FEAR and Stress As Collateral Damage

I’ve been advised to look at Paul Stiles Is the American Dream Killing You?. It’s a passionately written exploration of the author’s belief that the market/corporate interests are shredding our quality of life and human values.

Although there looks as if there is a lot with which I would disagree, Stiles does make some arguments that match my own recent thoughts about the role of FEAR in undermining people’s sense of well-being. Stiles discusses stress in terms that sound very like FEAR:

the word stress, as applied to people, comes form the word stress as applied to metals. The result is physical, mental and spiritual breakdown. Stress is thus the critical missing link between the market economy and human health.

 

According to psychologists, stress is caused by ‘any circumstances that threaten or are perceived to threaten one’s well-being and thereby tax one’s coping abilities. The threat may be to one’s immediate physical safety, long-range security, self-esteem, reputation, or peace of mind.’ Such stress stems directly from all the market pressures we have just described. In effect, it is our response to the Market’s efforts to make the economy more productive. And to some extent, that response is natural and healthy. It is only the hypermarket that pushes us over the edge.(pg 35)

The book is an impassioned outcry against the shredding affect of market manipulation on life and society. Stiles claims that road rage, urban sprawl, latch-key children, obesity, depression and even waning sex drives are the collateral damage of being enslaved to the demands of the market/corporate interests. It doesn’t seem as if Stiles is arguing for conspiracy theories that are aimed at destroying quality of life: he comments that the impacts he deplores are collateral damage. However, the absence of malice probably doesn’t do much to improve the quality of life experienced by those who sustain most of the collateral damage.

I am again struck at the role of mis-information in causing FEAR. There is a danger that we lose our resilience and end up trapped in a state that Seligman describes as learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is when we give up the belief that anything that we can do can influence our current experience and future outcomes.

Derren Brown has implemented some fascinating experiments that show how our behaviour can be manipulated by images, suggestions and ideas. Authors like Cialdini offer a rich exploration of the mechanisms behind influence and persuasion. Cialdini describes how some of us are more susceptible to the news and information around us than others. If we are constantly surrounded by news items or encounters with bureaucracy that undermine our belief in our own effectiveness, then I wonder if a predicatable percentage of our citizens are being pushed into a state of learned helplessness. People may manage to function in this state at a minimal level (depending on their personal circumstances) or they may seek help. At which point the latter may be medicalised, and they may receive an effective intervention. Or they may be stuck in the incapacity trap and roundly denounced for it.

My writing is becoming more stilted which is always a good time to stop. I will think about this again.

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project