Security regimes prioritize survival at the cost of becoming ourselves
Evidence
These seemingly abstract, even abstruse, distinctions have very practical consequences. It is the reversal of priority between subsistence and consistence that characterizes the security craze of our dominant attentional regime. The shameful Guantanamo Bay or the Patriot Act in the United States, like the mantle of fear maintained in France by the Vigipirate Plans, by warnings against pickpockets, the Romany community and beggars, along with all the toxic rhetoric around ‘terrorism’ – all of this only (seemingly) protects our subsistence by preventing us from becoming anything but submissive and terrified zombies. The security attention regime is a tragic example of the terrible things that we can ‘do to ourselves’ when we are attentive to some things (mortal threats that have been exaggerated to the great benefit of a few political and commercial interests) rather than others (possibilities for a better life that we might all share in on a planetary scale). — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 487
Categorization
- SEED: The ‘security attention regime’ as a distraction economy — an essay angle applying this to modern surveillance capitalism and platform fear-based feeds.
- XREF: Echoes Frankfurt School’s critique of how mass culture manages threats to serve political and commercial interests. — connects to: Dominating nature forces us to serve our own devices to survive. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1471; Compliance with surveillance regimes can threaten the minimal integrity of selfhood — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 501; Realistic threat is framed as physical survival of the in-group
Broader Connections
- Compliance with surveillance regimes can threaten the minimal integrity of selfhood
#complicates(0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 501 - Realistic threat is framed as physical survival of the in-group
#expands(0.80)