The Way Things Work
Aug. 27th, 2011 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueInterpersonally, my sense of panic tends to be inversely proportional to the people's around me; if something's certain to work, I'm obsessed with the ways it could go wrong, but if someone tells me the situation is dire I can immediately see how much better it is than the worst case scenario and start thinking we can pull it off. It's not my contrarian streak so much as biochemistry; I understand this is common to people with mildly depressive tendencies. It's arguably why depression exists in the population; having a few people like me around provides a survival advantage. It's only a problem when too many people in a group are slightly depressive or one person has debilitating severe depression.
However, I don't think that's what's playing into my expectation that Irene is not going to do any damage to my area. I've taken my container garden and patio furniture in, and I don't plan to be on the road, and I have a hand-cranked flashlight at the ready. But in general, as soon as people start buying generators and shutting down trains, I assume nothing will go wrong.
That's not temperament. That's a history of game playing. In my experience, very unlikely events take up a vast amount of mental space - hence people being more frightened of being attacked by a stranger when walking at night than they are about getting hit by a drunk driver while they're driving at night. The drunk driver's more likely. But walking at night is, for most people, unusual, and therefore scary.
The west coast tends to get wildfires and earthquakes. Texas tends to get tornadoes and hailstorms. Louisiana gets hurricanes all the time. People didn't evacuate in advance of Katrina partly because Louisiana gets hurricanes and hurricane warnings all the time. It's like the sun coming up. It doesn't usually disrupt your life. It's anticipated. People in Boston are freaking out about the possibility of a hurricane because they never get hurricanes. Which says to me hurricanes are extremely unlikely, and this is a long shot.
At the same time, mind you, I'll probably lose power through some freak accident like a transformer blowing, exclusively because that would stop me from working tomorrow, and if I work tomorrow I'll make $300. That would be really nice and therefore can't happen.
Edited to Add: I didn't lose power. The storm was, as predicted, nothing. But several TV stations lost their phone lines, so I spent three hours of my life pressing redial over and over. Am dubious I will be allowed to count those hours toward my bonus, even though I definitely held up my end of the bargain.
However, I don't think that's what's playing into my expectation that Irene is not going to do any damage to my area. I've taken my container garden and patio furniture in, and I don't plan to be on the road, and I have a hand-cranked flashlight at the ready. But in general, as soon as people start buying generators and shutting down trains, I assume nothing will go wrong.
That's not temperament. That's a history of game playing. In my experience, very unlikely events take up a vast amount of mental space - hence people being more frightened of being attacked by a stranger when walking at night than they are about getting hit by a drunk driver while they're driving at night. The drunk driver's more likely. But walking at night is, for most people, unusual, and therefore scary.
The west coast tends to get wildfires and earthquakes. Texas tends to get tornadoes and hailstorms. Louisiana gets hurricanes all the time. People didn't evacuate in advance of Katrina partly because Louisiana gets hurricanes and hurricane warnings all the time. It's like the sun coming up. It doesn't usually disrupt your life. It's anticipated. People in Boston are freaking out about the possibility of a hurricane because they never get hurricanes. Which says to me hurricanes are extremely unlikely, and this is a long shot.
At the same time, mind you, I'll probably lose power through some freak accident like a transformer blowing, exclusively because that would stop me from working tomorrow, and if I work tomorrow I'll make $300. That would be really nice and therefore can't happen.
Edited to Add: I didn't lose power. The storm was, as predicted, nothing. But several TV stations lost their phone lines, so I spent three hours of my life pressing redial over and over. Am dubious I will be allowed to count those hours toward my bonus, even though I definitely held up my end of the bargain.
