Session Eight

Unfriending
Chicken Little

Objective:
Unlearn sky-is-falling indoctrination that breeds fear.

Pivot toward critical thinking.

A reliable way to make people believe
in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because
familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.
Authoritarian institutions and marketers
have always known this fact.

—Daniel Kahneman

C
hicken Little gets hit by a nut, and the rest is history. He manages to convince the whole town that the sky is falling. Doomsday is here. For centuries, the tale has been told in various iterations, proving that mass paranoia and hysteria have always been in style.

Even before Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, there have been plenty of town criers flagging us down, getting us shaking in our booties because the world is coming to an end. Where’s R.E.M. when you need them? I don’t feel fine.

The bad news baits us 24/7. Not only do our screens flood us with images of chaos and negativity, but they follow us everywhere we go, clucking at us and activating each last nerve of our limbic systems. We receive our information faaast. We skim off the top of our feeds, Google-and-go in .003 seconds, taking in the equivalent of 174 newspapers a day. That’s a lot of breaking news about epidemics, pandemics, and the latest catastrophe. Crisis sells. Otherwise, maybe we’d have some serenity.

The news about “dead truth” is catchy, given our reality-show president. The March 2017 cover of TIME magazine jostles us with, “Is Truth Dead?” a fair question considering the “alternative facts” encircling us. Lies are dangerous and scary, especially when told by those in power. We’d be disillusioned to think there’s ever been a point in history when authorities have held a steadfast commitment to truth telling.

The world has long suffered its own versions of misogyny, predatory behavior, and corruption. Politicians simply weren’t exposed as quickly.

Cover-ups aren’t new. There just used to be fewer unbridled options available to tantalize the likes of those who take to Twitter and Tinder to display their dirty laundry. Discretion also seems to be dead. While we’re at it, let’s hold a funeral for humility, decency, virtue, diplomacy, pluralism, and bipartisanship.

Lay Off the Chicken Little Stew

We can’t hold a funeral for something that was never a thing, but we can’t roll over either. Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University and author of Boxed In: The Culture of TV, warns about media manipulation, citing it as “more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany.” With the volume of information that blasts us, we end up with the false pretense that we are getting the full story. Miller worries that this misconception prevents us from even looking for truth.

In 1983, fifty companies controlled 90 percent of the media. Today, six companies—GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS—have it wrapped up. The information they sell isn’t just half baked—the ingredients they use are toxic. And like McDonald’s, although the unhealthy ingredients are widely known, they manage to keep people coming back for more. Here’s their not-so-secret sauce:

Ingredients

Lead-and-bleed headlines (choose the cut that evokes the most fear)

Anecdotal stories (the more dramatic and unscientific, the better)

Fatalistic thinking (this ingredient cannot be substituted)

One ripe audience (provoke with fear and anger, then pick ’em)

Directions

1) Start by whipping up the audience with a swift and sturdy hook. Next, throw in some anecdotal stories and spin it on high, repeatedly. There is no risk of overdoing it. Add in heaping amounts of fatalistic thinking and then allow it to crawl across the screen over and over until the heaviness sets in. Use a very broad brush to present your final product. Serve to an audience hungry for comfort food that’s familiar to them. Repeat the steps as often as possible to keep them coming back. It never hurts for the chef to dress seductively or yell loudly to keep people’s attention.

This recipe works. The Washington Post called the 2016 campaign a “gusher” for CNN, which approached a record-breaking $1 billion gross profit, the best-ever in its thirty-six-year history. Fox News also boasted its most lucrative year. MSNBC’s percentage growth rate exceeded CNN’s and Fox’s. Our anxiety becomes their profit.

Given the information overload at hand, we need to examine what’s being served up. If we are what we eat, are we what we watch, too? We have information consumption choices that will either nourish and sustain us, or leave us depleted. Rotten ingredients, sketchy chefs, and empty calories hailing from WWE-type media can poison us if we’re mindlessly consuming what’s being served up writ large.

The indigestion from mainstream media has opened the door for alternative news sources and podcasts. There’s a midnight cruise buffet being served—with a taste for everyone—ranging from conspiracy stew to scientific data à la mode. I recommend generous helpings of science, culture, art, philosophy, and spirituality. Balanced diet. And lay off the Chicken Little stew. It’s linked with acid reflux and brain fog.

What if the media took a cue from positive psychology and adopted a strengths-based perspective in their reporting? The sensationalistic approach sells, but it also blocks us from seeing the progress and potential gains we are, and could continue to be, making.

Know the Science and Roots
Behind Mass Hysteria

When we face uncertain times, we can’t help but seek explanations. The trouble is, we can end up making judgments based on raw emotions, not facts.

We are prone to buying into fear-based marketing of the news and companies because of the brain’s tendency to trigger physiological symptoms. Dr. Gary Small suggests that when we are excited and scared, we tend to hyperventilate, causing lower carbon dioxide levels and heightened sensitivity to physical symptoms.

