The Stimulus-Effect, Viral Fear and the Brain
In becoming technologically connected, the world has not only become smaller it has become more forceful, pressing in on us in our cars, our bedrooms, our bathrooms, and worst of all, in the most private parts of our minds. Our brains are being altered, perhaps irrevocably.
And nothing changes the brain quite the way fear does. It has even been suggested by Bruce Lipton, a cellular biologist, that violence and fear can alter DNA. In brain scan studies, they have found that with persistent exposure to discordant and fearful stimuli distinct changes occur in the limbic system, particularly the amygdala. In simple terms, it gets bigger as the executive portions of the brain responsible for judgment and planning become smaller. If the evolutionists are right (and I both doubt and pray they are not), then it seems we are rapidly becoming lizards.
Fear has become so embedded in our culture we no longer notice it as fear. We see it as thrill. One Walt Disney theme park -- a place that was created as a small paradise for children and an escape for the young at heart -- not boasts a ride called The Tower of Terror. Can you imagine? "Daddy, after we see Mickey Mouse can we go on the terror ride?" How do you fit those two things together? I don't think they were made to go together, especially in children. So, then, what happens to us when we force it?
The Addicted American
Americans have always been a brave, brazen group. While most of us are religious or at least spiritual and the vast majority are incredibly generous, we are also a culture of iconoclasts and take some delight in upsetting the old order of things, splitting open the delicately jeweled egg just to see what's inside, racing across a forbidden continent to see who can get to the rocky coastline first.
Consider the sort of person, the individual that has those qualities. Now consider that individual over time as there are fewer and fewer old orders to overthrow, fewer and fewer gods to shatter against temple walls. The energy of that person, the forces at work in him have not been changed and as a result they must find some other outlet.
When we run out of continent, we must conquer space. When we run out of new fun, we must generate danger. We have become a nation of thrill addicts unable to be still or just be. So what do we do? I think we do what our graffiti artist said. We stop thinking and we shop.
Thrill and Fear
Thrill does not exist alone, either. Thrill and fear are kissing cousins. And in many ways our thrill seeking (whether that's insane roller-coaster rides that test the laws of physics or bungee jumping or staying glued to entertainment TV to stay informed about the latest scandal) is a defense against the constant pressure and fear we are fed by a media that is in our lives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
By going to horror movies, by subscribing to the Fear Channel, by watching beheadings on the internet we have found ways to manage our terror at a distance, to experience fear in controllable milieus so we can convince ourselves that we have some broader control in the world. It is delusional. Outside of twelve-step programs where the Serenity Prayer is a staple and the churches and synagogues where people still kneel to a higher power, we are a nation that has no context for spiritual surrender.
Fear That Won't Stop: What That Means to a Country at War.
Soldiers stand at the front line of modern fear cultures. While they take the worst of it for us, presumably they are also more prepared for the exigencies of battle and taught to be what is termed "stress hardy."
In many cases, this is true. Soldiers can do their tours of duty and return suffering less emotional damage than most civilians would experience under similar circumstances. However, a large and growing number of our soldiers are returning with incapacitating post-traumatic stress disorder, which, loosely explained, is a syndrome of chronically acute fear.
Chronic and acute are usually mutually exclusive, but in this case we see them bonded, and that is in fact the pathology -- an intense fear that simply will not go away. It is as if the off switch has been removed. But what these soldiers offer us in their awful suffering is the ability to see in crystalline form what is going on in us at a broader, more subtle cultural level.
When fear is relentless, several things happen to us: We lose judgment, we become insensate, our startle response is either grossly diminished or harshly exaggerated, we are stuck in arousal, we can't recognize safety signals (the cues that tell us when we don't have to be scared anymore), we're always on guard or conversely we're fearless when we shouldn't be and because of our numbness engage in stunts of increasing risk, we are unable to sleep and walk through our days with a sense of impending doom. We become irrational. We lose conscious control of our responses. We startle easily and simultaneously lose a necessary and rational responsiveness.
