Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been reading a great new book by Daniel Gardner entitled the Science of Fear, How the culture of fear manipulates your brain..
In the book, Gardner, a journalist by trade, writes about how in spite of us living in the safest time-period in human history, we still live in a culture largely driven by fear.
Our average life expectancy in the United States is about 78 years. In 1950, it was 68. In 1900, it was 48.
We live longer than we ever have in our history – and we’re healthier too. And yet, as a society, we mostly live in fear. Why is that?
Gardner spends the early part of the book talking about the science behind our fear. He talks about how our mind takes in, processes, and recalls information. He talks about how story-telling has evolved with the human species and how that plays into our ability to remember. He discusses how many of our decisions are based on emotion (fear is a very powerful emotion), how group-think can adjust how we perceive things, and how many different entities – politicians, corporations, the media – often create and prey on our fears because it is profitable to do so.
Gardner covers a lot of different topics: terrorism, disease, chemicals, crime. He never discusses dogs – but the correlations are very easy to translate to how we’ve grown to fear dogs, particularly certain breeds of dogs – and how our emotional fears have overcome rational thought in how we deal with them.
Over the course of the next 7 days, I’m going to talk about some of the ideas from the book – and provide examples from the dog world of how this has played out in the world of canine legislation.
Meanwhile, don’t take my word for it, go out and buy a copy and read the book. It’s a great read - it’s informative and includes great storytelling – and worth the time. Gardner draws on a large volume of scientific studies to tell the story of how we process and analyze fear. Even if you could care less about canine legislation, the book will completely change how you view information – and you’ll be a better, more analytical person because of it – on that makes more of their decisions based on factual information vs making purely emotional decisions.
For the first couple of days I’m going to talk more about the book and the ideas from the book. In the last couple of days I’m going to get more into how this pertains to the dogs (although some of that will be sprinkled in along the way).
I hope you enjoy this little series. I think it will be good stuff…and I hope you agree.
I read the book at the beginning of the year...And I strongly recommend it. Reading this book, along with Glassner's The Culture of Fear and Gladwell's Blink, you realize how much our reaction to various things is emotional response. Humans view themselves as logical, rational beings, when in fact we respond to situations more from an emotional or gut reaction before we even allow the brain/head to kick in to actually think things out. A recent paper in the scientific literature discusses how we judge an object based on our immediate reaction to what we "think" the object it. Say you see something fuzzy or a blurred image out of the corner of your eye. What you think that image is is going to be determined a lot by context or experience. You may perceive it as a gun, a hair dryer, or a cordless drill.
Gardner does a good job of laying out the information step by step. He gives detailed examples and writes in an easy to understand format to explain a lot of the scientific work behind all this.
And yes, as you read you can see how the fear and the hysteria comes about with the dogs.
TEH
Posted by: TEH | October 06, 2009 at 09:23 AM
I haven't read the book but it sounds like a good read. I think we all make decisions based on our emotions (fear in particular) without even realizing it. I'm sure the book would help me realize a bit about myself and remind me to think twice when making quick decisions.
And don't even get me started on fear in the media ... terrorism, flu shots, climate change and yes, dogs.
Posted by: Lindsay | October 14, 2009 at 10:00 AM