Do You Suffer From Mean World Syndrome?

October 21, 2010October 29, 2010 / Laura Grace Weldon / 4 Comments

Do you turn on TV news most days? You’re probably not doing yourself or your family any favors.

What you bring into your home is tragedy, violence and the worst of human behavior. Study after study has shown that news programming tends to breed cynicism and helplessness.

Yes it’s important to be informed, but the kind of coverage found in network and cable news is usually superficial. And worse, it’s skewed to visuals and headlines chosen for shock value. That’s what boosts rating. In-depth information that advances real comprehension isn’t what TV news delivers. As a result, viewers are more likely to become pessimistic, fearful and unable to gauge reality.

Yes, really.

The phenomenon is called Mean World Syndrome.

It’s based on the research of George Gerbner. His analysis showed that the violent content of news and entertainment convinces viewers that the world is more dangerous than it actually is. Back when Gerbner did the bulk of his work, media was a smaller and quieter place. Now we have 24 hour access to news channels, movies, and shows as well as all kinds of net content.

Gerbner wrote,

Our studies have shown that growing up from infancy with this unprecedented diet of violence has three consequences, which, in combination, I call the “mean world syndrome.” What this means is that if you are growing up in a home where there is more than say three hours of television per day, for all practical purposes you live in a meaner world – and act accordingly – than your next-door neighbor who lives in the same world but watches less television. The programming reinforces the worst fears and apprehensions and paranoia of people.

And those who are convinced the world around them is a highly dangerous, unpredictable and unforgiving place have more than a heightened sense of insecurity. They are more likely to see violence as a solution to problems rather than to reason in more nuanced ways. Fear also drives them to take hard-line political and social attitudes.

When Gerbner testified before a congressional subcommittee in 1981, he said

Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line measures…

Hmmm.

Fact is, the world is NOT more violent.

Center for Media and Public Affairs did a study on network coverage of murder. Between 1990 and 1995, the murder rate in the U.S. went down thirteen percent. (It continues to go down.) But during that same period, network coverage of murders increased three hundred percent.

Try this antidote, an excerpt of a Steven Pinker article titled “We’re Getting Nicer Every Day: A History of Violence,”

The criminologist Manuel Eisner has assembled hundreds of homicide estimates from Western European localities that kept records at some point between 1200 and the mid-1990s. In every country he analyzed, murder rates declined steeply–for example, from 24 homicides per 100,000 Englishmen in the fourteenth century to 0.6 per 100,000 by the early 1960s.

On the scale of decades, comprehensive data again paint a shockingly happy picture:

Global violence has fallen steadily since the middle of the twentieth century.

According to the Human Security Brief 2006, the number of battle deaths in interstate wars has declined from more than 65,000 per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 per year in this decade. In Western Europe and the Americas, the second half of the century saw a steep decline in the number of wars, military coups, and deadly ethnic riots.

Zooming in by a further power of ten exposes yet another reduction. After the cold war, every part of the world saw a steep drop-off in state-based conflicts, and those that do occur are more likely to end in negotiated settlements rather than being fought to the bitter end. Meanwhile, according to political scientist Barbara Harff, between 1989 and 2005 the number of campaigns of mass killing of civilians decreased by 90 percent.

The decline of killing and cruelty poses several challenges to our ability to make sense of the world. To begin with, how could so many people be so wrong about something so important? Partly, it’s because of a cognitive illusion: We estimate the probability of an event from how easy it is to recall examples. Scenes of carnage are more likely to be relayed to our living rooms and burned into our memories than footage of people dying of old age.”

Yes, we face harsh realities. I hardly need to recount them to you. But when crime, disaster, ecological devastation, famine, and other tragedies are presented as random occurrences nothing constructive is gained. Emotions like anger, fear, and sorrow can rouse us to positive action but only if action is an option. Sometimes that’s direct action, sometimes it’s seeking deeper understanding of how to prevent these occurrences from happening again.

Problems portrayed on movies and shows, problems relentlessly hyped in the news and by pundits—-well, they just seem so pervasive, so disconnected from causes, so impossible to change that we feel helpless to do anything about it. That’s another effect of Mean World Syndrome.

We end up pessimistic, which is bad for our own health and bad for the planet.

