Tempo task
from Sex & War (and Ann Kibbey):
We see and hear selectively. There were two images that predominated on the airwaves on September 11, and only one of them was the perverse and hypnotic repetition of the aircraft crashing into the buildings and the billowing erasure of the Manhattan skyline (controlled, uniform, and repeated, just as McKenna described it). The other was the authoritative father.
He was everywhere, in every guise, not only embodied in George W. Bush, but in a plethora of newly anointed ‘terrorism experts,’ and in the suddenly ubiquitous dick-thing posturing by male politicians and reporters with variously processed hair. It was as if the whole nation was being converted into a male revenge-fantasy film, wherein a state of emergency obliges the women and children (including those men who are feminized and infantilized) to cringe into the background, while the martial Reichian warrior-father transcends conventions in order to unleash his pure supra-rational masculine energy on the evildoers. The nation became the family, and its preservation depended upon the restoration of absolute authority to the white father.
Like we were rebooted by the crashing buildings, then returned to some ideo-mystificatory default.
Ann Kibbey, in the February 2003 edition of Genders, writing about the Iraq War political climate in the U.S., pointed out how effectively the Bush handlers were already using the mythic American signifier of the Western film genre. I want to quote unusually extensively from that piece, because the connection between U.S. film culture, imperial masculinity, and war will come up again and again… and she describes this so well.
Both liberals and leftists in the U.S. have had difficulty in believing that a much-discredited American film genre, the Western, could suddenly be structuring and mandating U.S. political rhetoric… from Bush’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” Bin Laden poster, to Colin Powell’s insistence that “time is running out” as we cut to the chase, to the numerous U.S. television and print media that report daily on the “Showdown” or “Standoff” with Iraq. The evocation of the Western and all its prejudices now infuses U.S. culture and underwrites U.S. militarism. It seems that Bush, initially distinctive for his inarticulateness and stupidity, has succeeded in forcing (and enforcing) that same inarticulateness and stupidity on the U.S. public.
People were stunned when Bush patronizingly dismissed the massive anti-war demonstrations in his “Father Knows Best” speech on the following Monday, but that’s consistent with the gender ideology of the Western. As we ought to be aware, the ideology of gender and the ideology of genocidal violence are intertwined in the Western. The parallel action that typifies the conclusion of the Western (and other U.S. ‘action movies’) has generally been characterized only by its racist polarization of populations, which creates an artificial binary opposition that is resolved through the physical annihilation of one side by the other. But there is another dimension to it: The polarization of gender roles that is intertwined with it. What Americans seem slow to realize is the repugnant role in which they have now been cast, that of the female victim who must be rescued and saved by the male hero, a female victim whose role is to be helpless, mute, and passive, immobilized by fear as she awaits the outcome of the chase. Such rescues are in no way about social justice. They are artificial “tempo tasks” (Sergei Eisenstein’s wonderful phrase). The tempo task actively closes off ethical and political issues. That is its purpose. With the inception of the tempo task – “time is running out” –, morality is located in the sidelined female victim, whose role is not to act morally, but to merely personify and symbolize morality. She passively awaits the outcome of the genocidal violence whose purported aim is to rescue her. This is why we are now being told to hunker down in the cabin, wrap ourselves in plastic sheeting, put duct tape over our mouths, and await the outcome of the horrific violence that is being perpetrated ostensibly to ‘save us.’
No wonder, then, that Bush had no difficulty relegating the anti-war demonstrations to the role of moral symbolism, the cries of the helpless victim in need of rescue. He used it as yet another occasion to display his own ‘masculine heroism’ with which he intends to save us from danger, first from ‘evil’ Iraq, and then from ourselves through the pending Domestic Security Act. Many people also seem to think this upcoming war, repulsive though it is, will be short. After all, tempo tasks end the film and impose their version of order very quickly – it’s the last part of the movie. No plans for reconstruction? Hey, that’s not in the movie script.
A reflexive reliance on the genre conventions of the Western has not only led to silence. It has helped to obscure the reality that this war has already been going on for many years, that the bombing of Iraq was never stopped and has already intensified again, that genocide has already been perpetrated by economic sanctions, that the much-touted weapons of mass destruction are those of the U.S., whose depleted uranium weaponry has already mutilated or killed much of the population of southern Iraq.
The genre conventions of the Western have mandated a deafening and ignorant silence in the U.S. in the last year. An important dimension of this silence is the de facto moratorium on gender issues. Ideologies of gender become highly coercive when they are taken for granted, when debates about gender are suppressed as unimportant, when they are dismissively cast aside as irrelevant. To be silent now about gender is to take the bait, to perceive the current political and economic crisis through the lens of socially conservative gender roles.
* * *
“Tempo tasks.”
In the book, I emphasized that September 11, 2001 had been transmuted into a national tempo task.
The current debate on torture is almost exclusively storied by torture apologists in the form of tempo-tasks, those kinds of emergency sceanarios wherein the premises are designed to foreclose any but a single violent conclusion. Tempo-task is not just a capitalist artifact; anti-capitalists are just as willing to rely on it to support violence. It is certainly, however, a male artifact, and one that’s been around for quite some time. Logical fallacies were useful long before (overwhlemingly male) philosophers identified and classified them.
