This is the first in a series of 3. Once you’ve gotten past your deceiving eyes, continue on hacking your Paleolithic brain in Part 2 and Part 3.
Stereotyping, overactive imaginations, and the comforts of familiar surroundings have have brought our ape-species a long way since we came to be millions of years ago. We’re all around now because our ancestors did some things right and for the most part played it safe to survive another generation. You can imagine the fear and anxiety that comes from not being atop the food chain for eons. Yet the adaptations that saved your great-great-great-(you-get-the-point) grandmother’s butt way back when, could today being convincing you the world is a scary place to travel today.
It takes work however to convince yourself otherwise – because, yes, your brain always comes to the conclusion you’re right. Don’t worry though, here’s how you can trick that spear-wielding hunter-gatherer inside your head to use the more recent additions to your cerebral cortex.
Why Unlikely Things Seem More Likely To Happen
We are a visually-biased species and what we see is much more likely than other forms of stimulus to be recorded in our memory. Consequently, the act of even just being able to visualize something in our minds makes us feel it’s more likely to happen. Combine disaster-obsessed media, televisions, and graphic online videos being processed by a prehistoric brain and the world can seem like a terrifying place.
Fortunately, the converse is also true. Although conjuring up images of violent demonstrations in Cairo are easier than imagining normal daily life in Africa’s largest city, for our brains, seeing is (generally) believing. Once you visit a place that perception will be paramount to all others – no matter what you see otherwise.
So far, easy enough, but you’ve still got to convince yourself to actually go to that seemingly scary place. Now it’s time to use the media against ol’ caveman (or woman) hanging out between your ears.
Refocusing Your Social Bias
While you might be a fellow introvert like myself, at the core we’re social animals. Other people are extensions of our own brains and we use them everyday to assess risk. The same reason why sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp are popular are also why interviews with people after travel disasters are so poignant. We are biased to follow the crowd, identify with our peers, and put ourselves in others’ shoes.
- These days the amount of social information we’re flooded with is difficult to discern, so our Paleolithic brains er on the side of caution. The news (or more precisely the newscaster you can visualize) says Bangkok is a scary place due to protests. Why bother digging deeper if “everyone else” is telling you not to go – surely you won’t be hurt in Thailand if you never go to Asia at all.
Rather than completely shutting out the media, simply switch the social groups you listen to. Previously mentioned TripAdvisor is a good start, but so are other travel blogs, Twitter, your Facebook friends, and language social networks loaded with people who’ve been where you want to go. What you’re after are people like you (i.e. age, personality, etc.) or those who have connections to the places on your travel wish list. They’re out there and you’ll find them; giving you the benefit of interactive eyes on the ground. (Not to mention making it easier to visualize yourself at the destination – remember the point above?)
This is just the beginning of unwinding your prehistoric brain – which by the way has a short (1 minute per web page) attention span. That’s why this post will continue in Part 2 next Tuesday by learning from people who refuse to escape burning buildings and those who drink too much on the weekends.
[photos by: Lord Jim (caveman), L1mey (girl with wide blue eyes), Augustography.com.au (crowd panorama)]
Hm, I am quite curious to see where this series is going…
What a tangled web our neurons weave…btw LOL at your tweet about this post!
Great post, and actually applies to everything we do in life! We just need to stop hurting ourselves with our own dumb fears!!!
Why is it sooo freaking difficult to fight ourselves into the good:)
Our best friend and worst enemy that fear!
This is a great series- I think we miss out on so much in life because our perceptions (or misconceptions) hinder us from going forward. It is not even funny how many of my friends REFUSED to visit me in Africa – when I lived there for more than 10 years- because they were afraid “it was dangerous”…at the same time, many of my African friends asked me how I could have spent one year in Los Angeles “weren’t you scared? Isn’t it dangerous?” ha ha!!
Funny how the grass is more dangerous on the other side…or something along those proverbial lines 😛 To your friends on both sides you must have seemed like an adrenaline junkie for going to both Africa and LA 🙂
Sorry my brain’s attention span stopped before I got to the end of the comments? I kid, I kid – great title and love this concept. Looking forward to reading the rest.
haha, you’ve made it this far!
I’m all about jumping and thinking about the details later. You are more likely to do it when you think about the millions of things you need to wrap up.
That method has certainly been successful for your travels 🙂
Its amazing how the mind works things that you believe can never happen usually don’t (success, happiness etc) and when you believe you will get a good job have a great day those tend to be the experiences you have. I guess this is the same when it comes to travel we allow fear to keep us from experiencing great things.
Fear in some ways provides stability; but it’s a low-risk, low-gain strategy in evolutionary terms.
Well, I’m intrigued to see where you go with this, Anil. Interesting point about being programmed to follow advice – does that hold true for pioneers and explorers, too?
There are always outliers certainly, but almost all of us are biased by our social networks when we make a decision. Tricky thing the mind is though, we tend to look for reassurance and the people who agree with our original premise though 🙂
Hope you’ll enjoy the second part tomorrow!
Great start to a subject I love. I totally understand the fear of traveling and how we are held hostage by media – but my goal is that people can past the barrage of media and start to see things on their own. When I was a bit nervous about going to Lebanon this winter – it was connecting with other people there that eased my fears.
Love this series!
Our biggest travel enemy is also our biggest ally 🙂 but one thing that makes social media such a powerful motivator.
This is fascinating, and explains so much! We had a sad example of this here a couple of weeks ago, a woman was murdered mid-morning in a supermarket in a very grisly manner, and now so many Brits are asking if this is a safe place to which to travel (despite that Brits have been vacationing here since the 60s with no such occurrences). It was, of course, the act of a madman and could have happened anywhere in the whole world. For people living here it’s disturbing that this happened in a shop we frequent as part of daily life, but for anyone who is going to visit it’s ridiculous to think the place unsafe. The circumstances could have been the same in London, Sydney, St Louis, Cape Town or Buenos Aires. Of course, perhaps we should stay out of supermarkets because they aren’t safe now!
I remember hearing about that somewhere…but a good example at how visualizing an event can make it o much more real for the fear-centers of our brains. A shame though – like you say, it’s a random act of violence. No need to avoid grocery stores all together!!