True, we humans may be more likely to pay attention to negatives than positives, a trait that probably helped us to survive in saber-tooth tiger days. But long progress of humanity has much more to do with our tendency to cooperate, form close relationships, and to care. We are hard-wired for compassion, not for the imaginary mean world.

Fight Mean World Syndrome

Get your news from sources that adhere closely to the highest journalistic standards.

Consider widening your perspective with international news.

Check out Center for Media Literacy. They offer resources to help young people develop critical thinking skills related to our world of mass media.

Read magazines about people and groups working for positive changes such as Ode and YES.

Enjoy some heartening news with Good News Network and Great News Network.

Fear image courtesy of Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha’s Flickr photostream.

When Girls Think Their Looks Mean Everything

October 13, 2010February 28, 2015 / Laura Grace Weldon / Leave a comment

As little girls, Elissa’s friends were rambunctious and wholly themselves. They pursued their own interests with no concern for other people’s opinions. They drew comics featuring hilarious dialogue, danced and laughed simultaneously until they fell down in breathless mirth, conducted basement science experiments, and pretended they had super powers. Their mothers talked about how freely their girls expressed themselves, grateful to have strong daughters.

Then it started.

Like a relentless viral infection, one by one these girls succumbed to our appearance-obsessed culture. Elissa watched angrily as her friends were laden with heavy new concerns. They worried about what they looked like and what others thought of them. By 11, 12, or 13 years old they hid their unique interests and suppressed their considerable talents. Instead they maintained a near constant awareness of hair, make-up, clothes, body shape, who said what, and how everyone else reacted.

Threats, screaming outbursts, bleak despair became common. And that was just their mothers’ reaction to their daughters’ behavior. Helplessly witnessing what has become a female ritual of relentless self-scrutiny causes many of us to lose it. We know all too well that the effort to constrict oneself into a mold is exhausting.

But who can blame our girls, let alone the adult women who continue to suffer painful confidence wounds, when impossible standards are the norm? It’s almost as if we females are set up to fail at this appearance game. Oh wait, we are. Even the Beautiful People aren’t beautiful enough.

Celebrities “fail” too. Take a look at the already lovely Mena Suvari, model and actress whose acne is removed, pores eliminated, eyes brightened and skin smoothed.

Check out the before-photoshop pics of women like Kirsten Dunst, Alicia Silverstone, Christina Ricci, and others. Until they’re rendered plastic smooth and Barbie thin, they look somewhat like ordinary people.

And let’s not forget, reality shows have made transformation from ordinary to perfect an entertainment phenomenon in a society where make-overs for little girls and high heels for babies aren’t out of the question.

Image after image through their young lives, girls absorb an ever present lesson that females aren’t good enough as they are. Such lessons aren’t confined to images. Girls and women portrayed in movies are typically clad in sexualized clothes and lead one-dimensional lives.

What’s the effect?

Devastating, according to the American Psychological Association. Shame, anxiety, eating disorders, and depression. Girls judge their bodies harshly as young as the age of five. No wonder a girl might choose keep the vitality of her true self hidden.

But there’s another side, often overlooked. Because Elissa and a few of her friends didn’t suffer (at least fully) the perils of lookism. They barreled through their pre-teen and teen years fueled by interests strong enough to hold them steady. Elissa poured her energy into a number of pursuits. She was a docent at the zoo, raised white rats, studied an ever increasing range of scientific interests, and moderated an online forum. One of her friends took up photography, becoming proficient in pinhole camera techniques and making albumen prints, while also advancing in a hockey league. Elissa noticed that girls who didn’t engage in the looks-first game were often ostracized by their more mainstream peers, but they also had strong friendships beyond school. Elissa, homeschooled through highschool, was one of those friends. She says she felt freer to follow her own interests without the pressures of school culture and advocated individuality to others.

As a teen, Elissa was angry at the influences that swayed so many of her other girlhood friends. She scorned their preoccupation with boys, clothes, body image, and interpersonal drama. But now Elissa is in her early 20’s. She’s reconnected with many of these same friends and learned a little about the adversity they suffered as they made their way through adolescence different than hers. One of her childhood friends became a mother at 15, another made multiple suicide attempts, still another struggles with bulimia. Elissa is sure the strengths from girlhood are still with all of them. She just doesn’t know how to let them know that their looks don’t define them.

