The Subliminal Slide - a ramble-and-a-half...

The following rant is a bit disjointed and bounces around a bit. My apologies.

At the end of 2001 the average number of assaults on Calgary Transit operators jumped from 5 per year to 30 per year and in 2007 there were 57. There was a also a small spike in the number of assaults in 1999. This was a North America-wide trend.

What the hell could have caused first the little spike in '99 and what could have caused the huge jump in 2002 and the steady climb up in the six subsequent years?

I put forward the idea that the spike in 1999 was due to the tension preceding the millennium and the naysayers calling for the end of the world, or at least a crash in all systems when the date rolled over on New Year's Eve. We didn't know what was going to happen when that nearly mystical event occurred and so as tensions rose, so did either people's tempers or their belief that if the world was coming to an end they might as well act like the idiots they really were behind closed doors. Or both.

I place the blame for the immediate rise of assaults in 2002 on the events on September 11th, 2001. 9-11?! You betcha! In late 2001 the biggest enforcer on the planet, the self-appointed police of freedom, the USA, was dealt a deadly, destructive blow by a handful of zealous bullies right in the heart of the heart of America, and since then even the biggest 'cop' on the planet hasn't been able to catch one little miscreant, even with the help of a handful of other enforcers. Osama Bin Laden still roams free, unless you subscribe to the whole theory that it was all a conspiracy. Whether you believe the story we've been fed or not doesn't matter a whit because what I'm leading up to is that it's what society believes that is making the difference.

There are two post 9-11 ramifications which I want to touch on here. The first is the obvious one, the idea that since the attacks the changes in security measures as well as the fear of being attacked has risen considerably, especially since there have been attacks elsewhere in the world. Fear causes tension to rise.

But there is a secondary, more subtle result of a world-shaking event such as the attacks on 9-11 and that's the idea that if the USA and all its gadgets and weapons and allies and subversive information gathering can't find Osama Bin Laden, then they'll never catch me. It's like the breakdown in society when there's an extended blackout or even a riot when usually sedate, 'normal' citizens are suddenly committing crimes, caught up on the pack's frenzy. Except that I'm not talking about a frenzy. This is a subconscious thing, like watching five cars speed past a parked police car and then increasing your own speed a bit as you go past, not worried about being caught or punished.

With the internet and the ability to disseminate news around the planet in a split second, a mob doesn't have to be in the same physical space for the mob mentality to bubble up and make subtle tweaks and changes to behaviors. It starts small, like a kid who successfully shoplifts a candy bar on a dare from his friends and eventually works his way up to stealing cars. If he never gets caught along the way, then bravado and a lack of faith in the system cause a gradual escalation in his law-breaking. But I hear you protesting that not all kids who shoplift grow up to steal cars, and you're quite right. Sometimes they go on to get university degrees and get married and raise families and only cheat on their income tax or lie to an insurance company when making a claim, or even steal from the funds they manage for their clients.

It's subtle, not out of the blue, because of a gradual escalation in social unrest, social disquiet and because of the sometimes not-so-subtle social infection weaving its way through our collective subconscious. An infection that slowly convinces us that we won't get caught.
I mean, really, how many people would actually obey ALL the rules if there were/was no one but ourselves to police us and enforce the rules? I know I wouldn't just go out and beat up an obnoxious neighbor, but would I walk past a Future Shop being looted without going in and 'liberating' a new laptop? I like to think that I wouldn't, but is it because of fear of authority or because I know it's wrong? I know me well enough to admit that I can't give you a definitive answer, based on some of my less-than-stellar activities as a kid. I can honestly say that I know only two people who would walk away from looting, and one of them would even try to reinforce the doors to stop it from continuing. If I were there with him I would help.

We are a self-destructive species. I believe that it's only competition, ambition and laziness which separates us from the other beasts. Because we cherish our possessions and our comfort level, we have created multiple systems to protect ourpossessions and positions and to enforce the rules we've set out, and to punish the transgressors who would take anything from us. But it's the same competitiveness, ambition and laziness which makes us covet what others have and then want to take it from them.

Because this is all within the root or foundation of our species, I don;t believe it takes much to bring it to the surface. One of our biggest motivators is fear. Fear can motivate us to cower, to fight, to run away, to freeze in place, to do just about anything. Sometimes the object of our fear is standing right in our face, such as an attacker; and sometimes the object is an event, waiting for us just around the corner, in the future, like a first date or a trial or the millennium.

There was so much negative chatter and theorizing regarding system failures leading up to New Year's Eve, 1999, that it all became fear-mongering, and then tension rose and tempers flared. I'm convinced that the assault spike on bus operators in 1999 was a result of this fear, combined with fearlessness from the already established misfits who thought they saw the end coming and figured there'd be no consequences to their actions.

As for the 600% assault increase in 2002? 9-11, plain and not so simple. The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were made against only one nation, but they changed the world. Everything from insurance rates to racial profiling to the way we travel has changed. Even the numbers of non-suicide airliner hijackings has decreased after the brave passengers of that ill-fated United Airlines flight stormed the hijackers and gave their lives to stop the attack.

Once again, the fact that the biggest enforcer on the planet still can't hunt down and punish the man blamed for the attacks has created a "If they can't catch him they won't catch me so I'll get away with this shit and no one will punish me" mentality.

The increase in assaults isn't just a case of bad attitudes bubbling to the surface, it's also fear and stress. Stress? Sure. 9-11 shook the financial markets from top to bottom and so the disparity between the cost of living and the wages we earn has made life harder. We work longer hours at jobs we may not enjoy in order to take home less money than we need to care for family who all have their own stresses. It's a cycle, and an often subtle one at that, but it's there, and it can make us yell or gesture or strike out when the heat of the moment arises. And a little Prozac won't make it go away.

We also have to ask if this underlying fear of where we're headed as a species is making us all a bit skittish and a little more sensitive to minor insults than we used to be. It's a snowball effect where one event leads to another which leads to another which leads... you get my drift. You get snappy at me, I snap back. Frustrated that the situation went bad, I snap even louder at my next encounter and they react by snapping back at me (maybe) and then taking it out even harder on someone else, their spouse or child or employee or whomever. When the underlying cause is so widespread and subsurface, the change can be so subtle that we don't notice it from encounter to encounter until suddenly the mild-mannered reporter snaps and punches a bus driver who tells him that his transfer has expired.

So, where is all this subliminal downward spiral leading? I couldn't begin to tell you. I can just theorize about what could be causing it, other than the growing divorce rate in Western society, video games and rock & roll. Maybe I'm way off base with my theory and we should just blame it all on the resurgence of the music of ABBA.

That's all I have to say about that.

Ciao for now.

Tim Reynolds.
Author of Stand Up & Succeed
www.StandUpAndSucceed.com