The hidden premises, as Ann Kibbey explains so well, are the male roles that are smuggled into the premises by cultural conditioning. These roles are killer-roles, whether they are killing “pests,” “vermin,” or humans who are assigned that status… tainted, chaos-threatening, civilization-emperiling outsiders.
The tempo-task is also a debate gambit used to bulldoze moral convictions based on pacific principles. This is where tempo-task can be most problematic, because it is a highly effective gambit. Without an analysis of the tunnel-vision inhering in disembedding abstractions, the advocate for pacific principles is rendered helpless before a constructed “example” (the constructed scenario).
Remember how Michael Dukakis was presented with a kind of post-action tempo task (and a direct gender-assault) by asking if he would support the death penlaty for someone who had raped and killed his wife, Kitty? Of course, the tempo-task is generally constructed as a preventative to an imagined horror (the list of which can be virtually unlimited, ergo the continued efficacy of tempo-tasks), whereas in the case of Dukakis, the after-the-fact imagined scenario was more directly designed to emasulate the candidate; and that’s why it is relevant to this discussion. One mustn’t analyze the tempo-task talk (and you’ll hear this crap from Chief Executive Obama and DOS-boss Clinton) without seeking the gendered content of it… the kind of schoolyard masculinity-baiting that constitutes the cultural backdrop.
Al-Qaida is a marvelously perdurable pretext for tempo-task stories.
The most wicked aspect of this cultural convention, as it applies to the behavior of individuals, and inevitably then collectives, is that it is designed to crush any appeal to the virtue of patience (the lack of which is a source of personal struggle in my own spiritual growth… I am a man, after all).
The analysis may be complicated by the fact that stories, especially entertainment stories, are driven by action and emergency to heighten the psychic participation of an audience. This action ratchets up the tempo in order to enhance the sense of suspense… and as spectators, readers, et al, we enjoy suspense. We also enjoy a good debate, even if it’s not framed that way, with ethical dilemmas contained in the debate. The very popular tv series Law & Order serves this stuff up in spoon-sized chatter scenes that feed audiences (often intricate) plots at — forgive me — a breakneck tempo. (We ought to do a collective deconstruction of L&O someday, since it does have such a broad audience.)
The point stressed and discussed here is (1) how the TT is employed specifically to justify violence or suspension of “due process,” and (2) how the TT triggers cultural conventions related to masculinity-as-violence.
Shamrock Pat:
I think that the US military generals and the federal government that provides them cover should be tempo tasked right in to a Cuban prison or Antarctican prison. Being a still childish lover of Grimm fantasies I would find it very poetic justice. I would be willing to bet that when you meet General Schneider or Col. Westhusing in the hereafter they would agree with me. Oh is that cheating to say that the are on my side? To bad because it is true.
As for the “due process” part that has been a problem that has troubled me for awhile. You see in a police action you have to give some one at least a brief chance to surrender. In a war that is not necessary. Now many people say that all war is murder. //// Yet the Catholic church has a just war theory. I have a just war theory. The Muslims have a just war theory. Even the Tibetan Buddhists have a just war theory. I have not read that one. Yet the fact that Tibetan Monks surrendered to the Chinese in the 1950s with bolt action rifles in their hands is evidence that they have one. Heck all these just war theories may even have something in common. \\\\\\
So the only question that I have is should the US generals and their political collaborators be treated as criminals or enemy soldiers by their non relevant, close to non existent enemies.
Of course if a person could come up with a alternative way that would end imperialism and put war criminals in prison and manage to disseminate this alternative to a large enough number of people in such a way that the generals did not get wind of it so that they could take countermeasures I would be very open minded about supporting such an idea. (Did I hear you say the legal political process?)
Of course someone could say that I am unreasonable for wanting to put war criminals in prison for crimes that happened yesterday because if we just wait 60 years then no one will care anymore about the crimes these very old men committed. Everything can then be forgotten about. What is done is done. There is no use in bringing up the past. Justice delayed is justice denied is just a quaint little proverb to get you to short circuit your thinking. Just like laying out an all to plausible forward looking scenario is.
Speaking of forward looking scenarios, you know the real warmongers defend the increased production of the F-22 by saying that we need to be prepared to defeat the Chinese. Many opposed to more F-22 say a better way to defeat the Chinese is to have more F-35s or drones. The clear assumption by all of them is that we will be fighting the Chinese near China not near the US. Why that would be stupid of us to fight a war with China near the US when we can spend some extra money and do it near China. Men may not be able to tell the difference between offensive violence and defensive violence but women can. There is such a thing as a difference. Julia Childs says, that men can so be easily tricked in to believing they are committing acts of defensive violence when the are in fact committing acts of offensive violence just shows how stupid men are.
Yes even Julia Childs is on my side. Is quoting Julia Childs in the present form cheating? Gosh I better be careful if my spouse finds out I could be in big trouble. By the way JC teaches Iranian cooking now.
17 August 2009, 11:19 amTimothy R. Anderson:
Mister Action Man Bush. Mister Action Man Obama.