Here are a few resources to light the way.

About Face

Adios Barbie

All Made Up: A Girl’s Guide to Seeing Through Celebrity Hype to Celebrate Real Beauty

Body Drama: Real Girls, Real Bodies, Real Issues, Real Answers

Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image

Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel

Mothers for a Human Future

New Moon Girls

Packaging Girlhood

Pink Stinks

Resolving the Confidence Crisis

Teen Voices

The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls

101 Ways to Help Your Daughter Love Her Body

Trying to Be Happy courtesy of Orm Huz

What To Expect From A Load of Crap

September 17, 2010May 25, 2015 / Laura Grace Weldon / 6 Comments

I’ve had one of those days. A steaming pile of crap sort of day. You know how it is.

We all have them. When the morning starts out with headache, an angry tailgater or the continuation of some tough circumstances the bad mood usually isn’t far behind. This has a ripple effect. We complain to others, tipping conversational topics toward what grinds and grates. And somehow that negative outlook sets our personal radar to scan for more difficulty on the horizon. Those days rarely improve.

Some of us hold out a little longer. We work hard at emphasizing the positive, which is handy because moods are downright contagious. Studies show an individual’s emotions can influence entire groups (families, playgrounds, workplaces). Positive contagion leads to more cooperation and less conflict. Negative contagion, well, you know how fun that can be. Apparently moods stick like that pink goo from The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.

No one is upbeat all the time. Besides, constantly perky people inspire loathing. But I keep learning the necessity of choosing the way we experience life’s ups and downs. You know how easy it is to focus on five minutes of difficulty rather than the smooth progress of the day. We do it all the time. A child’s angry outburst overshadows hours of sunny cooperation. A colleague’s late return from lunch somehow reflects badly on a week’s worth of work. Or a whole slew of minor problems start to look like a steaming pile.

I’ve discovered while reading Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom that we’re fighting a hard-wired tendency. Our brains pay more attention to the negative than the positive. That was probably helpful when saber-toothed tigers threatened our early ancestors. Not so helpful these days.

Fortunately I live on a small farm where the cows produce loads of actual crap. So I know what to expect from it. Whether mixed in to the garden beds or left in a heap, eventually it bursts into flower.

The same potential lies dormant in our worst days. No matter what, we’re still in charge of our own attitudes. Because “sh*t happens” is only one way to look at it. “Compost happens” too.

Dirt in hand photo courtesy of Tea Cupie

Flower in hand photo courtesy of Prismes

How Big Are Your Moments?

May 25, 2010July 22, 2015 / Laura Grace Weldon / 4 Comments

“Every moment is enormous, and it’s all we have.” Natalie Goldberg

When my daughter was a baby she napped in the stroller. One time. This may stand out in my memory because it was so unusual. Or because I savored that wonderfully long nap in a babyhood troubled by chronic illness. But I think it’s because I consciously chose to hold on to the memory.

That day I pulled the stroller gently into the backyard. Tiny spring wildflowers sprouted everywhere in the expanse of weeds we called a lawn. The honey locust trees were in bloom, making the air smell particularly sweet. As I sat there watching my oldest child play and my daughter sleep, an ice cream truck passed a few streets away, adding a magical tune to the afternoon. The springtime smells, the sun shining on my little boy, the soft untroubled look on my baby’s face, the complete peace of sitting on the back step are still with me.

Our lives are stitched together by what we notice and remember. Look back at any particular phase of your life. What you recall is constructed from what you paid attention to. Each moment there are sights, sounds, tastes, thoughts and feelings unique to your experience. The way you pay attention to those elements forms your memories. The shocking part? Looking back and realizing how few rich and full memories we really form.

That’s because we only really latch on to memories when we pay attention. When we’re engaged in the moment. Recall the last really memorable meal you had. It probably wasn’t one you ate in the car or standing at the kitchen counter. It was one you savored with full awareness of flavor, texture, scent. Most likely there were other important elements as well. Perhaps it was a meal shared with a new friend or made from a challenging cookbook. Perhaps it was a last meal you had before a loved one passed away, a meal you now try reconstruct in detail.

It’s easier than ever to miss our own lives. I’m guilty. Large chunks of mine have drifted by unheeded. Sure I was there. But I was distracted. I was multitasking. I was rummaging around in the past or fussing over the future rather than paying attention to the moment.

