Fear as a psychological response can be a good thing.
But once you've committed to an action ... or at least an action commits you
... Don't Panic seems like universally good advice for the individual, but
not for the collective. Examples of collective fear I can think of are
"America as the Great Satan" in the MidEast or "Rock'n'Roll as Satan's Tool"
in the heartland. People who are infected by a collective fear may have an
emotional response on initial infection .... God Damn that John Lennon ...
but then they begin to propagate the meme causing the fear in a fairly
rational way ... unless you challenge the basis of the meme ... "I like the
Beatles".
I was using "serious" in terms of infection. As in serious infections can
lead to loss of limb or life. So when someone hears and accepts we're
losing an acre of Rain Forest every second they think "isn't that awful" and
maybe the next time they're at Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Parlor they buy Rain
Forest Crunch instead of Cherry Garcia. It doesn't cause them to accept a
larger cost such as "No Brazilian Beef" ... or whatever. My point would be
that while it is in an individuals best interest to never panic ... but
societal change can either be plan: Let's Build A Pyramid, or as a reaction:
My God, They're Going To Build A Pyramid! Panic in a collective causes the
members of the collective to allocate even more resources to the
collective's goals.
----------
From: Robin Faichney[SMTP:robin@faichney.demon.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, April 02, 1998 3:04 AM
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: Re: virus: To Panic Or Not ... That is the question ...
Nate writes
>
>I
>believe Brodie described fear as a mechanism for infection ... i.e.
The
>statistic "every second another acre of Rain Forest is destroyed"
infects
>someone with an ecology meme ... but this type of infection doesn't
seem as
>serious as the more rational vectors like Eco-tourism or
cost/benefit
>analysis.
But isn't fear sometimes the most appropriate response to
a situation? Or, as I think David would put it: isn't
fear sometimes rational?
And what does "serious" mean there anyway?
--
Robin Faichney
http://www.faichney.org/robin/