Is the World More Dangerous?

The world has not become more dangerous, statistically speaking. However, the speed, method and context in which we hear of shocking and painful information has changed dramatically. Throughout our day we are bombarded with short snippets of information, often with little context. A headline here and there, a scrolling sidebar of news while we are at the gym, a tweet, a facebook post, a text message from a friend telling us of a tragedy unfolding half way around the globe in the life of a person we haven’t ever met.

The human mind is geared toward the salience of danger and bad news, often referred to in social psychology as the negativity bias (Rozin & Royzman). These pings penetrate our psyche and often come with no context and little if any opportunity to process them. As the flow of informations becomes more bite sized and bottoms-up, we have lost the context of our master storytellers who have historically put information into context. This is a side effect of modern living that undermines our feeling of basic safety on a subconscious level. I believe we will need to develop more effective buffering processes for coping with the dart-like effect of modern information flow. We must double down on the things that feed our souls, make us feel held and comforted and at peace within our hearts and relationships. Laughing with friends, hiking in nature, long bubble baths, writing in a journal, watching the sunset, snuggling, making music, dancing and so on. Likewise, there is important work to be done on the narrative we carry around in our own minds and these skills will be needed now, more than ever. As a society, we are in great need of compelling, persuasive leadership and fresh ideas that move us boldly into the future with greater confidence, optimism and strategic action. We wish to be informed, active members of society and forces for good in the world, and I would offer that to do this we need to pay extra attention to how we care for ourselves, how we digest the diet of modern information flow and how we align ourselves to compelling models of new leadership and action.
