At its essence, a shock is the gap that opens up between event and existing narratives to explain that event. Being creatures of narrative, humans tend to be very uncomfortable with meaning vacuums—which is why those opportunistic players, the people I have termed “disaster capitalists,” have been able to rush into the gap with their preexisting wish lists and simplistic stories of good and evil. The stories themselves may be cartoonishly wrong (“You are either with us or with the terrorists,” they told us after September 11, along with “They hate our freedoms”). But at least those stories
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