There is a man I once worked
alongside in a place of employment many years ago whom I will call Gus. He and I were working in the Field Service
division of the parts supply department of a medical supply firm. We shipped replacement parts on an emergency
basis to various customers around the country.
He was not on the job long before it became obvious that he was going to
be trouble. His particular function was
to obtain from other handlers in the building what was missing from our current
inventory that needed shipping.
Everyone caught on quite
early to the way he got around to demonizing each and every fellow employee he
encountered. We noticed that he was not
in a hurry to go obtain the parts we needed.
He kept pressing us to go over the list again and griping profusely when
we refused, parts we all knew he could identify. He had an engineering background; he was no
newcomer to the science the company was practicing. When we finally got him into a meeting with
the supervisor, he could not stay on the subject being discussed; he preferred
to go around the room and complain to each individual about an alleged slight
or an alleged barrier that each of us had placed in his path that supposedly
prevented him from functioning.
It became clear that he did
not trust anybody and was stalling at what he had been assigned, because he was
afraid of whomever he might have to deal with.
He was supposed to be a liaison between Field Service and the
manufacturing departments. The job
called for him to interact with lots of people at different times, which
required him to establish rapport with a wide variety of workers. His habit of demonizing got in the way of him
doing that. Gus was a paranoid, always
looking over his shoulder suspecting rudeness and mistreatment from others and
creating both in himself. After a few
weeks he was let go. I hope the next
interview he had was with a psychiatrist.
As I recall, Gus actually
thrived on the disputes he created; they were contrived by him. He seemed to have some vested interest in
suspecting and demonizing. He was
resistant to trusting, because trusting makes a person vulnerable to loss and
injury.
A paranoid feels helpless before what she/he thinks is a threatening
world, but by holding the world at arms length the Guses of this world
experience the illusion of strength – the strength of their warped
perceptions.
Is paranoia a sickness that
one can inherit? Are there genes and
chromosomes that can be acquired at birth that predispose a person to be paranoid
in thought and behavior? Imagine if you
can an innocent newborn baby opening its eyes to take in the world. If paranoia is an inherited trait, what
telltale signs would that infant demonstrate?
I would guess none! A baby learns
very quickly to depend upon the mother – for feeding, for affection, for
cradling, for care of the body. The
baby’s first achievement is mastering the ability to accept love and
caring. It is not hard. Until I hear evidence to the contrary, I will
maintain that paranoids are not born; they are created.
In the 1962 movie “David and
Lisa” the teenage David of the title is so resistant to trusting association
with anybody and so inclined to turn any encounter into a bitter one that he
goes into a rage when someone as much as touches his body. The setting of the story is a home for
disturbed youth. Having to share space,
he reacts to any physical contact as though an assault has been unleashed upon
him as a person, even if it happens accidentally, as it does in two instances. He has dreams in which he executes these
“enemies” by cutting off their heads, or as his analyst puts it, “so you’ll
feel safe”. Ironically the only one who
finally gets through to him is a schizophrenic girl, the Lisa of the
title.
No one attacks David; he only
supposes that everyone daring to enter his space is to be avoided and maybe
even punished.
What drives a nation or tribe
to engage in armed aggression? Various
things we would suppose: the lust for power or the craving for territory or the
expansion of political influence or the enhancement of national image or even
religious zeal. But it seems to me that
the pathology of paranoia has been known to play just as great a part in it. Distrust of anything foreign! The Empire of Japan in 1941 did not attack
Pearl Harbor in retaliation for anything.
Our two countries had been on at least ostensibly friendly terms during
the late thirties and early forties. The
attack was driven by the suspicion and nothing more that the U.S. had invasion
plans and that all the American military hardware sitting in plain sight there
in Hawaii was just waiting to be unleashed upon their small island nation. They created the monstrosity they somehow believed
already existed and feared.
The attack on 9/11 in my view
was driven by the same malignancy. We as
a nation had once again become the object of the same kind of fear. Back in the 1950s the general assumption was
that if World War III broke out, it would be waged between the U.S. and Russia. The big powers, the giants, in a super
collision! We had fears that they might
strike first and that whoever instigated it, the result would be the
annihilation of the human race or at least a large segment of it. The rest of the civilized world worried about
what these colossal nations would do and how they themselves could be caught in
the crossfire.
But time has shifted the
thinking of sober people. The Cuban
Missile Crisis did much to put an end to that perception. If either the U.S. or Russia had been trigger
nervous and ready to strike, that would have been the opportunity to make the
move. But the Russians in that 1962
event demonstrated that they were no more eager for that eventuality than we
were. They had as much to lose as we did;
they were no more ready than we to push that button and sacrifice their
infrastructures or their vast resources.
Today the picture is quite
different. It is now the small fry, not
the colossal powers, who pose the great threat.
ISIS and the Taliban and Al Qaeda are exercises in paranoia. They slash and run; they do not build
anything. They have little if anything
material to lose. Many of them are
suicidal, blowing themselves up to advance their influence, what little they
have. Like Gus they regard the rest of
the world as enemies, untrustworthy and ripe for demonizing. And they create the very warfare they think
others will wage.
But paranoia is
contagious. These terrorist groups do
the malicious things they do on the pretense that they speak for Islam. And there is the nagging fear in some
quarters, fed by the inhuman activity of these extremists, that Muslims
generally are a threat. We have a Presidential
candidate who wants to bar all of them from entering our country and another
who is pushing for police patrolling of Muslim communities. Recently a passenger on a major airline
flight made a big scene complaining that the Islamic man in the adjacent seat
was talking over his telephone in Arabic.
Law abiding Muslims have been shunned on the street. I fear that the paranoia of our enemies may
be spilling over into the mass consciousness of our nation.
A few days ago I watched on
line an old Twilight Zone episode in which a previously peaceful American
neighborhood is turned into a raging, reactionary mob by alien visitors from
outer space. The aliens, never seen and
remaining in hiding, have the power to shut off all their electrical fixtures
and to prevent all their automobiles from cranking. The people of that community, suddenly frozen
and immobile, sense that the aliens are somewhere nearby and begin to wonder if
they have someone living on their street who is in league with them. Puzzlement within a few hours turns into suspicion
and suspicion gives way to fear and panic.
Guns are finally drawn and one of their number is shot and killed. Seeing their own destructive power, they all
go stark raving mad. The episode ends
when the camera draws back and shows one alien instructing another in the best
way to conquer earth – one neighborhood at a time.
The story is farfetched, but
it gives us in microcosm an unforgettable image of people corrupted from within
by their own foolish paranoid suspicions.
Actually it might not take outer space aliens to undermine the security
and stability of our society and it will not happen in just a few hours.
I am pleased to see all the
burgeoning studies being currently made on the subject of peace making. A book published almost a decade ago entitled
“The Anatomy of Peace” issued by the Arbinger Institute has gained new
relevance and is one that every American ought to read. I will be reviewing it in detail in another
posting very soon. In a nutshell, it
tells a tale that is in actuality the reverse of the Twilight Zone
episode. An assortment of people already
full of suspicions and prejudices that have made trouble for them and their
families are transformed into peace makers in the space of one long weekend. I look forward to sharing it with you
all.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the
blog entry for August 9, 2013.
ReplyDeleteNice article tanks for sharing with us.
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