I think the urge to DO SOMETHING was overwhelming in the days immediately following September 11, 2001. I was HERE, on American soil, exposed to AMERICAN MEDIA on Sept. 11, 2001, the days before it, the days after it.
It was evident that the Federal Government Of The USA wanted its
taxpayers/subjects to forget that the military of the USA FAILED
to protect its own civilians.
On September 11, 2001 the USA’s military didn’t do its stated job:
to protect the persons and properties of the USA. It didn’t do
its job. It didn’t do its job. It didn’t do its job. It didn’t do its
job.
However, did President Bush ever say anything to acknowledge
that FAILURE ? No. Because admitting that the massive government entity that he was at the tippy-tippy-top of FAILED is just not
very macho, is it ? No, it isn’t very macho.
sSo, all this time later, it is now President Obama’s turn to
pretend that the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent
in Afghanistan and Iraq will secure the persons/properties of
the USA. It won’t though. It could very well send the entire country into the debtor’s prison.
Timothy R. Anderson
17 August 2009, 12:39 pmTimothy R. Anderson:
The Tempo Task Just Doesn’t Sway The Other Countries’ Government/Military Leaders.
And another thing. When President Obama announced that MORE
American military servicemembers would be put into Afghanistan, where was the outcry that the other countries of the world need to
help the Americans ? See, the legions of fans of Rush Limbaugh,
Hannity, Levin, etc. etc. and their tunnel-visioned beloved talk show hosts themselves do NOT see any FAILURE in being the ONLY country adding more troops into Afghanistan. But that’s what it is —–
it is a FAILURE to get other countries to send more military personnel into Afghanistan. That will be the stigma attached to everything
the USA’s government attempts to do : most likely will need to
do it mostly by yourself !
Failure. Failure. Failure.
I am just sayin’. Timothy R. Anderson
17 August 2009, 1:07 pmMichael Anderson:
One tempo-task that is being heated up now is the “Obama is going to take away our guns” rap—which I believe is patently untrue, due to Obama’s aforementioned timidity and his allegiance to his corporate mentors—and if you read the news today, there was an item about guys carrying assault rifles openly to several of his “Town Meetings’ in states that have lax open-carry laws, and the Secret Service doing nothing about it. No big deal to them, apparently. Mr. O has to show he has Cojones, apparently, even if they’re just tolerant Cojones.
I could not even imagine this happening during the Bush years—another white male memory disconnect. We do indeed see and hear selectively.
It ties directly into several cultural memes—the fear of the “other”, i.e non-whites, the female-protection meme (Sarah Palin being an exception to this, because she shoots and she’s a BABE—editorially speaking, please—gender decoy?), and the belief that educated people are dangerous.
Personal experience—insert your own family member and/or acquaintance—a family member who has stayed here in this small town his entire life, and is afraid to travel unarmed, has made many comments about “those people taking away our guns”, and other comments related to openly carrying weapons—I wonder how he feels about Blackwater—-I’ve never asked. Oh, and he has two daughters.
People are so fearful…and this is reinforced culturally, too, by the interests of power.
There is another meme going around now related to this about “an armed society is a polite society”. From what I have seen historically, openly armed societies are generally patriarchally-oriented, with all the accompanying baggage (this is how order is enforced), and at times, to put it mildly—not very polite at all. This applies to our U.S. Wild West myth, too.
I have eliminated TV from my life, for the most part, so I don’t get a lot of the stuff from there that filters into society—mostly secondhand. That’s enough for me, most of the time.
17 August 2009, 11:29 pmMichael Anderson:
There’s another TT getting going from Joe The Plumber:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/rights/142012/joe_the_plumber_on_pelosi%3A_i_would_%22beat_the_livin%27_tar%22_out_of_her/
The comments on the utter amorality of the Democrats, the masculinity-as-violence meme, and conservative (if you can call it that) efficacy in using these TT’s as motivators is relevant here.
Sure gets tiresome…like playing with a drummer who rushes (speaking of TEMPO), so you continually have to adjust what you play just to keep minimal coherency in the tune.
18 August 2009, 11:30 amcabdriver:
Timothy Anderson, I don’t think that what you’re positing about Obama fits the definition of a “tempo task.”
A “tempo task” related to the issue you bring up would be something along the lines of “Obama must be STOPPED” or “Obamaism must be annihilated.”
Not an allegation, a rumor, or an innuendo- but an outright demand for decisive action, coupled with a sense of urgency that makes the most direct course of action to be the only effective option available.
I find the concept of the “tempo task” to be quite interesting, since it brings up the notion of “male hysteria”, an emotional state supposedly so oxymoronic that it’s non-existent. It’s only females who are supposed to be running around clucking that the sky is falling, all hyped up and impervious to logical argument…but instead, it’s quite often the case that it’s the males who are tipped into an unbalanced and hyperbolic diagnosis of a problem- along with following up with Yangist snap decisions that make drastic actions imperative. (Yang: the requirement for Action. Execution. The result of Immediate Decision. Reflection is for…women.)
For example: I’ve heard that a lot of women value their shoes, and their shoe collections, and they will admit to this. But I’ve never heard of a woman shooting someone for stepping on their shoes.
Unlike the case with men.
