New Yorkers won't stop for terrorism - even if terrorists stop for them
God Love the New York City terrorism snobbery!
Excuse me for using America's favorite poet's syntax in the title of this blog, but the rhythm of the New York state of mind seems to fit the pentameter of Emily Dickinson's poem. Although she did not stop for death, eventually, death does stop for all of us. But, let's not stop for terrorism, even when it could put us all in harm's way!
"Whether it is that his own cowardice pushes him to impute anxiety to others or that his own cynicism leads him to exploit it, he benefits from panicked people." (referring to Donald Trump)
New York City will not stop for terrorism
New York City and New Jersey:
The bombings that took place in Chelsea and New Jersey over the weekend managed to be both frightening and, in a strange way, inspiring. They were frightening, obviously, because they reminded us that, given the realities of modern technology and its dissemination of information, we can never hope to be entirely safe against the threat of terrorism. Whether or not the suspected bomber had a direct relationship with isis or other foreign groups, or, as so often now, an indirect one, or none at all, information about how to construct bombs is now so widely available that it is impossible to build complete immunity against terrorism, certainly not in anything still resembling an open society.
For all the ingenuity and obvious efficiency of the New York Police Department and its fellows—qualities that have made terrorism in the city since 9/11 far more infrequent than anyone might have imagined in those panicky days and months after it—there is no such thing as no risk. There will be more bombings, and there will be other bombers.
The more inspiring news is that, despite that truth, the response of the people of New York was not merely “bold” or “courageous,” or all those other words we use, sometimes obnoxiously, to congratulate ourselves.
Instead, their responses were marked by something even better: cool, plain, dull indifference. It was as if New Yorkers were, after a difficult decade, finally internalizing the numerical realities of the threat that terrorism presents and the threat it doesn’t—of what terrorism is and isn’t. (And it was also a nice illustration of Jane Jacobs’s principle that there are many advantages in having eyes on the street.)
We can never get the risk level to zero. Still, the idea—still taboo to say, still disallowed from articulation, still too shocking to be uttered, certainly on cable television’s non-stop anxiety rounds—ought to be that terrorism remains as close to that as we can hope to find in this fatal world. The risks we take getting in a car or getting married (given how often spouses murder each other) or just walking outside—not to mention the risks that we take in owning a gun—are far higher than the risk that we run from terrorism. As The Economist pointed out in a useful rundown of the statistical truths not long ago, the risk of an American being killed by terrorism in the decade after 9/11 and up to 2013 was one in fifty-six million, adding, “The chance of being the victim in 2013 of an ordinary homicide in the United States was one in 20,000. Traffic accidents are three times as lethal.” President Obama has suggested as much at times, but it’s not what people want to hear, and the wisdom of probabilities is taken to be indifference to risk.
The question becomes why we develop such a high level of fright about such a low-level probability. Why are so many still so easily panicked? One reason is that there are political movements and politicians who think to benefit from them, Donald Trump chief among them right now. Whether it is that his own cowardice pushes him to impute anxiety to others or that his own cynicism leads him to exploit it, he benefits from panicked people. The more scared people are made, the more likely they are to turn to a strongman to reassure them. It is an ancient—and always duplicitous and disappointing—formula.
But a second reason is both more insidious and more interesting. It lies in the eternal human propensity to overstate and overimagine risks and loss and underimagine and understate gains and benefits. That’s something that the Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman, among others, became famous for highlighting. Losses loom larger than gains. We are so “loss averse” that we often fail to compute the odds of life very well. We pay far more attention to remote dangers than to the safety of our immediate circumstances. Risk is scarier than reassurance is reassuring. One terror incident terrifies; the absence of terrorism doesn’t seem to put our minds at rest.
Bad news is always bigger than good. It always will be. That’s why terrorism will always get more time on cable TV than ongoing normalcy that surrounds it. It is not just a fact of cable television. It is a fact of the human condition, or, if you prefer, of human psychology. But it is not an irredeemable part of the human condition, or a prison that human psychology makes for us. Some wisdom helps us break out. And the encouraging thing is that, somehow, most New Yorkers have already done that. The cool on display over the weekend was not courage, really. It was just calculation, the hard-won calculation of real risks and real damage, born from an accumulated knowledge of the cost that panic and fear exact from each of us when we succumb to them. It’s the kind of sane calculation that pushes people forward to walk where they want to no matter how scared they’re supposed to be.
The more inspiring news is that, despite that truth, the response of the people of New York was not merely “bold” or “courageous,” or all those other words we use, sometimes obnoxiously, to congratulate ourselves.
Instead, their responses were marked by something even better: cool, plain, dull indifference. It was as if New Yorkers were, after a difficult decade, finally internalizing the numerical realities of the threat that terrorism presents and the threat it doesn’t—of what terrorism is and isn’t. (And it was also a nice illustration of Jane Jacobs’s principle that there are many advantages in having eyes on the street.)
We can never get the risk level to zero. Still, the idea—still taboo to say, still disallowed from articulation, still too shocking to be uttered, certainly on cable television’s non-stop anxiety rounds—ought to be that terrorism remains as close to that as we can hope to find in this fatal world. The risks we take getting in a car or getting married (given how often spouses murder each other) or just walking outside—not to mention the risks that we take in owning a gun—are far higher than the risk that we run from terrorism. As The Economist pointed out in a useful rundown of the statistical truths not long ago, the risk of an American being killed by terrorism in the decade after 9/11 and up to 2013 was one in fifty-six million, adding, “The chance of being the victim in 2013 of an ordinary homicide in the United States was one in 20,000. Traffic accidents are three times as lethal.” President Obama has suggested as much at times, but it’s not what people want to hear, and the wisdom of probabilities is taken to be indifference to risk.
The question becomes why we develop such a high level of fright about such a low-level probability. Why are so many still so easily panicked? One reason is that there are political movements and politicians who think to benefit from them, Donald Trump chief among them right now. Whether it is that his own cowardice pushes him to impute anxiety to others or that his own cynicism leads him to exploit it, he benefits from panicked people. The more scared people are made, the more likely they are to turn to a strongman to reassure them. It is an ancient—and always duplicitous and disappointing—formula.
But a second reason is both more insidious and more interesting. It lies in the eternal human propensity to overstate and overimagine risks and loss and underimagine and understate gains and benefits. That’s something that the Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman, among others, became famous for highlighting. Losses loom larger than gains. We are so “loss averse” that we often fail to compute the odds of life very well. We pay far more attention to remote dangers than to the safety of our immediate circumstances. Risk is scarier than reassurance is reassuring. One terror incident terrifies; the absence of terrorism doesn’t seem to put our minds at rest.
Bad news is always bigger than good. It always will be. That’s why terrorism will always get more time on cable TV than ongoing normalcy that surrounds it. It is not just a fact of cable television. It is a fact of the human condition, or, if you prefer, of human psychology. But it is not an irredeemable part of the human condition, or a prison that human psychology makes for us. Some wisdom helps us break out. And the encouraging thing is that, somehow, most New Yorkers have already done that. The cool on display over the weekend was not courage, really. It was just calculation, the hard-won calculation of real risks and real damage, born from an accumulated knowledge of the cost that panic and fear exact from each of us when we succumb to them. It’s the kind of sane calculation that pushes people forward to walk where they want to no matter how scared they’re supposed to be.
Labels: Adam Gopnik, Donald Trump, Emily Dickinson, The New Yorker
posted by Juliana L'Heureux | 2:09 PM
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