I buy a gun because I’m free to defend myself, and I’m scarred—scarred, because I heard my neighbor has a gun. But now that I have one, you are scarred, because you control neither me nor my neighbor, and who knows, one of us might be crazy, or have a crazy relative—you are free to imagine the worst. So you go and get a gun—compelled by your nightmares, controlled by your freedom. And now we are all scarred together—bound together. We are bound by freedom and fear. Terrified of each other.
5 Comments
Yes, fear is surely part of the gun culture. But people like it too. They like guns, of course, I think because of the power they give (a bit like the ring of Gyges?), but they also seem to like the fear itself. Perhaps just because it provides the fantasy in which they get to use that power.
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reshef
1/30/2013 09:50:20 pm
At first I thought there was a tension between what you say and what I said. I thought there were two competing ways of looking at the matter: One in which fear is the main component, and the other in which fantasies of power of the sort you describe are the main component. But I think there is really a single psychological profile here: Fear begets fantasies of power--much as a child who is being bullied at school contemplates revenge. - Is this what you mean when you say people like fear itself?
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Duncan
2/5/2013 01:49:21 am
Yes, I think the fear and the fantasy go together. I don't know which begets which. But people like the idea of living in a state of nature, in the wild west or a post-apocalyptic wilderness. Maybe because what really living in a state like that is like is so unfamiliar to them.
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reshef
2/5/2013 06:59:27 am
"Wild west or a post-apocalyptic wilderness." This is very true. This also exactly captures much of the rhetoric of the Gun-Lobby people. I've never seriously considered the possibility that someone might actually want to live in such a state. So many thanks for alerting me to the possibility.
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Duncan
2/5/2013 11:44:43 pm
I agree. People don't (because they couldn't) really, wholeheartedly want to live in such a state. And you don't have to have experienced anything like it to be averse to the fantasy. But I think ignorance helps keep fantasies alive.
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