And since men have historically wielded the balance of power in political matters, that unbalance has often led to much more serious conflicts than individual one-on-one assaults, killings, or duels. Everyone is expected to get into the act; the vital decisions and courses of action are considered to be a foregone conclusion, and anyone who counsels a more deliberative stance makes themselves a target of derision, calumny, legal persecution, and even violent retribution.
One early example of the “tempo task” in American history- the War of 1812, which was largely ginned up by chauvinistic elements in the American press, and mob hysteria. Consider this event that occurred at the brink of the war’s outbreak:
“…On 27 July 1812, [Henry] Lee received grave injuries while helping to resist an attack on his friend, Alexander Contee Hanson, editor of the Baltimore newspaper, The Federal Republican. Hanson was attacked by Democratic-Republican mob because his paper opposed the War of 1812. Lee and Hanson and two dozen other Federalists had taken refuge in the offices of the paper. The group surrendered to Baltimore city officials the next day. Laborer George Woolslager led a mob that forced its way into the jail and removed and beat the jailed Federalists and Lee over the next three hours. One Federalist, James M. Lingan, died.
Lee suffered extensive internal injuries as well as head and face wounds, and even his speech was affected. Lee later sailed to the West Indies in an effort to recuperate from his injuries. He died on 25 March 1818, at Dungeness, on Cumberland Island, Georgia…”
Yes, that’s correct- in reaction to a stance of dissent over the advisability of “the military option”, a mob in Baltimore pounded Henry Lee III into insensibility, along with his companions.
That would be “Lighthorse Harry” Lee- a former commander of cavalry in George Washington’s Continental Army during the Revolution; former delegate to the Continental Congress; and former Governor of Virginia.
But Lee was deemed an opponent of the Tempo Task at hand- engaging Great Britain in armed conflict- so the mob comprised of his fellow citizens branded him with the status of Enemy, and considered it their bound duty to stomp him. And stomp him, they did.
What a country. What a species.
18 August 2009, 1:20 pmStan:
Wisdom.
They Boyd us, as in OODA-Loop us. They break up the coherence of opposition by doing more faster louder than anyone else. They teach this stuff in business schools… warfighting, Boyd, OODA-Loop. No one can ever match their capacity, so the tactics become a moot point. All opposition does in any stable system is agitate, because they are always playing catch up on the wildly asymmetrical capacity of a dominant group to change the game.
Wrong game for the opposition… whoever that might be. So don’t be “opposition.”
Don’t start fights you will lose; and you can lose any fight.
Create alternatives between the powers’ toes.
18 August 2009, 3:52 pmMichael Anderson:
Gotcha…
Sometimes you just have to turn away. I don’t like playing catch up, either—just saying “enough” is more constructive—and a great weight off your shoulders. I think you still have to observe, and think, but you sure don’t have to join the fray.
I may have mentioned this before, but a friend of mine went through a 12-step program for substance abuse, and the first thing they told him was “there are always alternatives”.
I’m framing the “toes” comment—one for the ages, Mr. Goff.
18 August 2009, 10:25 pmKim Sky:
Book – The Rebel Sell, why the culture can’t be jammed
by Joseph Heath & Andrew Potter
http://rebelsell.squarespace.com/
playing catch up — what is this exactly? as postulated in the book I mention above, a conviction that changing ourselves, our culture, “think globally, act locally”, will lead to the necessary changes in society without addressing the multitude of structures/institutions that need to be changed through political advocacy and hard work.
the book is in some ways lacking in accuracy, as the authors attempt to generalize the ideologies of those they view as have been the major people/forces effecting change since the 60s mostly [other more historic references are made]. but the criticism and analysis postulated are an excellent beginning!
19 August 2009, 2:38 pmTimothy R. Anderson:
cabdriver: thanks for writing. I rarely get any response to what I post here.
Once in a great while……
Uhhhhhh, cabdriver, uh, what ‘s the deal with avoiding the failure of
USA military “powers” on Sept. 11, 2001 as a topic ? Is that topic taboo to
you ? I think persons living today on American soil should consider, carefully,
what did and did not happen on that particular day, Sept. 11, 2001 ?
I found the War Of 1812 lecture fascinating, truly I did, but some of
what came before it, in your piece, and some of what came after it,
well, I as of now anyway, ” don’t get it. ”
That’s me, though. Some folks in Iraq found out today and yesterday
what exactly six hundred billion dollars ( give or take a billion )
results in. More death.
I am just saying. Please chime in again soon, cabdriver.
Timothy R. Anderson
19 August 2009, 3:12 pmcabdriver:
Timothy, my previous response to you referred to this portion of another one of your posts: “One tempo-task that is being heated up now is the “Obama is going to take away our guns” rap…”
By contrast, I think the near-unison lockstep response of the US “deputized political leadership” to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks fits the definition of “Tempo Task” quite appropriately.
Although there are some differences in how it was brought on- unlike Sept. 11, 2001, there wasn’t any one single pivotal event leading to the Tempo Task Reaction- the Argentine Dirty War provides another instructive historical example.
