What Does The Success of "Contagion" Tell Us About Our Natural Aversion to Happiness? (his)

Last week Contagion was the #1 movie in America.  This is a movie about how the human population could get wiped out by a virus, starring a multitude of big name celebrities.

Some argue it’s just a continuation of the theme of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which ended (spoiler alert – skip to next paragraph) with the idea that the earth’s population is obliterated by a man-made virus.  It’s a work of fiction, right?  My concern is that movies such as these undermine our happiness by playing on our brain’s desire to latch onto negative information and cause us to artificially fear each other.

As humans we’re prone to fear.  That’s a fact.  Our ability to react to fear is what has helped us survive for thousands of years.  It’s called our “negativity bias”.  Historically, the potential outcomes of negative information were more harmful than positive information so our brains became trained to focus and hold on to negative information.  We lived longer by avoiding problems than enjoying good information.

However, our brains don’t distinguish between real fear and synthesized fear.  Fear stimulates chemical releases in our brains and our brains react.  In fact, we often enjoy this chemical release and cause it to occur for fun.  That’s what roller coasters and horror films are all about.

Unfortunately, we also allow synthesized fear to attract us to information or events that don’t help us but we still think the stimulation is important.  The news industry is built on this subconscious assumption.  The job of newspapers is to sell newspapers.  The job of TV news programs is to get you to watch them.  The job of internet news is to get you to open them.  The two most proven techniques for doing this are sex and fear.

This is no secret.  It’s been done for thousands of years.  Orwell’s book 1984 is all about how a government controls its population through fear.  Many organizations and people use fear as their primary source of control.  It’s very effective.

My mother and mother-in-law truly believe their neighborhoods are less safe than when I was growing up (60s and 70s).  Apparently many see it the same way.  That’s why we have hover parents who don’t let their kids ride their bikes very far and prefer they stay in the house.  But, is this fear accurate?

Here are the facts about crime in the U.S. as reported by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports between 1960 and today:

• In 2009 America's crime rate was roughly the same as in 1968, with the homicide rate being at its lowest level since 1964.
• Overall, the national crime rate was 3,466 crimes per 100,000 residents in 2009, down from 3,680 crimes per 100,000 residents forty years earlier in 1969 (-9.4%).
• Crime in the United States has fluctuated considerably over the course of the last half-century, rising in the late 60s, 70s and 80s, peaking in the early 90s and then decreasing steadily from then on.
• The homicide rate in particular has decreased 49% between its record high point in 1991 and 2009.
• Overall, the crime rate in the U.S. was the same in 2009 as in 1968, with the homicide rate being roughly the same as in 1964.

So, my mother and mother-in-law have a point.  They saw the dramatic rise in crime through the 70s, 80s and early 90s.  However, they are not tracking the decline.  The U.S. crime rates today are just as good as the 60s.  And, if you live in a rural or suburban, middle or upper-class neighborhood your chances of being the victim of a violent crime are significantly less since those types of crimes occur far more often in lower income urban communities.

Fear is the antithesis of happiness.  Whenever we are experiencing fear we’re not truly happy.  We translate artificial adrenaline rushes of fear into feelings of happiness after stepping off the roller coaster or exiting a horror movie, but neither of those situations creates true happiness.

The real damage, however, is not roller coasters or horror films.  The real damage of synthetic fear is when it gets carried over into our lives and we live in a state of heightened, artificial fear about the world around us, strangers, our neighbors and those who need help the most. 

Fear is contagious and our brains grab onto it more forcefully than any virus attacks our immune system.  Perhaps we should be more concerned about that virus wiping us out, or at least wiping out our ability to be truly happy.