Geoffrey W. Sutton PhD, Psychology and Culture

During the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, the number of dead people lead news stories. And many people require scarce ventilators to fight for their lives. Scary stuff! Sensible people are afraid.  Sensible people embrace fear as a powerful motivator to take evidence-based pathways to health and safety. Possible Downsides:  When People do not Embrace Fear People who do not embrace fear can get sick and die or kill their family and friends if they ignore sound advice. Ignoring fear can be deadly. The dead testify to the reality of the fear.  Fear is a sign of mental wellness  as long as the fear is real and leads to positive action. The damaging side of fear can happen if we dwell on the fear after taking appropriate action. Filling our minds with misery and death can be discouraging or even depressing leaving us with low energy and distress. Fear is an emotional reaction to a real or perceived threat, but anxiety is an emotional reaction exp...

On the Psychology of Politics “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” The forgoing quote is from John Ehrlichman in 1994. Dan Baum includes it in his April 2016  Harper's   article: "Legalize It All: How to win the war on drugs." I came across the piec...