A few things we must overcome if we REALLY want to stop a renegade government.

To the mods: Sorry if this is the wrong forum. It directly addresses some things posted in this forum, but the actualy subject matter makes it questionable. If you decide that it would be a better fit somewhere else, please move it.


Recently I've been seeing a lot of concern about the US government given the current economic crisis. Most central is the concern that the govnerment is preparing to take control, strip us of our rights, etc. Inevitably, someone will say that we can't just be sheep, and that we have to rise up and take back our freedom, but few realize how hard this would actually be.

I'm not going to deny that there may be some true leaders amoong the ATS crowd, but I'm afraid that as much as most of you would like to believe that you'd be able to start some kind of rebellion, you'd probably have an easier time learning a new language from scratch and moving to another country.

There are many obvious, easily-visible reasons that starting a resistance would be difficult. They have armies with guns, tanks, bombs, etc while we just have guns. I'm not going to talk about those, but rather the underlying, psychological barriers preventing people from creating the change they really need.

Note that all of these phenomena have a wealth of experimental evidence backing them up and have been replicate time and again in laboratory settings.

-The bystander effect

This is the name given to the phenomenon that demonstrates that the more people are present, the less likely anyone is to do anything. This should be concerning given the size of our country. This can happen for two reasons:

1. Pluralistic ignorance: People assume that, because no one else is doing anything, there must not be anything to worry about. Let's face it. In a true crisis, 99.9% of the public wouldn't do anything. At this point, pluralistic ignorance kicks in and most people assume that the government isn't doing anything bad at all.

2. Diffusion of responsibility: Ok, so it's gotten bad enough that the public is concerned now. Well, now we have a new issue. It's one that EVERYONE here has encountered. It's the "someone else will take care of it" and "it's someone else's problem" issue. Quite simply: the more people present, the less responsibility we feel, and thus the less likely any one person is to act.


-Confirmation bias

People don't want to believe that they're being controlled. So what do they do? Seek out evidence and ONLY the evidence that suggests that they are NOT being controlled. This is one of the biggest reasons it's hard to sway anyone's opinion. They'll consistently only look at the evidence that supports their point of view. So what are we left with? A country that has thoroughly convinced itself that it is not being controlled.

-Self-serving bias

This is more of a problem in individualistic cultures like the US, but people have a tendency to take credit for their own accomplishments (dispositional factors) but blame anything and everything outside themselves for their failures (situational factors). For our little rebellion, this means a lot of in-group fighting. As long as we're doing well, we're fine. But the moment we suffer even the tiniest setback, everyone's blaming everyone else, and the resistance soon crumbles.




These certainly aren't the only psychological principles barring us from actually making a change, but I'm throwing them out there in the hopes that if a situation ever arises where we DO have to fight back against the government, we can recognize and combat them. I also know the repuation psychology seems to have on these forums, but the principles I listed are all ones we encounter in everyday life. It's just no one thinks about them and how completely detrimental they are to any sort of change, to the point where they can even completely prevent it.

[edit on 9-12-2008 by Tsuki-no-Hikari]

Starred and flagged, friend. Hopefully, this thread will take off.

And you hit the nail on the head. So many people on these forums, (the almighty individualists) and in general will spend all this time acting gung-ho about a revolution, but when the time comes to act, they won't do anything. Add to that the fact that the frontline will be everywhere and there won't be explicit orders telling them when and how to act, and you've got a recipe for failure- as you stated with the bystander effect.







[edit on 9-12-2008 by SpencerJ]

Armchair soldiers arent very effective in taking action.

Most of the rebellion, if any are to occur, will not come from those seeking popularity points in a forum.

It will come from the still active, still training, still well financed militias scattered across the country.



Cheers!!!!

Kind of a departure from my original post, but here's another concern I have:


I think this country is going to go through a big change in the next few decades. As the baby boomers get older, an unheard of amount of pressure will be put on the medical and mental health industries, and I fear that it will be to the breaking point. Rates of Alzheimer's, for example, have been increasing as the population gets older. It's thought that the rate could triple in the next 40 years. What's this going to do? It will drain all of the money that's left in the industry, which is sparse enough already.

I am also concerned with this trend of over-sanitizing and over-medicating. We're breeding new bacteria and viruses resistant to whatever we can throw at them. I wouln't be surprised if an old disease makes a comeback within the next century and wreaks havoc on our already weakening immune systems.

As if this wasn't bad enough, all of this sickness and death would cause an immense amount of stress, whcih in turn will cause even more problems, both physiological and mental.

The short of it is that I feel that if we stay on our current path, our medical and mental health systems will collapse. The government will have no choice but to step in and they'll ultimately end up with control over who lives and who dies. If you don't play by there rules, you won't receive health care...simple as that.

I think we'll have to watch how things are handled over the next four years, because we're running out of time. If we want to prevent yet another vital part of life and society from falling completely into the government's hands, we'll need to change the way we think about those industries and get the money to where it's needed (specifically: out of the pockets of the elites and into the hospitals and research labs).