Hysteria

Hysteria

   The philosopher and psychologist, William James, is quoted as saying, "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."   And prejudice, as defined, can emerge from "gender, political opinion, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, nationality" and other causes.  But what leads to prejudice, whether brought about by family or social pressure, is usually fear.  Throw in a bunch of people, add a good dose of fear, mix it all together and you create hysteria.

   The hysteria can come in many forms, from a disease such as ebola to a fear of animals such as Jaws and sharks (author Peter Benchley continued to apologize for the destruction his novel created on the shark population).  Sometimes this is due to quick and perhaps inaccurate reporting, the retractions coming far too late to matter (witness the recent apology by Rolling Stone for its one author embellishing her story on campus rape by fraternity members).  And sometimes, the reporting and graphs are not to scale, making things seem much larger than they are, ebola being just one example.

   So it was especially sad to read about the killing of three Muslim young adults over what appears to be a silly argument.  One couple was newly married, the other victim was her sister;  all were dedicated to helping the poor and impoverished with obtaining dental care.  Alongside this story came a series of graphs from Time showing the projected increased in the Muslim population in Europe;  dark colors painted an ominous picture high on the heels of Charlie Hebdo incident in Paris.  France's Muslim population was shown as jumping to 10.3%.  But wait a minute...the 10% figure was the estimated percentage of the overall French population; the actual number of French residents (not all are Muslim) who are known to have fought in Syria and Iraq as suspected terrorists (which was the basis of the article) numbered 1200.  So let's do the numbers...1200 divided by 66 million (the current population of France) equals .000181%.  Not a thousandth of a percent, not a ten-thousandth of a percent, not even a hundredn-thousandth of a percent!  We're talking a few per tens of millions!  Hysteria.

   The media is quite good at creating this sort of distortion.  It's not exactly deceptive, but it does take some thinking.  It reminded me of my younger days in Southern California during the Watts riots, something that was portrayed on the news as the whole of Los Angeles being on fire;  but Watts was such a small city and the riots were happening within a small area within that city, a few blocks really; but the hysteria had reached my part of town some 50 miles away.  Years later, I got caught in campus protests, demonstrations that involved thousands of college students.  Stepping outside of class, I saw helicopters flying overhead, police in riot gear lining up, and then the confrontation began; rocks and bottles flew overhead like an old Viking battle, the objects sailing in the air as if thrown in sych like a band of archers.  The police countered using their riot shields and marched forward, a few hundred moving up against several thousand.  Students inside buildings were kept inside (I was standing nearby on a veranda and was quickly swept up in the frenzy, a scary feeling as my feet left the ground when the crowd began running, my arms pinned to the side, my breathing getting compressed, helpless, unable to break free, and now understanding how people can get crushed and trampled in crowded stadiums).  Within minutes, the crowd was being segmented, a strategy one police officer told me about (I was a budding writer so was curious to see and hear about their viewpoint); undercover police (dressed as students) were in the crowd, searching for the few instigators (indeed, you could almost watch a half dozen or so individuals being handcuffed and led out of the crowd).  And in less than an hour, it was over.  With no one to lead the crowd into hysterics, students quietly returned to their normal routine.  Like me, they didn't quite seem to know what the whole thing was about.  It was exciting, to be sure;  but what was it all about?

   Comedian Carlos Mencia talked about being confronted in an alley as he left a performance via the back door.   The man told him that he needed to change some of his routine, to stop saying such negative things about people (the President being one);  Mencia said that he, coming from the "projects," can talk with the best of them, but saw that this was simply a joke going wrong.  "I'm a comedian," he told the man, "I tell jokes and my job is to make people laugh."  Chill, is what he was trying to say.  But he goes on to talk about how his encounter will likely get twisted, how his jokes will get told in another way, good or bad, and he'll be left saying he never said it that way, or it never happened that way, or you weren't there, this is how it went down.  It sounds good to any of us, until you're talking to a mob.

   Ferguson, Charlie Hebdo, ebola...the list could be anything.  It is up to us to sort out the facts, to know that there are likely many sides to a story, that labeling a cause or a group or a religion is fueling our fears...and that we need to question who's really behind it all.  Hysteria in other words...it almost rhymes with "chill."