“Successfully employed by the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss in the nineteenth century to describe deviations in astronomical measurements, the Bell curve or Gauss model has permeated our scientific culture, the economy and the self-image of modern society in general. It is more than a technical description. It shapes our thoughts. We think in terms of Gaussian distributions. The problem, however, is that measurements of uncertainty using the bell curve fail to take into account or attach any importance to the possibility of abrupt peaks or discontinuities. Employing such a measurement procedure in world risk society would be like concentrating completely on the grass and ignoring the (gigantic) trees. But in fact the occasional and unpredictable large deviations, even though they are seldom, cannot be dismissed as ‘outliers’ because their cumulative effects are dramatic.
“Traditional instruments of risk management concentrate on normal procedures and regard extremes as inconsequential. This approach is misleading in world risk society, which necessitates a turn towards a non-linear approach: the exceptions that only apparently confirm the rule must be the primary focus of attention.”
Growing up a couple of hundred miles south of “The Troubles” in Ireland during the 80’s had its vagaries, which at this now twenty year vantage point, can hardly be believed, if recalled at all.
Whilst the closest we ever came to their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns was the deplorable Dolores (who incidentally didn’t get much closer herself), we were of course witness to the media battle front. A battle conducted using the deadly weapons of voiceover. In their wisdom, the British government declared that like errant Victorian children, Gerry, Martin and the rest of their Sinn Féin/IRA cohort could be seen but not heard. Picture the scene, it’s the morning after the night before. Another tit-for-tat nationalist/loyalist killing (translation: straight-up murder) and UTV or BBC Northern Ireland is looking for a quote of either condemnation or abhorrence from Gerry or Martin. Well, they weren’t going to get it. No, Gerry would wag his beard up and down with some animated affectation, but all we in TV land would hear was a passionless fob-off and some gibberish about Ian Paisley being neither a real doctor nor authentic reverend. Whatever.
[One suspects all of this may in fact have been a result of intense Westminster lobbying by the Ulster Voiceover Artists union (commonly referred to as the UVAu), but we have no proof of this whatsoever. ]
We are remided of this over the festive period whilst reading some more World at Risk
. Beck proposes a simple thought experiment relating to “global terror” [yes cringe, cringe]. What, asks the German sociolagist, would be the result of a worldwide media boycott of the flash points of global terror. You know, a total worldwide ban on reporting the latest antics of underpants arsonists (do you see what we’ve done there) or shoe bombers. We’ll leave you alone to answer that one.
For Beck argues that it is the now ever present anticipation of terror incident, rather than the incident itself that is the goal of this 21st century terrorism. And it is the “glamour of terror staged in the West which transform terrorism into a power drug.” Beck goes on, when dealing with the discources of global subpolitics, to suggest this power drug is now the developing world’s best narrative in which to fight economic globalization. Certainly the only one in which the media industrial complex of the West will pay constant attention to. Take away that attention and perhaps we’ll get some interesting results.
Reading books cover to cover is something I’m not getting done at the moment. I may however persist with Ulrich Beck’s ‘World at Risk’. Handily enough Ulrich gets straight to the point on page one. Handy because I’ve not progressed much further yet.
A suicide bomber attack in which terrorists with British passports planned to blow up several passenger aircraft en route from Heathrow to the United States with liquid explosives did not occur during the summer of 2006… because British police, in cooperation with international colleagues, managed to intervene on time and arrest the suspected perpetrators. On 6 November, barely three months after the thwarted attack, a new EU-wide regulation came into force that imposes severe restrictions on the transport of liquids…
Beck’s points:
New security clamp downs have restricted the freedoms of millions of passengers.
The restrictions are to anticipated attacks, the likes of which have never happened.
Like total dopes, these millions of passengers have accepted in their minds these terrorist threats and haven’t uttered a word. Clowns.
It seems our politicians, their policy advisers and the special interests who keep the whole show on the road can at a turn twist a threat, a risk, into a full risk discourse. With little debate and even less implementation friction. For the love of god. I’ll spell this out. A blown up plane takes down maybe 500 people. Do 10 simultaneously and maybe you nail 5k. That’s hardly a Book of Revelations style threat to the species. Like climate change.
Okay, here’s my point; Stern, Hansen, Gore, the IPCC, the clowns at the UEA and everyone else on the anthropocentric side of climate change are going to have to get real. We’ve got more science that we know what to do with. We’ve got millions of people around the world ‘campaigning’ on the issue. And we’ve got a big conference called COP-15 next week that is bringing just about everybody in the world with a say on climate change to the table. Yet never has there been the sudden and unilateral action on climate change mitigation equal in scale to that the small cell of potential bombmakers have had on the personal freedoms of airline travelers*. WTF!
Scientists can continue churning out data. It can be great data. It can be peer-reviewed by the finest peers in the land. Hell, we’ll even get Piers Morgan in to give it some showbiz sexing up. But unless someone (metaphorically) distills it into explosive matter capable of being hidden in shoe heels, it’s going to come to not a lot. At least not anytime soon.
It’s time to push this thing up a notch. How exactly may come to me when I get to page two of ‘World at Risk’. I’ll let you know.
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A quick BTW, here’s the other Beck (and Hansen) in my life. I’ll take the sociology over the scientology every time but great tune nevertheless.
* I appreciate we should be making flying more expensive and uncomfortable an experience, but let’s just ignore that for the sake of this small blog.
Tags: bell curves, insurance, Ulrich Beck
