How to Be a Better Judge of What Is and Is Not Risky
Or, How to Not Be Like a Squirrel in the Road
A great deal of how we perceive the world, and our role in it, today is determined by how we perceive risk.
And as Elizabeth Wurtzel, the late author of Prozac Nation, once tweeted: “I often feel like America has become the land of 300 million people yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded room.”
In other words, many of us are on overdrive regarding our perception of risk.
Much of this is justified, of course. We have reason to fear for the state of our democracy. Our economy. And our planet.
But while overdrive may not do much damage to a car engine, it is not sustainable for humans. Nor does it help us accurately perceive risk, which is a prerequisite to wise action.
The Biggest Influencers on Our Perception of Risk
This is further complicated by the fact that the way we perceive risk is largely determined by evolution or personal experience, neither of which is a great fit for a world that is changing as fast as ours.
Even animals suffer from this failure of their brains to catch up with modern risks. Have you ever wondered, for example, why on earth a squirrel runs back and forth in front of your car as you go barreling down the road?
It’s because that behavior works well to confuse predators. But it works less well with modern-day cars, as Oliver Burkeman observes in The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking.
The same holds for us.
We are, as Burkeman also notes, far more afraid of a violent intruder than we are of a heart attack—although in the modern world, we are more likely to die from the latter than the former.
Personal experience, similarly, is not always the best way to judge what is or is not an actual risk. As the neuroscientist Elke Weber once told me, one of the reasons many people don’t have a visceral fear of climate change despite its genuine dangers is because they haven’t had a direct experience with it yet.
That has been changing with the growth of extreme weather events in recent years. But for the many who have not yet had an experience of the clear and present danger of, say, a wildfire, climate change can remain a seemingly abstract thing.
A One-Two-Step Alternative
So, how, then, do we better judge risk in a world seemingly awash in problems, armed with brains that, in many ways, are stuck in the past?
This is a much bigger question than can be fully addressed in a newsletter. But I would like to share a one-two step that I have found helpful.
One is to try to pause before reacting (assuming there is not an immediate threat.) If we know there is a mismatch between modern-day risks and, if you will, our old brains, a pause only makes sense.
It can help us bring our neocortex, or thinking rather than simply reacting ability, to bear. And as the Nobel Kahneman famously wrote: one is fast, and one is slow. Allowing for that can help.
Importantly, it might help us better let go of things that feel risky but are unlikely to occur and perhaps take more seriously things that don’t feel risky but, in fact, are.
The second move is to think like a Jiu-Jitsu master. This is a little funny for me to suggest since I am most definitely not one. But you don’t have to be a master to know that Jiu-Jitsu is a martial art famous not for matching strength to strength but for using other skills, such as leverage, angles, pressure, and timing.
Given that we could never be in a ring as an opponent on par with the outsized challenges of our world today, it seems a fitting perspective to take: How can we seek leverage, a helpful angle, or the right timing to exert a little pressure and be a positive influence?
So, that’s my invitation for the week: When something suddenly hits you as more than you can handle, try to take a pause and look for a new angle.