The argument being made is that if only Hitler had been prevented from speaking, then the Holocaust would have been avoided. The conclusion is that ALL distasteful speech (distasteful being entirely subjective) should be treated as a precursor to mass murder. People trained this way FEEL like they are watching a proto-Hitler every time t…
The argument being made is that if only Hitler had been prevented from speaking, then the Holocaust would have been avoided. The conclusion is that ALL distasteful speech (distasteful being entirely subjective) should be treated as a precursor to mass murder. People trained this way FEEL like they are watching a proto-Hitler every time they hear something they disagree with.
Feelings are easily manipulated. People really can FEEL like they've been punched in the gut from words. People can FEEL under acute threat from a glance. Have you ever seen someone having an acute phobic reaction? The spider is harmless, but the person is reacting like it's a lion or a serial killer.
Don't focus on feelings, it's the strategy that got us into this mess in the first place.
My point is that those FEELINGS are overwrought and transient, and that only in learning how to recognize that and "getting past" them to critical thinking can we fix the problem.
People have been taught, over the last 40-50 years, that emotion is more powerful than reason. That needs to be "un-taught".
Yes, they're overwrought. However once an anxiety disorder is created, those feelings are not transient. The hormones and neurotransmitters flooding through the brain are the same as if they were responding to an actual threat. Watching videos of genuine war will reinforce this, not undermine it.
Exposure to things you are scared of generally helps you to overcome your fear, not reinforce it. I think your body and your brain begin to know intuitively that the perceived risk is actually not as dangerous as was first believed. Malcolm Gladwell gives many examples of this in his book David and Goliath. One that stands out to me is the example of the British in WWII being constantly bombed. The idea was that after the first few, they were rather insulated in spirit from the terror of them, feeling a bit invincible. Here is a quote about the panic from bombing that Churchill and others anticipated:
"The panic never came. The psychiatric hospitals built on the outskirts of London were switched over to military use because no one showed up. Many women and children were evacuated to the countryside as the bombing started. But people who needed to stay in the city by and large stayed. As the Blitz continued . . . the British authorities began to observe—to their astonishment—not just courage in the face of the bombing but something closer to indifference. ‘In October 1940 I had occasion to drive through South-East London just after a series of attacks on that district,’ one English psychiatrist wrote just after the war ended:
‘Every hundred yards or so, it seemed, there was a bomb crater or wreckage of what had once been a house or shop. The siren blew its warning and I looked to see what would happen. A nun seized the hand of a child she was escorting and hurried on. She and I seemed to be the only ones who had heard the warning. Small boys continued to play all over the pavements, shoppers went on haggling, a policeman directed traffic in majestic boredom and the bicyclists defied death and the traffic laws. No one, so far as I could see, even looked into the sky.’
Dweck's Growth Mindset and Jordan Peterson's observations about voluntarily facing fears to overcome them also come to mind when thinking about how people respond to fear and how their mindset when facing things matters.
That's true, but only if the people around you aren't reinforcing that it's terrifying and disabling. Deliberately, mindful exposure to spiders will cure a spider phobia, for example. Watching people around you scream and panic at the sight of spiders will create one.
Yes, I agree. A kind of learned panic, learned offense, learned “shock” at a “scandalous” opinion. Some are deliberately trying to instill these things
The argument being made is that if only Hitler had been prevented from speaking, then the Holocaust would have been avoided. The conclusion is that ALL distasteful speech (distasteful being entirely subjective) should be treated as a precursor to mass murder. People trained this way FEEL like they are watching a proto-Hitler every time they hear something they disagree with.
Feelings are easily manipulated. People really can FEEL like they've been punched in the gut from words. People can FEEL under acute threat from a glance. Have you ever seen someone having an acute phobic reaction? The spider is harmless, but the person is reacting like it's a lion or a serial killer.
Don't focus on feelings, it's the strategy that got us into this mess in the first place.
My point is that those FEELINGS are overwrought and transient, and that only in learning how to recognize that and "getting past" them to critical thinking can we fix the problem.
People have been taught, over the last 40-50 years, that emotion is more powerful than reason. That needs to be "un-taught".
Yes, they're overwrought. However once an anxiety disorder is created, those feelings are not transient. The hormones and neurotransmitters flooding through the brain are the same as if they were responding to an actual threat. Watching videos of genuine war will reinforce this, not undermine it.
Exposure to things you are scared of generally helps you to overcome your fear, not reinforce it. I think your body and your brain begin to know intuitively that the perceived risk is actually not as dangerous as was first believed. Malcolm Gladwell gives many examples of this in his book David and Goliath. One that stands out to me is the example of the British in WWII being constantly bombed. The idea was that after the first few, they were rather insulated in spirit from the terror of them, feeling a bit invincible. Here is a quote about the panic from bombing that Churchill and others anticipated:
"The panic never came. The psychiatric hospitals built on the outskirts of London were switched over to military use because no one showed up. Many women and children were evacuated to the countryside as the bombing started. But people who needed to stay in the city by and large stayed. As the Blitz continued . . . the British authorities began to observe—to their astonishment—not just courage in the face of the bombing but something closer to indifference. ‘In October 1940 I had occasion to drive through South-East London just after a series of attacks on that district,’ one English psychiatrist wrote just after the war ended:
‘Every hundred yards or so, it seemed, there was a bomb crater or wreckage of what had once been a house or shop. The siren blew its warning and I looked to see what would happen. A nun seized the hand of a child she was escorting and hurried on. She and I seemed to be the only ones who had heard the warning. Small boys continued to play all over the pavements, shoppers went on haggling, a policeman directed traffic in majestic boredom and the bicyclists defied death and the traffic laws. No one, so far as I could see, even looked into the sky.’
https://djaunter.com/scared-to-travel/
Dweck's Growth Mindset and Jordan Peterson's observations about voluntarily facing fears to overcome them also come to mind when thinking about how people respond to fear and how their mindset when facing things matters.
That's true, but only if the people around you aren't reinforcing that it's terrifying and disabling. Deliberately, mindful exposure to spiders will cure a spider phobia, for example. Watching people around you scream and panic at the sight of spiders will create one.
Yes, I agree. A kind of learned panic, learned offense, learned “shock” at a “scandalous” opinion. Some are deliberately trying to instill these things