Google it if you need to. I'm not going into details. My psychologist sister in law thinks the show exploits the mentally ill, but I enjoy it.
Besides, in the spirit of Szasz perhaps those sorts of concerns are themselves condescending.
Here's my question: how should we partition this behavior between (1.) extreme risk aversion, and (2.) inaccurate assessments of the probability of doomsday?
Szasz types would probably err on the side of (1.). I don't see how you can watch these people explain their thinking without putting the bulk of it on (2.). If we were talking bomb shelters in the Cold War there's probably a lot of room for (1.), but not in most of these cases.
Kate just made a good point: She said she's surprised that these sorts of people would willingly let camera crews in and broadcast their story on TV.
ReplyDeleteI don't think we have to partition it either way. I see it as an attempt to have a feeling of agency in a world where the centers of power are remote and inscrutable.
ReplyDeleteThe reality of the situation -
1) Too many hands on the political/economic/social steering wheel to easily make predictions
2) Little chance of your average schmoe getting even a finger on that wheel and steering
3) The likelihood that this remote and inscrutable process will dramatically affect one's life
- is dispiriting.
Better to focus on an imagined and neatly defined disaster and work towards solving that problem. I believe that in the psych lit it is called displacement behavior.
There's also a great deal of reinforcement. Once someone starts down this particular rabbit hole, visiting websites and perusing catalogs, the "evidence" stacks up for the (fill in the blank)-pocalypse. I have seen a couple of people go into the internet paranoia death spiral.
As for Kate's point, I'll theorize that the presence of TV cameras is both a validating experience and a chance for evangelizing.
As a solar installer I have seen my share - houses way too far out in the boonies with way too much canned food.