In fact, much of the rhetoric of the Southern Cone juntas of the late 1970s in regard to their coordinated state terror campaigns is indistinguishable from the pronouncements of the Bush administration and their acolytes in the era immediately following the Big Event (an event which I prefer not to dignify with the status of inaugurating an “era”, although it’s difficult to get away from the shorthand that reinforces that view.)
That was one of the first things I noticed about the character of the response, which- and this is to be emphasized, I think- led in a matter of only a few months to the Bush administration requesting the power to detain American citizens as suspected terrorists, with no more legal authority required than the signature of the President, or one of his “deputized agents.”
I still remember where I was when I heard NPR lay that news on me, as blandly as if they were giving a weather report. (Sitting in my cab in front of the Hyatt on L Street, fwiw. And I just about hit the ceiling.)
All Things Considered: “Bush administration seeks to roll back civil rights protections to pre-Magna Carta era; in other news…” Of course, NPR didn’t put it that bluntly.
I think part of the problem is that one of the most important civil rights out there is known by an arcane Latin name: “habeus corpus”, which translates very roughly to English, as “deliver the body.”
That makes for a terrible introduction to the actual concept being discussed. Whether the phrase “habeus corpus” is brought up in a high school civics and government class, or as a reference in the communications media, for most Americans it sounds like something done in a morgue. And I include myself as one of the people subject to misunderstanding the term. I had a couple of fairly decent civics teachers, but they never did do much to clarify that confusion in their discussions of the Bill of Rights. The mamjor media is even worse, in my experience- they simply employ the term without ever offering a concise definition to their audience.
Over time, and after a lot of pondering, I’ve managed to come up with my own definition of “habeus corpus”, and what makes it relevant and important:
Here’s my shorthand definition, that most anyone over the age of 12 should be able to easily understand:
“Habeus corpus” means that the law enforcement authorities of the government do not have the power to simply kidnap you off of the street whenever they please.
Citizens of the USA have the right to let other people know that they’re being held in detention; they have the right to know what they’re being hauled in for; they have the right to see the evidence and contest the charges, with the aid of legal counsel. And if the authorities don’t have charges and evidence, they’re free to get back to their business.
When I heard George W. Bush was requesting the power to do away with all that- and there’s no way to prettify it, the request was quite explicit- that’s the point when I first decided that he deserved to be impeached. Whether or not Bush’s power grab was successful…just for the fact that he was demanding that power, in the first place.
But it was early in the year 2002 (March, April?), maybe six months after the Big Event, and George W. Bush was riding the full momentum of the Tempo Task, for all it was worth.
To this day, I’m not sure how many Americans even realize the wholesale rescinding of First Amendment protections that he sought, against American citizens.
That’s what the Padiila case was about- Padilla was the Poster Child for the Bush regime’s attempt to do away with habeus corpus for American citizens. Padilla was supposedly making a Dirty Bomb, remember? A radioactive toxic contamination device, an ultimate terror weapon…and that was the pretext for the Tempo Task of abolishing habeus corpus, and replacing it with the power of the police to use the signature of the King, er, President, to grab anyone found on the Enemies List off the streets at will.
The “tempo task”- Do Something. Do Anything. Shoot First, Ask Questions Later. It’s Life Or Death (the Dirty Bomb!)
Fortunately, there was sufficient resistance in the public and in the courts to eventually deny that part of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld agenda. But I found it to be an uncomfortably near thing.
I think that there’s a neat examination of some of the psychological factors that motivate and empower the Tempo Task, found in one of the books of the speculative fiction-satire The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea.
It’s a little set piece, called the East German Fire Drill.
Perhaps some of you have read the book- if you haven’t, here’s the gist of it:
a group of the main characters are sitting in a car, stuck in a traffic jam. One of the characters, afflicted with a prankish sense of humor, motions to the others in the car to follow him in line, as he gets out of the car…whereupon the group follows the leader as he starts banging on the car in front of him, motioning for the occupants to get out and join the line with a series of brusque orders- “Get out of the car! Get in line!” Follow the person in front of you!” “East German Fire Drill!” “Tell the people in the other cars!”- and, without looking back or waiting to hear questions or providing further explanation, the leader proceeds further on up the procession of stopped cars, repeating the same sequence of motions and commands.
As the scenario plays out in the book, the leader is successful in getting the occupants of a succession of vehicles to evacuate their cars and follow in a mindless parade with no purpose, eventually circling around a car up the line a ways, and leading back toward the original starting point of the car that they’ve left sitting in the traffic jam.
And then, at the end of it, the leader commands his new following to get back in their cars…just as if nothing had happened.
Later, the leader explains to his companions the behavioral psychology behind the trick that he’s just performed:
be demonstrative in boy language and speech; exude confidence and authority; keep moving; emphasize the urgency of the necessity of obedience; use the same sort of rote command language familiar to people from their early experiences in organized groups like school classes or teams; imply a purpose and goal; keep it simple; don’t deviate. Whatever you do, don’t look back. Just keep going up the line, banging on the doors and ordering people up and out…
The technical term for this is Induced Confusion Hypnosis- in the case of the East German Fire Drill, Induced Mass Confusion Hypnosis. In the setting of a traffic jam, the auto occupants are particularly suggestible, because they tend to be bored and disengaged- waiting for something to happen, as it were. And then suddently the EGFD Leader shows up, with a clear plan of Action…banging on their cars, getting their attention. And once you have their attention, the behavioral conditioning reinforcement cues work to keep it.
