The Importance of Being Urgent
Accelerating Society for Political Gain
Imagine if you will you are an emergency room doctor just about to finish your shift. You’re happy you’re finally done, especially since your daughter’s fourth-grade “Healthy Foods” pageant is set for the evening and you want to make sure to be there to support her and to take a picture of her dressed as a carrot.
Just as you are pulling off your white coat, someone comes into the emergency room missing a thumb. It seems they had had a close encounter with a shrub meany (woodchipper for the uninitiated) and now needs to have the thumb reattached.
While - to you - seeing your daughter’s play is more important, it is without question more urgent to immediately put the thumb back in its rightful place on the hand, if only to allow Darwin’s Dolt to be able to send text messages in the future.
Your daughter will be disappointed and a bit sulky for a bit – and you feel bad for missing the big event – but eventually both of you will understand the totality of the situation (though, of course, a few months later when you are shopping with your daughter she will mention the incident and demand a new backpack and you will acquiesce.)
In other words, there is a difference between something important and something urgent and sometimes the urgent must unquestionably take precedent.
But what happens when everything is falsely deemed urgent? That can give whatever it is – from responding to a mean Tweet or “owning” the other side in a political context to “saving” the planet to trying to squeeze yet another pointless point into a newscycle - the patina of importance as well?
Welcome to the politics of panic, the politics of (disgusted shudder) “never letting a crisis go to waste.”
The politics of the pandemic, the politics of the panopticon crisis now facing society has shifted humanity away from rational, deliberate thought: when all is urgent the important is ignored.
This purposeful effort – spurred on by an advocacy public relations industry that has a click-desperate media at its beck and call – is the root cause of much of the current global angst – Everything is going wrong! Everything must be done now! And if it isn’t we’re all going to die! And if you don’t think it’s a truly calamitous crisis that needs immediate attention then it’s your fault it is going wrong in the first place!
This use of fear, this spooking of the herd, is an age-old tactic of nearly every power elite that has molded nearly every culture to suit its own ends.
It should be noted that a spooked herd is far more likely to stampede and under a stampede is a very handy place to toss enemies and critics, silencing them.
From daring to displease the ancient gods to getting banned on Facebook, the use of the “obey for the benefit of the group” ploy is not only effective but also doubly powerful; like in so many movie scenes, the hero cares not for his own life and only gives in when someone else – someone they love – is threatened with destruction.
In other words, good people are more likely to sacrifice themselves rather than others and the bad people manipulating the situation know that full well.
Besides adding a societal element, an acute sense of urgency, let alone panic -
- removes psychological barriers to compliance and/or agreement with what is being offered.
Obviously, the past has seen its share of equivalent events and trends, but the speed at which “facts” and thoughts and ideas currently move through the internet – the primary starting point of almost everything today - essentially destroys the usual “predators” of bad ideas. Just as with the internet, panic as well removes those predators - nuance, history, research, reason, time to reflect, reliable sourcing, and proper context, all of which are shunted aside in an emergency situation.
A permanent state of emergency – from COVID to climate to systemic whatever-ism – allows its creators and controllers to make gains they otherwise never could.
That constant state of panicked uncertainty breeds an overwhelming desire for simplicity, for safety, for a cocoon far away and anyone or anything that promises that sense of normalcy is greeted as a savior.
And that savior will be followed until the ends – or just the end – of the earth.