It’s Not Cool to Overreact: How Normalcy Bias Will Define Our Future

During moments of crisis, I’ve certainly noticed that feeling of paralysis and the desire to look around for anyone who seems to know what they’re doing.

Creating the idea of a crisis in the minds of the public (they’re making it illegal to say “Merry Christmas,” they’re weaponizing pronouns to groom your children, those silly scientists keep changing their minds when they learn new facts) makes a big chunk of the populace easier to control.

This article introduced me to something that I’ve observed — that some people react to a crisis by calming down the fears of strangers. The article notes that sometimes a better survival strategy might be to act in some decisive way — to get away from danger — rather than seeking or giving emotional comfort. (I don’t mean to suggest empathy is wrong, but people who could have saved themselves and others during a crisis aren’t doing themselves any favors if they just stand around waiting for someone else to do something about the problem.)

During any given crisis, you can count on 30 percent of the public to respond appropriately and do the right thing.

About ten percent will freak out.

Those ten percent cause riots and stampedes. That’s why governments and mainstream media work so hard to silence them. Unfortunately, they don’t do a very good job of distinguishing between the ten percent who panic and the ten percent who know what we should be doing.

They get us mixed up.

So does the public.

Another ten percent will get in the way, insisting that everything’s fine and everyone should just calm down. Everyone else will stand around waiting for someone to tell them what to do. They make up about 50 percent.

So when you add it all up:

• 30 percent respond well.
• 10 percent freak out.
• 10 percent minimize.
• 50 percent go into sheep mode.

Psychologists have observed this pattern over and over again in everything from earthquakes to traffic accidents. It’s practically baked in that 70 percent of people will wait until it’s too late to solve a crisis. —OK Doomer