That’s an example taken from fiction. As such, it’s theoretical. Neither the authors or myself would make the claim that performing that experiment in real time, on the ground of the non-fiction world, would necessarily obtain the success of the experiment-prank as performed in the story. But perhaps others here might agree with me that there’s some proverbial wisdom to be found in there, somewhere.
And, well, you never know unless you try. It might work, no?
The East German Fire Drill is a particularly comic example of a Tempo Task initiated by a Confidence Game. “The Easier It Looks, The Hotter It Hooks…”
To provide another example: “419 scams”, the email-fraud requests requesting that the recipient front a sum of cash, on promise of a huge payoff shortly to follow- those partake of some of the qualities of the Tempo Task. “Just follow the simple instructions- WITHOUT DELAY. Time is of the essence.”
And once the marks are on the hook- or the treadmill- they often have a terrible time coming to their senses. Even after their money is long gone.
As the saying goes, “you can talk yourself into anything- but how do you get out of it?”
And– how do you help to get someone else get out of it?
You can’t do it for them. I think everyone here would agree that the notion of “beating some sense into someone” is highly overrated. Verbal abuse, ridicule, derision…similarly ineffective.
What I’m getting as a helpful hint from the other comments is that the thing to do is slow it down. Centered, calm, and patient. The way people in ER admissions communicate with someone in an agitated emotional state…”talking them down”, as it’s known. It doesn’t always work, but at least you yourself stay cool, calm, and collected- and patient- and thus you aren’t pressed into the role of playing their tune, at that breakneck pace.
20 August 2009, 12:42 am(Boer) Tom:
To T Anderson:
20 August 2009, 1:05 amJust reading your posts above, I’m left somewhat uncertain as to what you mean, and I’m struck by a sense that you fear being contradicted – if you make your position more clear, someone could disagree with you. Meaningfully participating in a discussion involves taking risks, e.g. taking an explicit position, that someone can argue against – I’ve suffered worse here (a while back, someone was posting under the name Tom or Thomas statements that were denying De Clarke’s contributions here – that person would follow my usage – that’s why I’m adding boer in front of my name – seems to have frightened said person off). Take a position, and have someone here disagree with you, so that the underlying premises, and practical conclusions can be argued over – that way they can come into focus; say ‘just saying’, and that without a specific claim or point of view, although you seem to imply (vaguely) that the USA state orchestrated the attacks on the pentagon and WTC, and you give the impression of uncertainty of your own convictions. It takes some courage to voice such an opinion, especially as many people simply attack that position, usually ad hominem, but if you hold such an opinion, you should gather the confidence to state it, and don’t attack someone else for not holding it, or not specifically mentioning it (as you do above). Many people, myself included, will argue against your position – basic mechanics and metallurgy make me suspicious of such claims – but if you hold the position, show yourself the self-respect to voice your views, and gather the confidence to face the resulting criticisms – masculinity shields us through our bluffing, to the detriment of our social development.
Lenny Lyons:
Create alternatives between the powers’ toes.
Stan, that is the wisest thing I’ve read in a long time.
20 August 2009, 1:43 amElaina:
“Yangist.” I really like that.
Good morning, Stan. Dug this piece. Want to comment further, but have to go to work!
20 August 2009, 7:44 amMarcilla Elizabeth Smith:
@TRA: I guess if I can restate what you’ve said, maybe it is nonsensical for someone like Bush to say that 9/11 was an act of war (and therefore justifies some kind of military response), and yet not question the “how” as if the failure to prevent it was the fault of the terrorists as well. If that is your meaning, I’d say I could agree. I would disagree with your statement only *as worded* and on technical grounds. Pre-9/11, the role of the military with regard to anti-terrorism was mostly a force protection matter and not a national security issue (the FBI had that responsibility as it was assumed a LE duty). Apparently, there is a TV show (we also threw out the boob tube) about some military unit that deals specifically with *counter*-terrorism (more of an “after-the-fact” scenario, to over-generalize), but as I’m not sure where the US policy is on breaking (ridiculous) “kayfabe” surrounding Delta, as well as the presence of folk far more qualified to speak to that matter, I’ll leave this run-on sentence as is =-P
Don’t misunderstand – I am *not* attempting to support the ethical legitimacy of the US government’s use of military power. The military does exactly what it needs to do *according to the system*, and it seems to be doing it remarkably well. There are beautiful persons up and down the ranks of the military as it is in LE as it is in the IWW and ELF and ALF, etc. etc. I believe one of the fundamental problems is that we fail to see how decisions are made by *systems* and not persons. Systems can be cold, they can turn persons into parts both literally and figuratively. If any person has been born naturally “cold”, I would think they are few and far between.
“No single drop of rain thinks it is responsible for the flood.”
20 August 2009, 11:45 amShamrock Pat:
@ Mark Twain,
24 August 2009, 3:33 pmIt is run by smart people who are putting us on. No one in a position of authority could have been so stupid as to not know that stationing US troops in Iraq would result in an War of Independence that would continue until the last US boots leave Iraqi sand. When that happens the US military will tell its soldiers that they won.
