Thought of the Day - November 30 2021 - Pandemic Shock Aggression

Back a few months ago I talked about a syndrome known as Learned Helplessness ( Thought of the Day - October 5 2021 - Learned Helplessness ). I got a number of readers saying they could certainly relate. So I figure why not provide another element in what may end up being a series.

If you study social animals, like humans and rats, they display a number of similar traits such as Learned Helplessness when faced with adversity. After being chronically shocked, if two rats encounter one another, rather than the normal cooperative, exploratory, social tendencies these rats will instead be extremely aggressive toward each other. In some cases will simply fight to the death. This is known as Shock-Induced Aggression.

Humans are known to do the same thing. For example, when the shock of COVID first arrived, some anger was turned toward our Asian population. Violent acts occurred even here in Vancouver. These acts prompted Bonnie Henry to ask us to treat each other with kindness. Unsurprisingly this anti-social anger has continued to mount. Many of us, for example, have already witnessed confrontations around the use of masks. The latest manifestation is directed at so-called anti-vaxxers. Like it was ridiculous to label Asian people as villains eighteen months ago, the same can be said for lumping together the unvaccinated as the new culprits. Both are unjustified. Thus, I can only hope that Bonnie reiterates her plea.

Unfortunately, COVID shocks are continuing. As well as the disease itself (repeated waves, waning vaccination protection, new variants), shocks now come in the form of restrictions, physical (travel limits, social distancing) and virtual (vaccine mandates and the like), as well as economic impacts (job losses, irresponsible government spending, price gouging).

More worrying, many of the institutions delivering these shocks understand this phenomenon and are busy redirecting public anger for their own ends via social and mainstream media.

There are now millions of people around the world protesting against such activities. Their hope is that humans might just be a little smarter than rats. Rather than attacking each other, we should be directing our anger at those that are shocking us. If not, we are in for a very sad couple of years.

Cheers

Cliff