‘I heard a rumour’ is Allison’s superpower on Umbrella Academy. ‘Rumour has it!’ is Adele’s superhit track. Love might make the world go round, but intrigue has motivated human action and shaped our history. Disney movies might convince us that anthropomorphized animals gossip as well, but that’s a claim that needs verification.
Researchers studying the brains of animals and humans found differences in their responses to danger. While reptiles categorised stimuli in black and white terms of dangerous vs harmless, animals included attachments and emotions in decision making. Humans included all this as well as reasoning and imagination.
These findings helped understand animal responses. When a peacefully grazing deer is chased by a lion, it shifts from being at ease to running for its life. Upon outrunning its predator, it returns to graze without further ado.
Any such instance that would come as a shock to a human would not be treated as lightly. To go from safety to endangerment without warning is traumatic for us. This goes beyond trauma, since anything out of the ordinary is a big deal for us and requires some processing. Think of some juicy gossip of someone’s wedding, a celebrity scandal or a to-die-for cat video you saw online. We promptly forward it to select others, and have separate venting sessions or lively discussions with each of them. It’s our way of restoring equilibrium in our life. Before this experience, our life was a ball of clay bearing some shape. This new piece has to either fit into that shape and enhance it, or blend in, or be discarded. With the constant bombardment of information and stimuli that we encounter, that ball of clay is an ever-changing entity. How then do we process this information?
There’s one piece of the puzzle that ties it all together. Upon outrunning the lion, the deer goes and vigorously shakes itself next to a bush, AND THEN goes to graze. This seemingly simple action is the deer’s closure from this experience – so that there’s nothing left over. You see, the deer doesn’t develop PTSD and stop grazing. It deals with one threat at a time.
When I learnt this theory, it felt ironic that humans’ need to make meaning out of patterns has also led to anxiety and mood disorders. With so many patterns to make meaning of, we turn to our loved ones to help decide what pieces to include and which to discard. When I get any gossip or come across a conspiracy theory (e.g. were Annie Murphy and Dan Levy a thing?!), I promptly call up Person 1: with whom I get this news off my chest. This action helps me clear my head. Then, I speak to Person 2: someone who will be equally excited and join me on the trip down stalking these guys across every social platform, whereupon we bandy even more outrageous conspiracy theories and compare the ethics of how Game of Thrones reshaped our generation’s attitude towards incest. This list isn’t exhaustive, because if it’s a classmate’s wedding or social media post, there may be any number of people involved with these steps getting rinsed and repeated. Finally, at some point, we engage in the human equivalent of shaking it off by drawing some (temporary) conclusion for a semblance of closure (until the next piece of gossip rekindles everything).
I fondly think of the people I can have these discussions with and the roles that they play in being the keepers (and enablers) of my obsessions. Perhaps we can best make meaning and decode patterns in the company of other like-minded people. Maybe it is not such a bad thing that our prefrontal cortex stores patterns. Appreciate the beauty we sculpt with our clay!
Past the Racket 