The rebels will claim that they won. US forces will no longer be there so it will seem that they have the greater claim to victory. But, the US military leaders will say, we left because we were no longer needed.
Then the US military will get ready to go somewhere else they are no longer needed. I would like them to come here and build me a nice pond with water roses and lotuses and lilies along the shore and put some of those beautiful colorful Japanese carp in it. A bridge to a little island in the middle of the pond would be nice too.
The Island should be covered with Rhododendrons, Ortensia, Hibiscus, Azaleas, and Ninebark, or thornless Roses. A granite bench underneath a Magnolia tree with a small granite table with a marble tabletop beside the bench would finish off the work. Imagining that was really hard work. I guess that means that I am famished for the day.
Shamrock Pat:
Stan,
25 August 2009, 12:46 amHere is a quote for the top right hand corner. “Revolutions are not made by meteorologists.”
I will bet $20 or 20 Euros to the first taker that I am right.
Jonathan:
Tempo Task
The relation of this concept to music I think is especially invocative, especially the conversational/debate ploy of the tempo task and the metaphor of trying to play with a fast drummer. Not to mention as a way of understanding Boyds’ OODA Loop; that the key is to get the opposition to dance to your beat – always reacting to your decisions.
Stan – your use of the image of creating “alternatives between the powers’ toes” is wonderfully instructive.
I am wondering of what use it would be to shift this spacial metaphor into a temporal one, given that the element of time so important to the tempo task… as well as music.
I am thinking of a few things to sketch the outlines.
The first thing that comes to mind is the experience of both listening and playing music in an “around the campfire” type setting where a lot of the good music is improvisational. There might be a lot of time that a group spends playing muscially nothing of note, maybe where the loud drummer dominates. However, when the group “works” it is often at a tipping point where a thread, for lack of a better word, that someone had been quietly developing in the background suddenly comes into focus and demands the attention and participation of everyone else.
I am definitely a novice when it comes to music, but it also makes me think of some things from what I’ve studied of permaculture. For example, one system that has been a particular interest of mine is forest gardening. In most of eastern North America (where I am located) if you were to let say, your lawn or vegetable garden go with no more human inputs, it would, given enough time, eventually become a temperate forest. A lot of our activities here, from mowing our lawns to weeding our gardens is a use of energy (with immensely variable “returns”) to hold back this beat, or tempo of nature. Which is really more than just a tempo but a progression, one ecosystem sets up the conditions of the next: grasses lead to shrubs which lead to pioneer trees then to canopy trees etc. However, especially with access to fossil fuels we are able to play a loud drum against this tempo. Forest gardening, one in a multitude of strategies, is a realization of the need to dance to the beat of ecology, or to use a nautical metaphor – not rowing against the wind but setting a sail.
I fear I am wearing out my metaphors. The point I am trying to get to is related to the fact that when designing a forest garden you start the design with what the garden will look like in 15-20 years, the maturity of a forest garden, which is acutally a young stage in a forest – especially considering that the oldest managed food forest may be over 2,000 years old. Designing these systems exist within a vastly different time scale than the music that most of us trained under: modern industrial society.
This then brings to mind a moment in a novel that I recently read – Ananathem by Neal Stephenson – where the main characters after being a part of paradigm shifting events, end the book by living out their days pursuing work, which they pursue despite the realization that they won’t see the “completion” of this work in their lifetimes.
So I guess to finally bring it back to thinking of “creating alternatives between the powers’ toes” as an instruction as it relates to time; there is, I think, a pervasive difficultly among those of us working in the struggle for social justice for our efforts to be efficaciously apparent in the short term…to be the giant not the space between its toes. Though this difficulty should not be over-generalized, as Stan’s point is well noted – the inability to abide with ambiguity is most definitely male gendered. (Also there are certainly different scales to everything. Sometimes the simplest of daily accomplishments can be the most rewarding and instructive.)
So, to my mind the related temporal instruction would seem to be – at its simplest – patience. We can’t possibly drown out the beating of the war drums, so perhaps our efforts should be directed not simply at making even more noise but toward developing the progression of what will become a new tune – one that might not be picked up in its fullest even in this generation.
A generational tempo task.
Thought provoking stuff. Thanks for sharing….and letting me play a ramble.
27 August 2009, 12:20 amTimothy R. Anderson:
The failure to prevent it. “It” being the terrorist attacks ( plural)
on the United States Of America, its citizens on Sept. 11, 2001. Please think of all the taxes that have been paid by the USA’s taxpayers for, let’s say, the past 40 years. Forty years, and at one point, all on the same day, FOUR airplanes are involved in the killings of more than 2,700 American citizens. That’s a FAILURE to protect American citizens. Period.
All this time later,…….. I am writing on Sept. 11, 2009 there’s still the matter of acknowledging the FAILURE. Well, it hasn’t been done ! Excuses, delays, passing-the-buck, more excuses, more delays.
