How do we thrive in a world where every which way we turn our fear is being activated by
politicians, by the media and by the desperate events that are happening around us?
What is really fascinating when we look at the brain research around fear is that our
brains proxy anything that feels unfamiliar, incoherent or inaccessible as being unsafe.
There is fascinating research that shows that when people have lower levels of self-esteem
and they are in a job in which they are recognized and promoted, that promotion can feel incoherent
to the person with low self-esteem.
They have low self-esteem and they might be used to and expecting to be treated badly.
So what is fascinating is the results showing that when people are promoted when they have
a lower levels of self-esteem they are more likely to leave their jobs.
Fear is an incredibly, incredibly powerful force in our lives and our brains are fairly
immature in assessing anything that feels slightly incoherent for unfamiliar as unsafe.
What this might mean is that if you are used to hearing a story time and time again from
a parent or from a partner about how you are not good enough, you are more likely to be
drawn to that relationship because it feels familiar.
The messaging that you are getting time and time again is connected with what you expect
to get.
When we have politicians who are effectively demagogues who are inspiring fear in us, that
fear leads to very particular and relatively predictable responses.
When we are fearful there is this idea in psychological research of mortality say yes
that when our mortality is threatened, when someone says oh this group of people is out
to get you and we feel that we are actively being threatened we are more likely to stereotype,
we are more likely as individuals to become bigoted, we are more likely to respond to
messages that we hear time and time again even if they are against our values as somehow
making sense to us.
How do we protect ourselves against this?
Daniel Kahneman describes system 1 thinking and system 2 thinking.
System 1 thinking is the intuitive response, the emotional visceral us and them that can
sometimes arise out of fear.
System 2 is the deliberate thoughtful examination of what is this person saying?
Is it inline with how I really want to be?
Is it connected with how I really want to raise my children?
Is this a world that I want to support?
When we are able to step back from our fear, not to pretend that it doesn't exist but to
see our fear for what it is, fear, not a direction but data and an emotion.
When we are able to step back from the fear and able to assess the fear and assess the
messaging from the place of our values in a more deliberate thoughtful way, we are able
to come to a place where we are ultimately protected from the demagoguery message, from
the message of the fear and are able to move us ourselves forward in a way that is aliened
with how we truly want to be and with a world that we truly want to live in.
When Donald Trump first started with all of his messaging we used to hear things that
the politicians would say and we would be like oh my goodness how can the person possibly
say that thing?
But what happens over time is the more familiar something sounds, so the more we've heard
it time and time again, even if the story is inaccurate, even if the story doesn't serve
us the more we are likely to become immured to it and immune to it.
So what I actually think from a media perspective is when I speak to people in the media about
this they will often say well we simply go where the story takes us so we'll give as
much coverage to wherever the story is at even if the story is one that insights hatred
or violence.
But I actually think that there is a very, very powerful ethical choice that the media
makes in that.
Because when they expose and expose and expose and expose a story that is about hatred and
a story that is about violence, as human beings the more familiar we become with that story
the more immured we become to it.
And I think we can see exactly this in the current elections that things that were said
six months ago where everyone was horrified that a politician could possibly even prevail
on people to listen to what was being said are now being met with oh there we go again.
We somehow have become immured to the messaging because of the familiarity with which we are
hearing it.
And I think it's really important for us as a society and for us as voters to recognize
that a familiar story it's not necessarily a truthful story.
A familiar story might sound comfortable and our brains might proxy that story for meaning
safe and therefore right and therefore comfortable, but that story doesn't necessarily reflect
us or what we value.
And it's really important to be able to step out from the safety of what might at this
point feel familiar and really recognize the words for what they are.
They are words that are inciting hatred and division and stereotyping in us as a society.
And for many of us that's not the society in which we want to live.
And I think there is a moral impetus on us to be able to step back from the story and
step forward with our values.