About 15 years ago I was disucusing how I had inadvertantly driven to my home instead of the place I was going and had not even realized it. I was told that this is called "dog brain" by a friend of mine. You are so engrossed in another activity in your brain (yes yes, I know, shame on me for not thinking about driving) that you automatically just go to the place you are normally conditioned to go, in this instance, Home, instead of turning to the grocery store. Dog Brain
I'm not sure of the origin of the theory or the title. Apparantly there was an article 15 years ago or so but I've not found it. So what's the point? I thought about Dog Brain when I got an email comment about the posting here on 22 January. Dog Brain is the subconscience activities that you do and do not even know you do but to a keen observer it is noted that you do it as habit. It is this very observation that an assasin would use to his or her advantage. Dog Brain.
This is also a useful tool in trying to understand a terrorists mentality. First you have to observe what he or she observes. Put yourself in their head. Next time you have a dull moment eating lunch in that same restaurant, cafeteria or even sitting in your cubicle just observe your co-worker, friend or familiar person you always see. Take some mental notes over time and think about how this activity is repetitive. Now, start to think like a terrorist and see the world through the eyes of someone looking for oppotunities to incite terror. What would you do? If you can think of it so can they.
This exercise of watching dog brain can eventually lead you through several phases. First you'll probably worry about every little thing and become nervous and maybe want the government to implement more police state structure to protect you. But then you realize that the probablity of some of these things is so remote that you can't just shut yourself in your house and hide from the world so implementing more security by the government is going to accomplish about the same. Then you'll remember that one of the original intents of terrorism is to create public chaos and fear so a police state ensues and then their will be a violent overthrow because it will create enough 2nd rate security people with too much power and too little self confidence that everyone will get fed up with being hassed by people with a Napolean complex and just overthrow the government: Hence, we don't want a police state as this plays into the terrorists hands.
The next phase will probably be one of nirvana. You'll understand that there is danger adn that you shoudld be aware of it. You'll begin to ask yoruself where the real danager lies. You'll start to think about what you would do as a terrorist if you wanted to be successfull. You'll observe Dog Brain on a larger scale. How do organizations behave? Are there consistant patterns of Dog Brain? If I where a terrorists would I use Nuclear, Biological or Chemical weapons? Which one of these is easiest to acqire, transport and has the most bang for the buck? Well, let's see, if a potential martyr where infected with Ebola or Marburg and stuck in a series of flights around the country the infection rate would be pretty high and given that 70% of the cabin air is recirculated in coach, well, that might be easier than trying to bring in fissle material and building a bomb.
Have you figured out where I am going with this? Yea, we started talking about Dog Brain and that got the juices flowing but here's the crux. AS indicated in the Mapping the Future document in the previous post the biggest threat given a choice of NBC is B biological. Now why is it that the only thing you hear about in Homeland Security is Nuclear? Doesn't the bio seem more or a threat. There was a time when you could trust and assume that someone somewhere in a government office was taking care of this behind the scenes. I think that given our collective experience with Katrina and Homeland Security you can't trust someone to be in charge. Perhaps the mental midgets in charge are driving home thinking about who they can get to babysit their children during the next conference of world leaders, missing the turn to the grocery store because of Dog Brain and not even being aware of the mental exercise you just went through.
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