Words&Dirt

“The nature of parties has been imperfectly studied.  It is, however, generally understood that a party has a pathology, that it is a kind of individual and that it is likely to be a very perverse individual.  And it is also generally understood that a party hardly ever goes the way it is planned or intended.  This last, of course, excludes those dismal slave parties, whipped and controlled and dominated, given by ogreish professional hostesses.  These are not parties at all buts acts and demonstrations, about as spontaneous as peristalsis and as interesting as its end product.”

––Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck, loc. 2087

“This notion of reciprocal accountability as a balance of power can be seen elsewhere in many forms.  Take, for instance, the uniquely American romance with person firearms.  One favorite myth of the Wild West, depicted in countless films, has been the power of a humble man, armed with an ‘equalizing’ six-shooter, to resist thugs or corrupt officials.  This notion was generalized into a forceful ideology during the 1940s, when John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding magazine, propounded, ‘An armed society is a polite society.’

Campbell posited that even a mighty gunslinger will be foolish to abuse other people, if everyone around him is also armed!  Under such circumstances, no swaggering bully, even one with a quick draw, will last very long.  The ‘inevitable’ result, promoted by Campbell (illustrated in novels by Robert Heinlein and others), must be a society of great manners and courtly caution, where weapons wind up being used rarely just because they are ubiquitous.

This ideology underlies many of today’s arguments against gun control legislation.  Alas, as with the ‘just so’ tales of Karl Marx and so many other ideologues, Campbell’s fabulous leap of logic does not survive the test of evidence.  (Like communism, it might apply to some other species of sapient beings, but not to humans.)  The definitive experimental test is currently under way on the streets of countless North American cities, where a plethora of handguns has brought about anything but a renaissance of civility.  The problem with Campbell’s notion is that many humans beings, especially young males, have intensely wrathful emotional reflexes, often blinding them to abstract long-term consequences.  In former times, when fists were the chief schoolyard weapon, lashing out caused no more than a black eye.  But with firearms, one angry spasm and lead to at least a pair of tragedies: a dead victim, and an assailant whose life is effectively ruined.  There are no ‘take backs’ if you lose your temper with a gun.  No saying, ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I didn’t mean it.’

And yet, one wonders.  What if some way were found to remove the major drawbacks from Campbell’s idea?  Suppose that instead of pistolas, we all carried something nonlethal, that would nevertheless be profoundly effective in enforcing accountability for vicious actions?

A stun gun?  No, that’s still too literal.

How about cameras?  The kind with a live remote feed to some distant recording device, as described in chapters 1 and 2.

Ponder an image of everyone sauntering down the street with one of these ‘weapons’ on their hips.  Naturally, one result is near absence of street crime––that is a given.  But what about the price?  To many folks, the first picture that leaps to mind will be of a nosy place, snooty and provocative, with everyone shoving lenses toward one another at the slightest cause, real or imagined.

But would that actually happen?  Recall the restaurant analogy discussed in chapter 1.  People already have the power to stare at strangers!  Yet blatant gawking doesn’t happen very often, because most folks just don’t like Peeping Toms.  It is generally more embarrassing to be caught staring than to be observed with crumbs in your beard, or soup on your tie.  True, it is one of life’s hazards that someone you know may ‘make a scene,’ attracting unwanted attention in public, and the famous or beautiful will always lure the eye.  But these are bearable life hazards––or else restaurants would be empty.  For the most part, the deterrence of two-way visibility already works in daily life, helping to keep things generally cordial.

So why not extrapolate the same overall sensibility to a future world of enhanced vision?  Aren’t cameras just extensions of our eyes?  What holds of a restaurant should apply when we have tomorrow’s amplified senses, assuming that such powers are distributed evenly.  If it is considered boorish to brandish your camera too openly, people will ‘shoot back’ at those with itchy trigger fingers, retaliating by spreading reputation-damaging evidence of their voyeurism on the Net.  However, most of us will leave courteous neighbors alone, not because of some utopian civility, but out of general self-interest––the same muted balance of power that today lets us have an islet of privacy amid a crowded diner.

Perhaps, after a while, Campbell’s aphorism might come true after all.  A photographically ‘armed’ society could turn out to be more polite.  Only there is one paramount difference from his scenario that used lethal firearms.  With cameras, one can aim and fire without ruining lives.  The first to shoot does not always win.  And it is possible to apologize after a flash of temper.  In a world of cameras, in other words, there can be ‘take backs.’”

––The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?, by David Brin, pg. 255-6