I won’t delude myself into believing that I have the capacity to stay in the moment. But I can try. And because my daughter has just come into the room I’ll be turning from the computer now to hear about her day.

Maybe Next Time courtesy of PORG

Going to Hope in a Handbasket

January 4, 2010October 29, 2010 / Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

“Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Arundhati Roy

Fear sells. Blood and guts sell even better. What really grabs our attention? Out and out panic. That largely explains today’s so-called news channels, talk radio, actually much of commercial media. The worse it sounds, the greater audience share they grab and the more money they make. Trouble is, they also make up minds and harden hearts and plant misery where optimism could so easily flourish.

But they’re wrong.

Sure, it seems we’re in big trouble. Structures we count on to be stable are crumbling—finance, health care, education, consumption driven economies, us versus them mentalities, you name it.

Remember the parable of the mighty oak and thin reeds? The oak boasted of his immense girth and height, mocking the reeds all around him for their weaknesses. But the reeds could withstand wind, lightening and the weight of snow. The oak succumbed while the reeds survived, stronger than the oak in their ability to bend and stand again. Big institutions are fighting transparency, reform or annihilation with everything they’ve got, believing that strength means rigidity. Meanwhile a shift is happening on the grassroots level, as flexible and self-correcting as reeds in the wind.

Times of change are destabilizing and difficult, but ultimately valuable. After all, what’s broken, corrupt or simply no longer workable must be fully revealed before it’s healed or transformed into something much better.

Look more closely. Things are getting better all the time. In fact amazing evidence shows that we’ve long been on the path to health and harmony. Here are a few examples.

We’re Smarter.

Intelligence continues to increase from generation to generation. In fact, to accommodate continuously increasing intelligence the IQ test must be renormalized (standardized to keep the average test results at the 100). This is called the Flynn Effect.

Between 1932 and 1978, mean IQ scores in the U.S. rose 13.8 points. If your grandparent received IQ score results of 98 back in 1932 they’d have been deemed of average intelligence. That same grandparent, if administered today’s tests, would be considered to have a borderline mental disability by current scoring standards. IQ scores have risen even higher in some other countries: 27 points in the UK between 1942 to 1992. Of late, developing countries seem to be experiencing the biggest surge.

Many explanations have been proposed, but the increase can’t be definitively pinned on genetic improvements, improved nutrition, greater familiarity with testing or better schooling.

According to Cornell professor Stephen J. Ceci, the most direct gains are not in subjects that are taught (math, vocabulary) but are shown in parts of the test that seem unrelated to schooling (matrices, detecting similarities). In fact, test gains have been enormous in areas requiring the child to apply his or her own reasoning, such as arranging pictures to tell a story or putting shapes in a series. Although teaching children does return positive results, what a child learns through the natural stimulation of everyday life has a more profound effect. For example, a study to determine the effect of schooling on rural children in India found that the increase in overall intelligence from a year of age is twice the increase from that of attending a year of school.

IQ test scores don’t relate to what truly provides satisfaction in life. But the Flynn Effect is intriguing. Factors we can’t completely explain are giving us the intellectual capacities to deal with a ever more challenging world.

We’re Healthier.

Studies conducted by Robert W. Fogel, a Nobel laureate and economic historian at the University of Chicago, show that in a few hundred years human biology has changed in startling ways. We are more resistant to ill health, more likely to recover when faced with disease and less likely to live with chronic disability. We are also smarter and live longer. Fogel calls this radical improvement “technophysio evolution.”

An interview in the University of Chicago Magazine quotes Fogel as saying, “The phenomenon is not only unique to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of human beings who have inhabited the earth.”

Fogel doesn’t necessary attribute the changes to genetic shifts. Improvements in medical care, nutrition, sanitation and working conditions may cause epigenetic changes. These are shifts in gene expression that can last through many generations without altering underlying DNA.

Information amassed by Fogel indicates that chronic diseases such as arthritis, heart disease and lung ailments are occurring 10 to 25 years later in life than they did 100 or 200 years ago. Interestingly, well-being may be more strongly affected by conditions each individual faces in utero and during the first few years of life than previously suspected.

