The homo sapiens or modern human was born 200,000 years ago. He mostly lived as a hunter gatherer in the plains of Africa. In those years, a man was lucky if he lived 20 years. In those times, man was a prey. Life was very dangerous. You took a nap in the afternoon to wake up with a 700 pound sabertooth tiger eating your leg. You kissed your febrile baby and you would die with him in 4 days.
Fear was what kept humans alive. Fear was what made humans hide and run. Those who were afraid lived longer. Fearlessness had nothing to do with courage, it was plain stupidity. Against the predators of these ancient times, you just ran as fast as you can and tried to hold your shit together.
All this suggests that the part of our brain that processed fears, the amygdala, was an evolutionary advantage. The more fear, the better.
A few thousand years ago, life became a little safer, humans gathered in tribes then settled in villages then started to farm. We invented tools and weapons. Rapidly, the prey became the hunter. After tens of thousands of years of slow progress and evolution, our lifestyle just exploded…in a mere century, we build sky scrapers, we flew in planes, we sent men on the moon, we invented the internet and facebook.
Gone are the dangers of the past hundred thousand years. Sabertooth tigers are all dead. Strep throat, a disease that killed just 100 years ago, is a now just a minor annoyances to be treated with a few doses of penicillins. You see, science has made our world as safe as it can possibly be. And science keeps making our world a safer place at an accelerated pace.
We don’t have to go that far to see how the world evolves rapidly and becomes safer and safer with time. A few decades ago, we used to ride bicycles without helmet and cars without airbags or seat belts. Kids would play on DDT treated lawns and they would breathe lead enriched exhaust fumes. People would spray oil on dirt roads to reduce dust and they would drink contaminated water from their well. Everyone would smoke because it was the healthy thing to do. Those were days when we lived “dangerously” compared to today’s standards.
Now, i can say that we live in the safest era humans have never seen. I hope no one will challenge this assumption.
Yet, everywhere i look, i see fear and anxiety. The average man’s amygdala in the 21st century is overactive as 200,000 years of evolution made it to be and we are still fearful. Our brains have not had the time to adapt to all these rapid changes and we all are still convinced that we will die of something dangerous and since all visible dangers have disappeared we now fear things we do not see nor understand.
Some people see danger everywhere. The newspaper and news on TV do not help. Did you know our brains are wired to pay attention to bad news much more than good news. Again, it’s our amygdala. Bad news will keep you listening, it catches your attention. Very bad news is good for TV audiences. If there were only good news on TV, you’d be bored. So there is a negative skew in journalism toward negative events.Some people’s amygdala are so overactive that they become paranoid. They think our governmental institutions are filled with bad people out to get them. They think the CDC promoted vaccines to make money. They think the world is a very bad and toxic cancer promoting place. They also use the internet to promote false ideas, not backed up by science. Their rationale: if some website says something that confirm my fears than it must be true.
Fear breaks down reason because the amygdala is stronger than the pre-frontal cortex. Intelligent people give into fear because even intelligent people are just homo sapiens.
The main message i want you to remember today is: Relax, the world is a very safe place. Get your kids vaccinated. There is no evil conspiration out to get you. Autism is not caused by vaccines. Our healthcare and public institutions are mostly filled with intelligent trustworthy people with good intentions.
Thank you.
Martin Pham Dinh 