Paranoia - A Creeping Social Infection (Essay by Bob Racine)

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.