Bruce Shneier, author of Beyond Fear, mentions that despite the irrationality of our thinking, we tend to make judgments on our feelings, not facts. He emphasizes that we often exaggerate risks, especially to children, to keep them safe—but we also foster a situation of overlooking facts in favor of emotional conclusions.

Here’s a truth bomb you’re unlikely to hear: we live in the most peaceful and prosperous time in history, with the greatest advances in democracy.

Instead, we’re told it’s The Worst Time Ever. The sky is falling, and that No One Has Ever Had It Like This.

We are certainly not the first generation to face brutality, terror, and trauma. The partition in India. China’s Great Leap Forward. Biafra. Vietnam. Khmer Rouge. South Sudan. Rwanda. The Holocaust. War after war after war.

The truth is, we’ve evolved quite a bit as a species. The world we live in is technically safer, with better outcomes than ever before. We live longer. Literacy rates are better. We have technologies and advances that were once the stuff of dreams.

Yes, there’s far too much violence, but we don’t bludgeon each other like we used to. Evolutionary psychologists say we’re apt to cooperate more since it helps ensure survival.

We’re still in a lot of hot water. Our health care systems, schools, and governments have come a long way, but have far to go. Public health experts from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report that zip codes predict health outcomes. Massive disparities based on socioeconomic status and race limit access and affordability of care. You don’t have to look far to see injustice.

We’ve made significant gains in reducing communicable disease in many parts of the world, but we are obese, addicted, and medicated. By 2030, the World Health Organization says stress-related, noncontagious illness will be our prime concern. It’s not ideal to get sick or die in either case, but the truth is we’re living longer. We have the resources to keep improving our outcomes.

Saying that the world is as it should be would be like seeing with only one eye. Around the world, violence, terrorism, and political unrest are rampant, but they’re not new kids in town, like the media want us to believe.

It’s better than it used to be, but we still have much to overcome. When we deny the pervasive violence, inequities, institutionalized isms, war, poverty, lack of access to education and health care, and polarization in our current global sociopolitical climate, we might reify the root causes that perpetuate them in the first place. We need Chicken Littles to keep us woke, but we don’t need to eat Chicken Little stew every waking minute either.

We all have Chicken Littles in our lives, and not just on the media and political fronts. Church ladies doused in Jean Nate perfume shake their fingers at us, warning that we’re going straight to hell without passing Go; that doomsday is here. Some scientists deny any existence of the divine. They lump together as pseudoscience anything that doesn’t have a double-blind peer-reviewed process and cannot be precisely measured.

Keeping fear from spreading takes our collective will. Subjectivity and partiality reign. If we look at life through too narrow a frame, we miss the chance for integration of knowledge from a wide range of sources. If there’s one thing my work in grounded theory research has taught me, it’s the fusion from all the worlds—science, spiritual, philosophy, arts, and beyond—that helps us inch our way just a little closer to understanding. In order to do so, we cannot blindly follow down the road led by one so-called expert whose agenda might be led by fear, not getting us all to the good life. The mass hysteria that our leaders promote diverts our attention away from their outlandish tactics to keep us from tuning into the problems that need our unwavering focus.

Get Off the Yellow Brick Road

In the Land of Oz, Dorothy Gale has one set mission: Find the Wizard. As she journeys through the dramatic twists and turns along the yellow brick road, she and her companions underestimate their gumption as they channel all their energies on getting in with the “expert” who will surely impart his wisdom and grant their wishes.

The moment of truth arrives in Emerald City. Luckily, Dorothy’s dog, Toto, puts an end to the whole scam. When he pulls back the curtain, he exposes the sweaty phony dude sitting on his perch, pressing everyone’s fear buttons. Go, Toto! Leave it to a dog to sniff out the truth. Little smarty. Get him!

So many aspects of this plot from one of the most popular movies of all time are familiar. Across the world, societies have touted the idea that one all-knowing leader will magically wave a wand and remedy all our problems. All institutions have been built on this very premise—that solutions come solely from experts and those in power, not from varied sources and perspectives.

We’re introduced to these ideas before we can safely eat honey. From an early age, we’re taught to sit at the feet of teachers and authorities, with bated breath, ready to absorb the secrets that will set us straight. We’re supposed to revere people in power—from teachers to clergy to celebrities, mimicking their alleged formulas for better living.

We’re taught not to question authority, to show respect, all while some jackass behind the curtain is scamming us. Across societies, power is misused and abused, diminishing the worth and credibility of anyone outside the few dominant-group key holders to the city. Those in control push their agenda by defining whom they see as “good and worthy,” while marginalizing and stifling the voices of the masses.

Across generations, culture, time, and space, dominator systems have left whole groups of people in the dust. Whether because of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, religious affiliation, appearance, or other social identity categories, much suffering has resulted.

These time-honored traditions cause a lot of damage. People who use their power for their own glory and to the detriment of those they are supposed to be serving are @RealCowardlyLions. If they were more evolved, they would share their power. They would stop talking and start listening. They would care about the greater good. But with too many benefits for them, they keep us hustling along the yellow brick road. When we finally arrive and peel back the curtain on the expert we’ve been seeking, we’re likely to find a shriveled dominator who’s far from heroic.

