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The Rational Fear of the Irrational
Sometimes when I watch a scary movie, I have trouble falling asleep. Most horror movies don’t scare me all that much, but when they do scare me, I imagine the monster slithering in the dark, and it keeps me up. This is a normal human occurrence, but it is fundamentally absurd.
I am genuinely scared of a monster that I know doesn’t exist. For the record, I don’t believe in ghosts or ghouls or demons or what have you. Yet the Dunwich Horror and Siren Head so creep me out that it keeps me up, though they are explicitly fictional characters made by horror nerds.
So some part of me believes in a story that is expressly sold to me as fictional. Weird isn’t it? Why does my brain do that?
I think our brains are made to run simulations of the possible scenarios in order to develop better strategies to survive. I imagine myself in the situation of being hunted so I formulate a plan to survive. In order to more realistically formulate a plan for my survival, my brain simulates the emotions that I would have if I were in peril.
Once I flip that switch on, it’s not exactly easy to turn off. Though some have it much worse than I.
I remember listening to a podcast with a Doctor describing a patient being utterly crazy over Covid. The guy was thirtyish and in good health. This was a few months after Covid emerged so the Doctor said, “You’ll be fine. The disease doesn’t kill anyone your age unless they are already very sick. Don’t worry about it.” However, the man insisted that he was terrified of Covid. His feelings did not care about the facts.
I don’t think that patient likes horror movies. I think he has a problem with turning his danger simulation switch off.
Stories are incredibly powerful things in shaping the human imagination. Far more relevant than facts and well-researched analysis of metadata, it’s whatever flips the switch that gets remembered.
We ought to remember that most of our ancestors were illiterate and not especially numerate. To understand the world around them, they told stories to each other.
Our modern moral panic over the number of black people being shot by cops is an example of how a story can overwhelm our collective reason. According to the Washington Post, in 2019, 14 unarmed Black people were terminally shot by police. For the sake of comparison, there were 20 direct lightning fatalities in America.
But if every day, you are told that cops regularly kill black people, you are forced to imagine that story to a point where you might internalize it. Now a good tale needs to have an engaging character, a fascinating monster, or be expertly written in order for you to be so invested in the book or movie to believe in it so much that you become scared of a thing that doesn’t exist.
The media relies far more on repetition than craft or captivating storytelling but it still functions quite the same. It activates the fearful parts of your brain to run the story in your head. Once you start up the simulation, you are imagining the claim as though it is true because that’s what humans do with stories.
We need to be very careful about the stories we tell. They hold a very real power over us. In fact, I would say that is rational to fear the influence of irrational stories.
A fine post, Henry! And intriguing, too. Thanks. Although I just avoid scary movies for starters! ;-)
I wonder about the Dunwich Horror. Aside from the fact that the town of Dunwich in Norfolk, UK, is being eaten away by the sea (I have been there), when did you encounter the Horror? And what is it?
I have trouble with the idea expressed in this sentence. Those who believe the story as delivered by the WaPo are succumbing to propaganda and that has little to do with reasoning of which there does not exist a collective form to my knowledge. OTOH, black individuals who reside in one of America’s urban cities can be very rational when acting cautiously out of fear of what is possible in an encounter with police.
Especially if they try to kill the police officer or someone else during that encounter…
But if you look at the murder statistics, it would be much more rational for a black individual who resides in one of America’s urban cities to act cautiously out of fear of what is possible in an encounter with another black person.
The stories never include how many black people are saved from violence due to a timely encounter with the police. That of course doesn’t make for as juicy a story.
According to the Washington Post,
Why is that factoid propaganda? I have heard similar statistics by other people who pay attention to facts and figures.
It’s a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. It’s scary.
Didn’t say that fact was propaganda. That resulted from the use of a fake news propagandist as the source.
WaPo is highly skilled at this.
I don’t care about WaPo. According to every analysis of statistics that I am aware of, Black-Americans have no rational reason to worry about being killed by the police. But much like myself, many people are irrational.
Don’t you think the Black-Americans know where most of the homicides and others gun crimes take place? Would they not also realize that this makes law enforcement more alert and this has the potential to lead to mistakes? Remember, we are speaking of innocent people here not the criminals who engage in shootouts with police officers. This is why this fake news plays so well and I guess WaPo has ten fake stories for every factual story. And the fear of police created by the fake news is not rational.
I do find it interesting how many of these monster movies boil down to us not being on the top of the food chain anymore. I can point to a number of science fiction books where the evil invading aliens eat humans for food despite the fact that farming humans would be exponentially harder/more dangerous/less rewarding than just ranching cattle.
Humans have a lousy meat to weight ratio.
And they taste pretty greasy too.
Or so I’m told.