Fogel’s most dramatic proof of technophysio evolution was found by comparing Civil War veterans to subsequent generations. Researchers examined health and longevity data of 45,000 Union Army veterans, including over 6,000 black soldiers. Military records revealed that young American men of that era commonly suffered debilitating health conditions. Approximately 65 percent of men from 18 to 25 years of age volunteered for the Union Army. But arthritis, tuberculosis, cardiovascular disease and blindness disqualified a quarter of them. And the military of that era wasn’t choosy. Incontinence and blindness in one eye didn’t disqualify a recruit. Even the youngest men lived with chronic disabilities. Fully one-sixth of volunteers between 16 to 19 years of age were rejected for serious health conditions.

By the time Civil War vets passed the age of 65, 68 percent of them suffered from arthritis, 76 percent from heart disease and over 50 percent from back problems. World War II veterans at the same age, in contrast, counted among their ranks 48 percent as arthritis sufferers, 39 percent with heart disease and 30 percent with back problems.

These remarkable health gains don’t diminish our current struggles with cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, autism and other serious health conditions on the increase. Despite the blessing of bodies more resilient and healthy than those of our ancestors of just 150 years ago we suffer the effects of environmental toxins and nutritionally squalid diets. To fully accept the gift of health and energy from our ancestors, it seems we must expand our awareness to make positive changes here and now. That way our choices continue to benefit our descendants.

We’re More Peaceful.

We function best through cooperation and harmony. Even our body systems are in greatest sync when we are peaceful, according to studies at the Heart Math Institute. It may be taking us quite a while, as a species, to get accustomed to living in larger settled groups but it seems we’ve come a long way in the last few centuries.

And peace is how our species has come this far, despite what history tells us. According to anthropologist Douglas Fry, evidence shows that for 98 percent of human existence on earth we lived in small nomadic bands that thrived precisely because warfare was avoided. He presents compelling proof in his book, Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace
along with the message that human beings have highly developed capacities to seek and maintain peace.

Psychologist Steven Pinker points out in an essay titled “A History of Violence” that public cat burnings were a popular form of entertainment in the sixteenth century. Although we pay more attention to atrocities now than ever before, the horrors of slavery, genocide, barbaric punishment and vigilante justice were accepted as commonplace a little more than a century ago.

Empathy for people of another race or class? Not a typical attribute even a few generations ago. Pinker notes, “Conventional history has long shown that, in many ways, we have been getting kinder and gentler.”

As Pinker cites specific data, the good news gets better. For example, the homicide rate has declined from a rampant 24 murders per 100,000 Englishmen in the 14^th century to 0.6 per 100,000 in the 1960’s (5.4 per 100,000 in the U.S. in 2008).

No matter what the angle, the view is good when we look at more recent U.S. history through this lens as well. Despite what ranting pundits and blaring news promos may indicate, crime rates have been steadily dropping per capita since the 1970’s. Some analysts say by as much as 50 percent in 15 years. Despite staggering economic losses, crime has continued to decline recently.

The ecumenical organization Project Ploughshares reports, “Peacebuilding efforts do work. Although one conflict is too many for those being killed and wounded, there has been a significant decrease in the number and intensity of armed conflicts over the past 10 years.”

We’ve come a long way without direct efforts to educate each person in the ways of negotiation, mediation, intervention, reconciliation, heck, even listening skills. Imagine turning our attention toward cooperation and mutual respect. Surely acknowledging the human tendency toward peace welcomes greater possibilities for harmony in the years to come.

We Care.

Never before in history have so many people worked tirelessly and selflessly to benefit others. Paul Hawken writes in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
that the abolitionist movement was the first major movement by human beings to advocate on behalf of others without seeking advantage for themselves or their particular social or political group. Since that time, such efforts have grown with astonishing vigor.

There are now over a million organizations on the planet working for environmental stewardship, social justice, the preservation of indigenous cultures, and much more. These groups don’t seek wider acclaim, they seek to make a difference for the greater good.

Artist Chris Jordan has made a mandala of the names of those million-plus organizations. His work is inspiring—-make sure you look at the images up close as well as the whole picture.

It’s time to turn our attention away from doom-shrieking media. While it’s valuable to be informed, such knowledge is useful only to the extent that it motivates us to turn more consciously in a positive direction.

A heavy heart, or worse, a hardened heart, makes it nearly impossible to raise a child or plant a garden or grow a benevolent future.

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