I made a conscious effort, while drugged to the hilt with meds to deal with my generalized anxiety disorder, to say ‘Fuck it, if it’s beyond my control, I’ll worry about it when it really affects me.’
That mantra did more for my recovery than anything else. What is is about the human psyche that positively begs to have something to worry about?
Global Warming
Mega Tsunamis
The Mortgage Crisis
Terrorism
Fatness (or other body issues)
Money
Pedophiles
Taxes
Credit
Asteroids
Scientology
Automotive Resale Value
(and historically)
y2k
WMD
Avian Flu
Take, for example, the rising cost of Gas…what? It’s not rising any more? Hmph, well it could rise again! Oh, you’re worried about your mortgage…well 6 months ago you were worried about buying gas…you’ve just moved on to the next worry. When that’s done, you’ll just worry about something else.
I’m not saying there’s nothing to worry about, I’m not Alfred E. Newman, I’m just suggesting folks worry about things WORTH worrying about. Things within your sphere if influence. If it’s affecting you and you CAN’T affect it, then take manageable chunks and deal with the parts you can…all this worry without traction is worse than pointless.
Not that this will help things, but the avian flu thing isn’t historical. It’s still something to worry about.
As to why we worry, I have no clue. But I hope someone with a little more background in psychology can help us out a little, because I’m curious. Maybe it’s connected to our tendency for recreational outrage.
That’s the point…Avian Flu has a non-zero chance of affecting my (or your) life…but that chance is so very low that while you’re fretting about getting that cold, there are several hundred other slightly more than non-zero-probability things waiting in the wings to…not happen to you.
Well, I dispute some of the things the OP listed as being on the list of tangential worries. For instance, I very much worry about money because I’m not earning as much as I spend each month due to underemployment. I’m also worried about taxes, as they further diminish my limited money supply. I’m worried about automotive resale value because if things continue this way I may want to sell one of my vehicles in order to get rent or food money. I may not be able to change these things, but they certainly DO affect me or have a high potential to affect me.
But as for things like the Yellowstone thread… well, they’re unlikely, so in a sense it’s a sort of escape from my more immediate worries. And after pondering the effects of Yellowstone going BOOM then a little cold weather and beans and rice for a holiday “feast” may not seem quite so bad in comparison. Or maybe it’s something else.
Because the people who worried about bad things happening tended to survive and leave descendents who had the same traits, both genetic and cultural. The guy who leaves when the volcano starts smoking lasts longer than the guy who says “Don’t worry, be happy !” The family that kept up a good savings in case of economic disaster is likely to do better than the family that ran up it’s debt on the theory that they’d always have more money. And it’s generally safer to worry too much than too little.
I mean, you might as well ask, “Why do people worry so much about how to get a good job or their next promotion ?” Well, it’s because the planners tend to get what they want more than the people who expect good things to drop in their lap. And by the same token, people who plan for the worst are less likely to get smashed when it happens, and more likely to keep it from happening at all.
Never mind, Der Trihs said it better. What we need to learn (IMO) is how to control the worry so that it works to our advantage and doesn’t impair our lives (like free floating anxiety/phobias etc). Some concern and worry is good. Too much is not.
speaking to Der Trihs Yeah, but I think my point is slightly different…it’s that so much of our society is based on fear more specifically, irrational fear.
Is there a need for retirement help? Absolutely. Is there a need for fiscal responsibility? Certainly.
Is there a need to lose sleep over the stuff? Not as much as you’d think
I’m not looking for Hakuna Matata or a Hippie lifestyle. Just a recognition that a great deal of our worries are baseless and take away from the worries that CAN be dealt with.
Unfortunately, I’m running with %25 less take home pay as the year closes. Do i have money worries? Sure. But I’m also specifically spending time realizing that the sun still rises, the end are still meeting (with greatly reduced luxury spending) and life on less money isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
But that doesn’t sell newspapers…and the fearmongering that DOES sell newspapers is pervasive in our society. It’s almost like we LIKE worry.
A co-worker of mine firmly believes all life on earth will end on December 21, 2012. He bases this on some info from the bible and some ancient calendars. He plans of quitting his job some time in October so he can enjoy his last few months on earth with his family.
Speaking as a proud lifelong pessimist, I find that I agree with the OP.
There’s a marked difference between my chosen attitude of “things may not always be as good as they are now, and it’s almost certain that something will eventually go wrong, so I’d do well to live below my means and keep an eye out”, and the all-too-common attitude of spending every day living in fear that some horrible fate is just around the corner from any number of unforeseen sources. The latter, I believe, is what UB is criticizing.
Sure, there’s always a nonzero chance that something might go horribly wrong at any moment, and taking reasonable precautions against foreseeable events isn’t a bad idea. Freaking out about it, however, is not only nonproductive, but significanly lowers one’s quality of life in general. Once you’ve done all you can (or all you’re going to) to guard against catastrophe, there’s no benefit in stressing yourself out and screaming cries of death, destruction and mayhem from the rooftops.
