A Shocking Reaction to the Fractalnoia of "The West Wing"

Although many would applaud The West Wing’s attempt to “reveal” and condemn the racially charged reactions of some to the 9/11 attacks as a noble crusade against the development of racism in America, I would consider The West Wing’s “Isaac and Ishmael” episode as a simplification of the more complex issues of racism and human associations that existed long before 9/11. I found that many people disregarded or chose to ignore the fact that “Isaac and Ishmael” was viewed on television, which makes Neil Postman’s discussion about the pacifying and simplifying effect of television much more relevant to the episode’s effect on its audience. Not only is The West Wing a television show that attempts to discuss the deaths of real people in a fictional context, but the show also commits multitudes of offenses against the audience through the simplification of very complex characteristics of human nature and the political landscape of the time. The first offense against the audience occurred at the point where the show uses the reactions of children as a metaphor for the reactions of the American people to terrorism. While the episode manages to avoid the reason and logic behind the arguments justifying the natural reactions of the American people to 9/11, the enlightened government officials of The West Wing engage in a one-sided lecture that only serves to insult the reasoning abilities of anyone who has ever experienced a traumatic loss or a traumatic situation. Furthermore, the episode does not manage to avoid making a few “irrational” associations itself, which is evidenced in the writer’s choice of the simple SAT analogy “Islamic Extremist is to Islamic as the KKK is to Christianity." The analogy manages to narrow down the anger of an entire nation of diverse religions to an association between Christians and Muslims, undercutting the relevance of the episode’s argument by implying that Southern Christians were the only group that was irrational enough to need an analogy in order to liberate themselves of their false beliefs. Therefore, the ideas expressed in the “Isaac and Ishmael” episode are symptoms of Douglas Rushkoff’s fractalnoia:

[Fractals] offer us access to the underlying patterns of complex systems while at the same time tempting us to look for patterns where none exist. This makes them a terrific icon for the sort of pattern recognition associated with present shock—a syndrome we’ll call fractalnoia. Like the robots on Mystery Science Theater 3000, we engage by relating one thing to another, even when the relationship is forced or imagined. The tsunami makes sense once it is connected to chem.-trails, which makes sense when they are connected to HAARP (Rushkoff 201).

Rushkoff’s idea of fractalnoia demonstrates the irony of the “Isaac and Ishmael” episode. By condemning the associations that individuals make within complex, personal environments the episode forces the development of an association not only between Southern Christians and irrationality, but also between 9/11 and the magical creation of racist suspicions of Muslims. The West Wing, therefore, engages in a discussion about the morality of associations that it is not prepared for because the producers choose to have this discussion on television. Of course, “Isaac and Ishmael” cannot recognize the inevitability of association between two ideas or people because that discussion would utilize a neurological argument that television is not equipped to deal with. These new arguments about the inevitability of mental associations such as racism were created after the development of the associanistic view of human reasoning that was pioneered in Hebb’s Rule:

An excited neuron tends to decrease its discharge to inactive neurons, and to increase this discharge to any active neuron, and therefore to form a route to it, whether there are intervening neurons between the two or not. With repetition this tendency is predominant in the formation of neural routes (Hebb).

Therefore, since associations can be enhanced with repeated interaction of ideas through direct experience or distant emotion, the extended response of individuals to 9/11 is a rational response to an incredibly traumatic situation that inflamed already present associations in society. In conclusion, I felt that The West Wing episode “Isaac and Ishmael” was a rushed and incomplete response to the complex topic of racism and immoral assumptions in society that was mostly due to the limitations of television as a medium for complex discussions.

Works Cited

Rushkoff, Douglas. Present Shock. New York: Penguin Group, 2013. Print.

Hebb, D. O.. Conditioned and unconditioned reflexes and inhibition. Montreal, QC:         McGill University, 1932. Print.