As a group, from early prehistoric tribal societies to our present day towns and cities, we carry a level of fear with us to help ensure our safety. Being closer to the middle of the food chain for millions of years, fear is hardwired in our neurology to help avoid imminent threats, survive and thrive.
In nature, the predator and prey evolve at a similar rate or co-evolve. As a result, there’s an ecological balance. The gazelle gets faster and smarter to avoid its predator, the cheetah. So, to survive and eat, the cheetah, over millions of years, gets faster and smarter as well. This is a sustaining ecology in balance.
In an evolutionary sense, we are slovenly standing at the top of the food-chain as if it was an all-you-can-eat buffet. Without the fear of being an object of predation, we, as a species, are increasing our population to an unsustainable density.
When the Ancient Egyptians flourished along the lush banks of the Nile River, the scattered global population was around 40 million people. About 4,000 years later, there are about 7.5 billion of us. Proliferating, like an alien species out of balance with its environment and ecology, we have new collective fears rising from our transformed environment.
The coronavirus disease or COVID-19 has spread around the globe with unsettling speed while ignoring political boundaries, causing a collective fear that's almost tangible.
A level of collective fear is a rational response to what we watch on the news and see in the incessant stream of information on all our screens. However, we have to be aware, as a group, that fear doesn't swell up to a dangerous, and irrational, hysteria.
The psychology of a group, or society, is different than that of an individual. A virus, or misinformed irrational fear, can spread with dangerous speed within groups and, in a larger context, in human society. We react to news of a potentially deadly global virus with fear, which is a part of our evolutionary instinct for self and group preservation.
With that in mind, mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness (MPI) is a recognized collective disorder which can be as dangerous or deadly as the original virus which initiated the group fear. As members of a societal group, we feed off each other's emotional reactions and can cause panic to escalate to levels of danger and even death.
These days, mass hysteria looks to be materializing with people buying unnecessarily large amounts of toilet paper.
Scientific-based precautions, which are being communicated through government agencies, are the rational actions we can do. It seems counter-intuitive, but calmness is the correct response to what feels like a societal emergency.
The message to keep calm and carry on will regulate our primal fears and keep the situation from spreading truly harmful group behaviour faster than the virus itself.
We forget we exist in a natural ecology with consequences to our actions as a species. It might be a humbling situation not to have total control of our environment.
If we respond to the emerging situation with calm and rational acts, our collective fears will be lessened and, hopefully, the danger to human health, from the coronavirus and accompanying hysteria, will dissipate.
Keep calm and carry on. It’s the only way to turn our collective fear into a natural, constructive response in our place in the natural world.
Robert Skender is a Powell River freelance writer and health commentator.
