Sunday, November 04, 2012
Riots and afterimages
Half-formed thought, more or less trailing from here.
All of our senses form afterimages, both static and dynamic. The static visual form is completely familiar: after looking steadily at a red object, we can look away and see the same object in green. Dynamic visual form is somewhat familiar: After driving for a while, with a constant flow of road-details moving downward as seen in the eyes, we can close our eyes and see a flow of road-details moving upward.
Vestibular dynamic afterimages are also common: after spinning leftward, everything seems to be spinning rightward.
Well then, how about afterimages in more subtle senses like number and status?
After our numerical sense has been counting upward, does a halt make us feel like we're counting downward? After our sense of comparative status has been sliding upward for a while, does a time of stability make us feel like we're drifting down in status?
This would correspond to the actual cause of riots and terrorism. If we get accustomed to rising status, a sudden stop or rejection, a broken dream or broken heart, will often lead to violence.
Contrarily, if we feel a constant low status for a long time, we're not inclined to riot or go postal. Any constant stimulus fades into nothingness; it ceases to be a stimulus. Conventional political 'experts' continue to blow this fact entirely, despite decades of deadly proof. They continue to attribute violence to steady low status, usually termed "grinding poverty and lack of education".
¶ 1:38 PM 