It is enough to make a person-capable-of-thoughts ponder :
What Is The Point Of Spending So Much Money On National Defense
If The Nation Is Vulnerable To Attacks ? Why Were American Military
Servicemembers In South Korea On September 11, 2001 when they were
obviously needed in the USA on that day ? Call It Whatever You Want,
But I Am Not Convinced That Keeping LARGE numbers Of American Military Personnel Far, Far Away From America Is Productive ! An argument
could be made that it is a waste of money and time and money and time and more money and more time.
Another thing that a person-capable-of-thoughts might ponder :
In central California today, the price of one gallon of gasoline is $ 3.09 . . . . . . . . . . . that’s fortunate for President Obama. Imagine if you would, please, what President Obama ‘s opinion-poll
statistics would look like if the price of one gallon of gasoline
was approximately double that ; say, 6 dollars a gallon.
President Obama would not be getting the same amount of ” love.”
There’s no significant amount of time spent waiting for the opportunity to purchase gasoline, either ; much to the advantage
of President Obama once more. It is an impressive machine but not
a perfect one.
Please imagine, if you will, what life would be like in your particular area of the USA, my dear American-dwelling readers,
if the average visit to a gas-station became a three-and-a-half
hours visit. And please imagine also what life would be like if
the price of gasoline, per gallon, was six dollars.
This is stuff that President Obama and his Cabinet would rather that
you didn’t trouble your mind with.
I suggest you think about it.
Thanks for the input above.
Timothy R. Anderson
11 September 2009, 1:11 pmSteve:
The internal paradigm of the Iraq war as GI JOE rather than the cowboy movie.
(GI JOE is a popular Saturday morning cartoon/comic book/action play-set brand recently matured into a movie)
The Evidence:
#1-“Rid the world of evil-doers” and so much other Bush-speak is comic book language, not cowboy language. This is something He-Man or Superman would say, not something John Wayne would.
#2-Cowboys were not trying to “liberate” the Indians. They were trying to kill them off, this was clearly understood, and no one was really ashamed of it.
#3-All the cowboy imagery is completely appropriate within the GI JOE paradigm. GI JOE has a cowboy, a ninja, a biker, and a guy with a bionic hand. Dubya is just another action figure, one with “Water-boarding action grip”. The “victory” scene on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln is not a scene from a cowboy movie, but it could have come directly from a GI JOE script, the final victory scene of the episode. In his flight costume Bush even looks like a GI JOE commander.
#4-Say what you will about cowboy movies; the worst of them had better acting and dialogue than the Bush administration.
#5-The Blackwater look is GI JOE, all methed up and roided.
#6-Dick Cheney was clearly working from the Darth Vader/Cobra Commander PR model.
#7-If a cowboy was going to kidnap and savagely sexually torture a young male Indian, he would have done it with some level discretion, and would have understood his action as something disgusting and degenerate. The whole abu ghraib crew (especially the women involved) looked like GI JOE after decades of meth, wal-mart jobs, internet rape porn, mike savage and Fox news.
#8-GI JOE is closer to the mental and cultural level of the neo-conservatives and the limbots. Cowboys movies are two hours long and sometimes have complex plots and even moral ambiguity. GI JOE episodes were 30 minutes, perfect for the ADD generation to digest.
#9-GI JOE has flying submarines, helicopter attack jets, laser space satellites, attack drones, etc. Cowboys have a gun and a horse. The cowboy is a lone warrior. GI JOE is part of TEAM JOE, supported by its own military industrial complex.
#10-Cowboys win for being racially/morally superior to their enemies. GI JOE wins after Stormshadow and Mad Dog covertly infiltrate the secret undersea Cobra base and steal the command codes to the Lunar Death Ray.
#11-Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein don’t really fit in a cowboy movie. They are perfectly at home next to Cobra Commander, Destro, Doctor Doom, Lex Luther, etc. Indians didn’t have any interest in weapons of mass destruction or conquering the world. These are the normal preoccupations of Doctor Doom and Cobra Commander. Indians didn’t “hate us for our freedom”; they hated us because we were slaughtering them. Hating Freedom is a normal motive for the comic book villain.
#12-George Bush isn’t stupid; he knows that GI JOE has way better weapons than cowboys!
15 September 2009, 3:11 pmCurt Kastens:
I was reading on Anti-war. com that the US government is being tempo tasked in to emplacing crippling sanctions against Iran by the end of the year or “allowing” (really ordering) an Israeli strike on Iran by the end of the year. This report could be more saber rattling. I see the long term plan here as just harping about the Iranian nuclear prorgram over and over and over and over and over and over until the American population is so desensitized that the US can order the Israelis to carryout an attack. If this is not the plan what is the end game? Of course any Israeli attack would clearly be insufficient and be seen as an attack by the Americans anyways. Leading to violence between the US and Iran. Perhaps giving the US some stupid ass cover story that the US was attacked by Iran. It is kind of hard to believe that such things would happen soon as the US military seems to a civilian like me kind of stretched right now. Maybe those who make the decisions see it differently.
18 September 2009, 4:39 amI think that the US should be calling for crippling sanctions against the United Kingdom and Canada for their countries backward laws concerning libel. These laws which allow someone to be sued or arrested even when they are telling the truth is a much greater threat to the security of the American people than any Iranian hydrogen bomb. How manipulated can people get?