I think the obsession with doom is just the flipside of the obsession with salvation. Both are wishes for some external force to end our world and our responsibility for ourselves. If you think you’re doomed, or that you’ll be saved, you don’t need to do all the sometimes-painful work to improve your own condition.
Because we are told, over and over, that everything is bad. I don’t want to point to the media (again), but when was the last time you turned on the news and DIDN’T hear the word “crisis”?
I particularly dislike the stories that start: “(fill in the blank) reported today…not as good as exepcted” or “(thing) is down…but it could go up again…how it affects you, next”. The sesationalism is disturbing. It must sell, because if it was as bad as they say, we’d all be pan-handling.
CNN had a running header on its site: What are you giving up? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t over-buy my house. I didn’t run up credit card debt, I didn’t invest billions in hedge fund ponzi schemes. Sure, my 401k is down, but I’ve got time.
Speaking of the stock market…record fluctuations daily (up 200, down 400, up 500, down 300…) cannot be based on anything but speculation and panic. I mean, what changed overnight? I bet if we stop watching the news we’d all feel a lot better about what we have and not worry about what might happen…uh oh…aliens…gotta go.
Thinking about disasters if fun. It’s about the nature of time. The main difference between us and dogs is we can see further ahead in time. Thinking through possible futures is fun. Futures with problems are interesting.
To make things even more interesting, there are many things about the world today that are clearly not sustainable. And the rate of change is faster than anytime is known history and is accelerating. I don’t know about the world, but when I do that on my bike it always ends in a crash. If something the size of the world crashes, I would like to know in advance which way to scamper. It’s a hobby.
I think a lot of the obsession with actual doomsday scenarios is also due to the fact that when it comes right down to it, we can’t see over our own horizon – i.e. our world is comprised of our own perspective, and, since that can’t continue when we end, we have trouble conceiving of a world without us, from which we infer that when we end, the world must, also. It’s a simple mistaken attribution of internal states to external circumstances, a fundamental solipsism that derives from the (often biologically advantageous) stance that in your world, you are in fact the most important person.
As for the (unnecessary) worrying, or any form of largely self-induced suffering, it’s in a sense a side effect of trying to give meaning to one’s life: as long as it can be constructed as some sort of martyrdom, it implies a higher purpose, something you’re suffering for, and thus, it has meaning, which is something most people yearn for.
For some people, it’s fear of the unknown or slightly known. Others like me; it’s kind of a morbid curiosity. I regularly follow hurricane updates, tracks, wind speeds, and who might get whacked by the storm. I’m no where near the path but a whopper storm piques my interest. Yellowstone blowing up; Mt. Rainer, giant tsunamis, all get my attention.
The chances are minuscule, LHC black holes anyone? But I have an interest in the science, the background, the deep history; just no specific fear.
At work the other day (I work in a hospital) I found in one of the common lounge rooms that the public sometimes uses a magazine by these people entitled “Endtimes Magazine”. They were on volume 18, issue 4, I believe. I found that amusing.
It also had been stamped all over with the name of some small church with a local address. craaaaazzzzzyyyy people and their crazy church’s… Going around leaving end of the world material in lounges that are so far off from the main areas of the hospital the only way you’d know it was there was if you knew a patient on the floor and were visiting them.
Oh… I’ll go visit so and so… Wish him well… Drop off some end of the world bible prophecy magazines… Grab lunch…
Wow, I was way off. I entered this thread thinking it was about the computer game, and couldn’t imagine that many people still remembering the game, let alone being obsessed with it.
However, now that I’ve read the postings, I have to agree – I’m freakin’ fed up with the constant bombardment of doomsday messages.
I recently read a book by Daniel Gardner called “The Science of Fear: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn’t–and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger” – an excellent book that addressed this very issue.
Yep. I think of it as all of us being stranded on a desert isle.
Some people think that help is just over the horizon, so there’s no need to worry about where the next coconut is coming from if you’re going to be saved.
Some people think that you start gathering those damned coconuts now, Gilligan, because help ain’t coming.
The fear of big things is part of a very human inability to weigh risks. We pump up the big unlikely things and downplay the small likely things. We fear the plane crash more than the car crash. We fear strangers molesting kids more than relatives. We fear terrorists more than heart disease.
It’s all a confusion play on the part of those who control the media. By throwing up endless scenarios of DOOOOM, they introduce noise and thereby reduce the chances of the right people picking up on and then thwarting the REAL Doomsday plot that is even now in motion.
Well, since the media are run by profit-hungry capitalists, I’d guess that they will use anything that is the strongest “hook” for people, a la advertising. The strongest human motivations come from our basic survival urges, such as procreation and avoiding pain and suffering. If playing on people’s fears will sell the most papers, that’s what the media decision-makers will do. There would probably be too much of a stink if sex was primarily used to attract news readers, since our society is so repressed… violence/fear is much more socially acceptable. So that’s what gets used.
