From: Kenneth Van Oost (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Thu 08 Dec 2005 - 20:06:29 GMT
Patrick, Kate,
Out of date, out of time....but anyway,
From: Kate Distin <memes@distin.co.uk>
> Is this to do with our perception of how much we are in control of these
> things? So we get in a car and even pick up a 'phone while we're
> driving but we feel fairly in control so don't panic; whereas a flu
> epidemic is something out of our hands.
> Also of course there's the thing where we pay particular attention to
> situations which have especially horrific consequences,no matter how
> unlikely. So we panic more about letting our children out of our sight
> for two minutes in a store than about letting them drive twenty miles
> with a friend's parent of whose driving skills we are completely
> ignorant. We imagine an avian flu epidemic potentially wiping out
> thousands . . . which outweighs in our minds its unlikelihood . . . so
> the meme successfully grabs and holds our attention.
Patrick wrote,
> > Whets interesting about memes like these is that we give them more
> > headspace, despite low probability of occurrence, than memes dealing
with
> > far more dangerous things like cars etc.
<< That is because we " see/ feel " the danger of cars as something self-
evident,
we given 't it that much thought. We know the danger and live with it, but
with
an Asian flu pandemic at the horizon we ain 't sure about the hazzards and
we
don 't know what to do. We take the chance that we can be killed in a
freeway
pile- up as a part of our daily life/ routine. To die of the Asian flu would
be some-
thing out of order. I ' know ' I can be killed by an atombomb and I learned
to
live with that knowledge, but I ain 't know how to ' behave ' if scientists
tell me
that I can die by a meteor impact. The latter ain 't something of my ' lived
expe-
rience '. All what I can suppose what will happening is Hollywoodian and
thus
fiction....abscract....
Regards,
Kenneth
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