cage. They just fought the worst devastation as best they could, and, what they couldn’t prevent, like the flooding of all downtown, they set about rebuilding. Grand Forks was news for about three days and then dropped off the radar. Why? Because there was nothing to report but people getting back to rebuilding their city.
Indeed.
“If it bleeds it leads.”
What does that say about human nature?
And those who would control use it as a button to push.
But good to hear about responses such as Grand Forks.
I liked a comment from an elderly Japanese woman that “an evacuation zone of 30km was unnecessarily large”. She apparently had been within 4 km of ground zero at Hiroshima.
Nice if true. Good marks for creativity if made up.
When we had the flooding here in Nashville last year, the national media couldn’t even be bothered to report it (with school buildings floating down the interstate). Make of that what you will.
The husband and son of a friend were in Sendai, in fact on a boat in the harbour. They felt the quake through the hull of the boat. They immediately went to shore. They were met by their Japanese host and were in his car waiting to exit the parking lot. Nothing was moving. Chris, the son, went to see what was happening. The parking lot gate was not working because the power was out. Chris smashed open the gate, to the horror of the security guard. Chris speaks Japanese and said Tsunami. Now all the cars left the lot. The respect for authority by the Japanese almost led to a loss of life.
Be heading back to Japan as soon as I can get a flight. It’s not about living forever, it’s about living with yourself.
Jack, Borneo
Simple reason: Hollywood presents disasters as if all the people involved were from Hollywood… clueless and inept in any unscripted situation of physical stress and danger. It’s how THEY would react so it seems perfectly realistic. Of course, it also helps build up the hero.
I’m talking about “the creative talent,” the writers, directors, designers, actors, etc., not the nameless and faceless grips and gaffers and drivers and caterers and mechanics and location people, who are just as competent as their counterparts anywhere else.
Simple reason: Hollywood presents disasters as if all the people involved were from Hollywood… clueless and inept in any unscripted situation of physical stress and danger. It’s how THEY would react so it seems perfectly realistic. Of course, it also helps build up the hero.
I’m talking about “the creative talent,” the writers, directors, designers, actors, etc., not the nameless and faceless grips and gaffers and drivers and caterers and mechanics and location people, who are just as competent as their counterparts anywhere else.
Your readers might be interested in how to treat their radioactively contaminated drinking water:
http://crisismaven.wordpress.com/2011/03/22/dangers-properties-possible-uses-and-methods-of-purification-of-radioactively-contaminated-drinking-water-e-g-in-japan/
A Japanese translation seems underway, see comment by Takuya there. Maybe someone wants to help with other languages?