Dominators are demagogues who hoard all but a few scraps of bread. The crumbs they scatter leave us stampeding, knocking each other down without a second thought. The promise that we, too, can live the dream by working hard and doing our very best sends us in a frenzy to beat the odds, and to beat each other out. They intentionally whip up crowds to shut down reasoning. They tend to use immediate and forceful means of addressing conflict, and when questioned, they respond defensively with accusations of lying and disloyalty.

Demagogue

Academic Definition

A leader who gains followers by exploiting fears, prejudices, and ignorance among the common people. Demagogues are known for their ability to agitate and rabble-rouse.

Street Definition

A demagogue is a trash talker who loves to stir up trouble and get everybody against each other. #trashtalk

With not enough to go around, we’re pitted against each other. Common bonds are hard to find when primitive survival instincts are activated. It’s a smoke screen that keeps us from seeing what’s really going on. When we’re facing off against each other, we’ll never see who we should be fighting against. We’ll just keep accepting the truths of those pretending to have the answers, but who really have an agenda to keep us from rethinking what we’re dangerously being sold.

Hold onto Your Pop

The little Tootsie Pop boy’s curiosity was no match for his impulses. He needed some help, but Mr. Cow, Turtle, and Fox were self-identified biters, too. Surely, Mr. Owl would impart his wisdom to solve the burning licks-to-the-center question. He postures himself and 1-2-3 . . . chrrruuhck! He bites. Neuroscience wins. The world will never know the answer. The lure of instant gratification was too much—even for Mr. Owl’s stellar brain.

This vintage 1970s commercial shows that even the wisest among us fall prey to the impulse for the quick and tasty. Our brain is hardwired for the immediate fix. Even with strong wills and the best of intentions, we easily succumb. When students at Purdue University reenacted the commercial in a laboratory experiment, they found that getting to the pop’s center took 252 licks. Now, that’s restraint.

Like Tootsie Pops, fallacies are hard to resist. The word fallacy originates from the Latin fallacia, meaning “to deceive.” We bite down quickly on information, preventing us from critically thinking and overcoming our mind’s natural inclination to being tricked.

Critical thinking helps us tame our bite reflexes and move beyond impulses to believe what we want to believe. The discipline it gives us is worth it. We end up with lenses to evaluate information carefully, getting us closer to clarity and accuracy. It helps us cultivate the skills we need to raise questions about what we’re being sold, gather and interpret information, arrive at well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, and think more open-mindedly.

Critical Thinking

Academic Definition

Disciplined thinking based on intellectual standards of clarity, accuracy, relevance, precision, breadth, depth, logic, significance, consistency, fairness, completeness, and reasonability.

Street Definition

Thinking about thinking while you are thinking to make it more on point. #think #questioneverything

Critical thinking is truly essential to get us to the good life—and not destroying the center. We’re not taught or automatically inclined to think well. It’s a practice to be adopted through our lifetimes. Like anything important in our lives, it is built upon a set of virtues. Understanding essential intellectual values helps us move away from egocentric thinking and tune in to becoming less self-serving, or being bamboozled by Chicken Littles, wizards, and demagogues.

Know the Essential Intellectual Virtues
to Combat Egocentric Thinking

Dr. Linda Elder and the late Dr. Richard Paul assert that we do not naturally appreciate the views of others, nor the limits to our own points of view. We believe in our intuitive perceptions and use self-centered measures to decide what to believe or reject.

Elder and Paul suggest that we commonly accept things as true for the following reasons:

Their Thinker’s Guide Library highlights steps we can take to move from being unreflective thinkers to accomplished thinkers who demonstrate these core values:

When we commit to lifelong practice to cultivate intellectual skills and virtues in our lives, they can eventually become second nature—but not without tuning in and working to get beyond our natural tendencies to think narrowly.

When we stop listening to town criers and take the opportunity to listen to varied voices, it can help undo a fear-based, sky-is-falling indoctrination that prevents us from critical thinking. It’s easy to get cynical given the contradictions at hand. Cynicism keeps us stuck. We can instead adopt a “skeptimistic” mind-set that blends the traits of a skeptic and optimist. Our skeptical side is always seeing through issues and asking important questions:

Our optimistic side believes we can find answers and knows that since life is rich with mystery and ambiguity, we can’t expect a single source to provide our definitive formula. Like Dorothy Gale and her Oz friends, we have the resources we need to get to better thinking and to avoid believing that the sky is falling and we can do nothing about it. We can become mindful skeptimists who honor the voices of scientists and morally conscious faith-based leaders just as much as we do the lovers, dreamers, poets, artists, and athletes. We can learn from all of them: Alanis, Marie Curie, Noam Chomsky, Adrienne Rich, Venus and Serena, Buddha, and Glennon Doyle.

We’re so much better off when we appreciate each other’s lenses, instead of bickering and raising constant fear. Combining varied perspectives helps us pool our resources and become better equipped to stand on guard against oppressive regimes, sensational media, and sneaky marketers, who want us to be so busy watching the sky fall that we can’t see the rainbow on the horizon.