    43

    Perceptual Shutdown And the Future of America

    "Progress is possible only when people believe in the possibilities of

    growth and change. Races or tribes die out not just when they are conquered

    and suppressed but when they accept their defeated condition, become

    despairing, and lose their excitement about the future."

                                                                 Norman Cousins

    Americans threatened by foreign terrorism, battered by ubiquitous

    crime, victimized by downward mobility, and menaced by the decline of

    American industry, are trying to fight back.  The average breadwinner's

    workweek has gone up from 41 hours to 49,107 and the run-of-the-mill family

    now has two working parents.  Yet despite these adaptations, somewhere

    deep in the back of their minds Americans feel trapped.  They sense they are

    being pummeled by forces over which they have no power.

    As we've seen earlier in this book, a strange thing happens when

    humans and other animals are cornered by the uncontrollable.  Their

    perceptions shut down, their thoughts grow more clouded, and they have a

    harder time generating new solutions to their problems.  The outlines of this

    perceptual shutdown were revealed by an extensive series of experiments we

    encountered a while back, experiments which have become recognized as

    classics.  In a typical version, two rats are placed in cages next to each other.

    The cage floors can be electrified--producing a painful shock on the rodents'

    feet.  In one cage is a bar the rat can press to turn off the floor's electrical

    shock.  In the cage next door, there is no such convenient turn-off switch.

    Both floors, however, are on the same electrical circuit.  When the electricity

    shuts off in the floor of one cage, it shuts off in the other as well.

    When they're first put into the cages, the two rats go about their

    business--scratching, preening, sniffing for food.  Soon, the first shock hits.

    Both rats jump, startled.  They race around their cages, searching for relief.

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