MIND MOVES:In times of fear we turn to what we know and become antagonisitc towards 'outsiders', writes TONY BATES.
FOLLOWING MY recent visit to Kentucky a friend forwarded me a link to an edition of the New York Times, which carried a story from Louisville about the right to carry guns.
The article featured Ken Pagano, pastor of a Christian church in that city, who had invited his congregation to wear or carry their firearms into the sanctuary to “celebrate our rights as Americans!”.
The article went on to document the steady rise of gun sales throughout America since Obama’s election: indications are that sales rose by 42 per cent last November and that every month since then, sales have exceeded all previous records.
Membership of the National Rifles Association (NRA) is up 30 per cent since November and this organisation is aggressively pursuing an active agenda to protect and extend the right to bear arms in every state (currently the right-to-carry is law in 40 states, 20 of which also allow guns in churches).
While it would be easy to write (or laugh) off this story as evidence of some kind of unique cultural insanity, I believe this would be a mistake. This story carries within it evidence of a core psychological phenomenon that shapes behaviour in every culture when people are exposed to raised levels of threat to their survival.
The theory that deals with this universal tendency in human beings, based on the writings of Ernest Becker, is called Terror Management Theory (TMT).
To be human Becker wrote, “Means full fear and trembling, at least some of the waking day”. When a person becomes aware of how utterly fragile they are in the face of a reality that is radically unpredictable and filled with random disasters that make little sense, how is he or she to cope with such awareness?
In the late 1990s, a small group of social psychologists in the US, who coined the term “terror management”, began a series of experiments to explore how human beings the world over react in the face of threat to their existence.
They found that when awareness of death and our own fragility is activated, we are drawn back to the symbols of our culture because they bestow on us some sense of safety.
Culture, they argue, embodies our collective attempt to make sense of this world. It serves as a buffer between a world that can seem chaotic and meaningless, and we who have to live in it. In the face of any experience that raises our awareness of our vulnerability to death, we are unconsciously drawn to identify with symbols of our culture. By living up to one’s cultural standards and values, we feel good and we feel strong.
A second component of TMT is our tendency to view those who hold different ideologies as a serious threat to our world view and to take action to either incorporate or eliminate them.
The world that most of us live in has become a much more frightening place in the past 12 months. Many of the fantasies and fictions from which we drew our sense of security, if not omnipotence, have been exposed as the false gods they were. Where are we to turn? If TMT is right, we can expect a steady drift back to the cultural symbols and rituals that gave us some sense that we were in control.
During his presidency Obama is expected to crack down on guns sooner or later. Guns that hold meaning not merely as instruments of self-protection, but as symbols of a culture that has shown itself capable of survival in the face of adversities throughout its history.
Rumours have been propagated across the land that this will leave the country poorly protected and prey to being over-run by Muslim hoards. Symbols of a shared world-view, eg guns, are being reinvested with importance. Ownership is felt to bestow protection and solidarity. And among many of those who vehemently defend the right to carry arms, lurks the other component of terror management: hatred and prejudice towards any culture whose world view differs from the American world view.
I witnessed all this first-hand in conversations with some folk I met in rural Kentucky. These were good people, mostly of Irish descent, but their prejudices towards black Americans, homosexuals and, in particular, Muslims were irrational, inhuman and beyond debate.
Many of these country folk were without jobs, victims of an economic disaster that their own country has dropped upon them. They were full of fear and confusion and anger. These men carried guns everywhere and used them on a daily basis (generally on animals, snakes and occasionally on humans, if they looked threatening). Their guns were vitally important to them; they clung to them much as a child might cling to a security blanket.
I wasn’t at all surprised to read about pastor Pagano. But my thoughts now are more about people throughout this land. Where are we to turn in the face of a world that seems so out of control and so radically unpredictable? Where are the cultural symbols that we might expect to give us some sense of meaning and solidarity?
Central to the Irish psyche has been a shared religious faith, but most people feel so betrayed and disillusioned by religion, it is unlikely the majority will take any comfort in conventional symbols of a shared faith. We have other symbols, our language, our music, story-telling and sports. It strikes me there could be a strong renaissance in each of these sectors in the coming years, if terror management theory has any truth to it.
But we must guard against falling prey to the second component of terror management – becoming antagonistic to those among us who express their sense of meaning through other symbols. Reading of the horror unleashed in Belfast recently against one immigrant family, it struck me that TMT has something to say to all of us here at home. We may scorn pastor Pagano and his flock, but do we really have the high moral ground when it comes to prejudice and violence?
Tony Bates is founder director of Headstrong – The National Centre for Youth Mental Health. www.headstrong.ie