Rob: "Dropping contaminated corpses" was - of course - a historical metaphor showing the illusion of safet provided by walls, wasn't it Constantinople that not only fell to the "bacteriological warfare" but whose refugees also spread the disease across Europe? For that matter, the film "Safe" - arguably one of the best American motion pictures in the last quarter of the century -- beautifully shows the illusory safety offerred by new age "refuge communities" (no wonder why liberals and new agers hated the film). As far as responses to crises are concerned, I am really far away from rat-choice and game theories, beacuse they try to explain behaviour from omniscient hindsight assumed by the viewer. These theories assume that the actors think what the viewer does - indeed, an example of the arrogance of (social) philosophy - without trying to investigate into the actors' actual thinking, motives, definitions of the situation etc. I am much more inclined to accept a situationist point of view claiming that people re-eneac certain role that come with the definition of the situation, even if that means being harmed in the end. That point is well argued by Jack Katz in _ Seductions of crime : moral and sensual attractions in doing evil_ New York: Basic Books, 1988 -- where he shows how crime requires a ceratin cooperation between the perpetrator and the victim, each one playing the appropriate to the situation and predictable role. He furrther argues that defining the sitiuation as a certain type of crime by the perpetrator is a prerequisite of a success, for otherwise the behavior of the victim is not predictable. I am pretty sure that such is the explanation of the apparent cooperation of nazi victims - the victims simply succumbed to the definition of the situation imposed by the nazis and duly played their victims roles (cf. Richard Rubinstein, _The Cunning of History_ ). I sincerely doubt that any rat-choice calculation, e.g. "compliance will prolong my life by a few minutes" took place. I am pretty sure that had someone transgressed the nazi-imposed script and, like that proverbial child souting "the emperor has no clothes" -- the people quietly marching to the gas chamber would ceased so doing and behaved "unpredictably." That illusrates the powerful influence of collective norms on individual behavior. "Keeping up with the Jonses" may not stand up to the standards of rat-choice, but certainly reduces uncertainty. That I think may explain much of the behavior associated with capitalism - people go shopping sprees, vote & answer opinion polls in a predictable way, scapegoat the poor, flee to the burbs etc. not because of some rationally (mis)calculated risks, but because they have been lead to believe that everyone does so and hence it is the "right thing to do." They simply play out the roles they think are expected of them. That view, BTW, offers some hints about the possible scenearios for a revolution in the US Doug asked about a few days ago. Here is one. Have a few truckloads of dynamite to blow up TV stations and newspaper printing facilities and a few crates of ammo to shoot the celebrities and pundits - or find some other way to shut the tube up so people will not know anymore what is being expected of them, what script to follow. Chaos will result, but chaos is a prelude to a revolution. Best regards, Wojtek
