Check out this post over at Boing Boing: Listen to the authorities and die.
Growing up in Mississippi, where there are quick shifts between populated and unpopulated areas, I’ve known this for a while. In Jackson, you pull over nicely when a cop flashes his lights at you and you comply nicely too. If, however, you are out in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi, surrounded by trees and a policeman pulls you over, you still comply, but you remain ready to pull a Dukes of Hazzard and gun it if things don’t look on the up and up. If you are not in a car and a cop drives up, you make yourself unnoticeable or you hide. It doesn’t matter if you were doing something wrong or not; no one wants the attention of a bored, hick cop.
Sure, there are good cops. But there are also a lot of cops who aren’t the big hero, who are just being a cop because it is what they could do to make the scratch they needed to get by. And there are also downright corrupt cops. As in any other profession, this is very much along a curve, so there are fewer hero and crook cops at either end, and a whole load of cattle in the middle. If those cattle are working under a bad cop, we’re all screwed. If those cattle are working under a hero cop, we have much better chances, unless of course, that hero is a stickler for rules.
Life doesn’t follow rules. Life doesn’t follow structure. Especially in the face of calamity. Although there is order in nature, it is an order that is beyond our limited structuring and therefore nature can appear very chaotic in our limited vision. There were probably very identifiable reasons why the tsunami happened. After it did happen, there were several news stories talking about how very few animals were affected by the tsunami. Why? Because they all naturally and instinctively headed inland as fast as they could. No ordered lines. No wait here and stay calm. They ran away. They survived.
Imagine if—as the Boing Boing post implies—we, as people, are able to replicate that instinct through cellphones and technology, resisting the false authority of lines and static orderliness? Now that’s interesting.
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