Guns: Terror as a face of freedom, terror as a social binder

1/30/2013

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

Duncan link

1/30/2013 08:26:43 am

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.

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?

In any case, fear has become here a basic way of knowing others--I fear you therefore you are. But is is also a way of defining ourselves, and asserting our own existence for ourselves: I am feared, therefore I am acknowledged. And if I'm not acknowledged, I'd better go get a gun.

solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

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.

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.

However, I still find it hard to think that people can wholeheartedly want to live like this. It is like bungee-jumping: you can want it occasionally, for the thrill perhaps. But spending your life on a bungee rope is torture.

In the same way, what you say explains why people here have so many fantasies about post-apocalyptic wildernesses. But it doesn't sound true to me that one actually has to experience such a world in order to know that life in it is not good. Not even decent.

There must be something in the culture here that forces these fantasies on people. What is it? -- It has to be something strong; something that can actually make people look at the reality in which they live, and almost see a post-apocalyptic wilderness.

How can a society like this even survive?

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.

I don't know what pushes these fantasies on people. There are wild west movies, of course, but then why are they so popular? There is the mythology of the American frontier, the lone man or family living among wild animals and hostile "savages" with just their wits and trusty rifle to protect them. And there's the history of the American South, where the federal government forced the end of slavery and segregation. I think that's where a lot of the fear of "big government" comes from (even non-racists don't like being forced to change their ways), although some of it seems to be motivated simply by a desire to justify keeping weapons. Self-defense is probably related to this too--the criminals that people fear are often pictured as being African-American. There is also probably some truth in the belief that gun ownership helps keep burglary down.

In short, I think the fantasy has enough connection to reality (frontier history and contemporary deterrence) to keep it alive, but above all it is a fantasy, fueled by lingering traces of racism and the desire to have the power of life and death. It would take a careful rhetorical and psychological analysis to really figure it out though, I think.

Guns: Terror as a face of freedom, terror as a social binder

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