Note: This piece was originally written after the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol.
In one way, the trauma you may be feeling from the past 48 hours is a good thing: It means your brain is trying to keep you safe.
We are wired to crave information that has a survival benefit. As our species evolved over roughly 2.5 million years, a laser-like focus on potential dangers helped us avoid death. A Homo sapien who lived 150,000 years ago and focused on, say, how beautiful the trees looked instead of the predator lurking within those trees? They became dinner. His friend who was more enamored with the warmth of the fire instead of the enemy tribe member sneaking in to rob his camp got his skull bashed in.
My book The Comfort Crisis explores how modern comforts and conveniences are linked to some of humanity’s most pressing problems — obesity, chronic disease, depression, anxiety, lack of meaning, etc. — and how engaging with the forms of discomfort our ancestors experienced every day can improve our mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. We evolved in uncomfortable environments, and so we evolved to seek comfort. We instinctively default to safety, warmth, extra food, and minimal effort.
And so it is that our attention still defaults to information that implies danger. This is why our favorite news sites and channels and social media feeds look the way they do right now. The problem is: Our brains have a terrible time putting negative news into perspective. We still maintain a focus and stress response not entirely different than that we’d have when seeing a lurking predator.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s hard to know how real of a threat a couple hundred people breaching the Capitol really is. Certainly, the accounts and images feel viscerally terrifying. We can feel and react like our lives are in danger because we go down rabbit holes about what this will mean for our personal safety. This is our survival instinct firing on in a powerful way. But a concept called Prevalence Induced Concept Change offers a scientific basis for why we can’t see how comfortable and safe we are in the long arc of humanity.
In a 2018 study, the researchers found that as we experience fewer problems, we don’t become more satisfied or even experience fewer problems. We just lower our threshold for what we consider a problem. We unconsciously move the goalpost. This, the lead researcher David Levari, PhD, told me, is a low-level feature that saved brain power as we evolved. But the more comfortable we are, the more strongly we react to the tweets and news reports that set us off.
As you watch and read the news, ask yourself how the events you’re seeing will directly impact your life and safety. What is the most likely end scenario, to you personally, of whatever’s happening in the news cycle? What specific aspects of your life will it change? If it changes anything, how is that change most likely to manifest itself?
The answers to those questions might be complex, and a lot will depend on who and where you are, but arriving at them will help you gain perspective.
