Why Are We Obsessed With Disasters?
41 RESPONSES // asked by shabnam - around 1 month ago
The bubble-headed bleach blond comes on at 5. She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye. It's interesting when people die. We love dirty laundry. // Don Henley
Why are we obsessed with disasters?
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I'm not necessarily sure I can answer this question, but maybe my response will offer some depth and spur some other conversation. In several of the high school classes I teach - introduction to journalism and 21st century communication specifically - I try to engage the students in a conversation about why we like to know about other people and why we like to share ourselves. And, despite how messy the train wreck gets, our attention is held even more the messier it gets. This could be an actual train wreck or the train wreck of someone's life. I mean, it's pretty much reality television played out every day in high school. In a matter of weeks four girls shared pregnancies, and boy was the attention tuned in. I would even say students were more attuned during normal class time, just because their social barometer was up and running. Why are we obsessed with disasters? Morbid curiosity would be my easy answer, but all the ways we can be obsessed with disaster just keep piling up.
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An English teacher once told me that without despair in the world, everything would be boring. I responded by asking her if there would be boredom at all if there were no despair.
An English teacher once told me that without despair in the world, everything would be boring. I responded by asking her if there would be boredom at all if there were no despair.
I think people naturally wait for things to make them feel fortunate, and our minds are so confused why you feel anything but sickness at the loss of life, that it comes out as a form of sick fascination.
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I think that it's stemmed from a fear of being hurt ourselves, but in general it may just be that many people feel spurred into action by violence and destruction.
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Frankly, I think its just because some of the natural disasters are just so beautiful. I think they are, they just dont have a positive aftermath. God brings us down before he can lift us higher.
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because we need a corrective disaster every so often. something that puts us back in check and makes us band together and have patriotism for our country. the United States is quite fortunate to not have car bombs go off every day, suicide bombers every day, or a real war on our soil. it seems after every disaster, people start to become a little more human...and that's something very warming.
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I've always been obsessed with disasters, ever since I was a little (blonde...) girl. We'd gather around the table after dinner and read a page at random from the book Catastrophes & Disasters, that I bought on a class field trip to the Franklin Museum in Philadelphia. I don't know why the rest of my family put up with it, but I know I liked it because I hated being a kid. Being young and ignored and knowing that the no matter how good you were you'd only be "good for your age" until you were finally an adult and would be taken seriously. Reading about horrible plane crashes and volcanic eruptions was a very basic reminder that it could be worse. I needed to hear that. Every night, I guess.
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Great question. I think the answers show a lot about human nature. One reason we love disasters is the internal dialogue we can have about it. Here are some samplings of what goes through our minds when watching a disaster unfold:
Great question. I think the answers show a lot about human nature. One reason we love disasters is the internal dialogue we can have about it. Here are some samplings of what goes through our minds when watching a disaster unfold:
Excitement. We breathe quicker, get an adrenaline rush. We feel superior because we're far away from the disaster and safe in our little section of the world. The more disasters happen away from us the safer we are because "lightning won't hit twice in the same place." We want to see how people squirm and just how low-down things can get. We like to see people out of their usual element, down to "bare bones", shaken, real, bloodied and battered, where all the sudden wealth, power and fame no longer matter. It doesn't matter anymore how beautiful or successful someone is if they are swept away by a volcanic eruption. Disasters are the great equalizer. It's closer to "real life" than the advertisements for beauty aids and all the things people try to sell us all the time. It's one thing we can watch on TV that's real, not a political speech or formal, nicey, nicey $10000 plate dinner. It's the time when people can actually come together and help each other, and we actually do love to see real humanity. It's an opportunity to see the really horrible but yet it's real because we've so often been sold a bill of goods. We'd rather see something, anything real, no matter how bad, because we really would like to try to figure out how people tick, and how people can REALLY DO some of the things they do, like kill children, start firing at a college, drive car bombs into crowds. Disasters are an opportunity to try to figure out who we are and how we tick.
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We aren't just obsessed with disaster. We crave it. Disasters show us that there are people out there who have it worse than us. It shows us that we have more power than they do - and to want power and be better is only human nature. This is a good question, but the answer seems, when you really think about it, quite simple. Humans are arrogant, selfish creatures, and disasters let us be on top of someone else.
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because it brings to light the fact that we are not safe, and NATURAL disasters reminds us: this world most likely does not WANT us there. New Orleans floods because our technology had a fault, it's not a technology problem. It's not something to fix, it's something to avoid by staying in places that are ABOVE sea level, or at least, if they're not above sea level, places not surrounded by water at the same time. If your mobile home gets hit by a tornado more than twice and you've been in the same place for only two years, maybe you should consider a new location. You enjoy the scenery, but you can enjoy it as a tourist just as well. As far as man made disasters, like bombings, or plane crashes, that goes to show that just because we're technologically advances, we're not untouchable, we are not safe, I agree with Me2You on that. Technological advances do not make us superior to animals, because we still have an animal temper and impulse, which actually makes us being technologically advanced WORSE because it means that we can create even more horrible catastrophes. You don't see Apes waging war on each other with AK47's and hydrogen bombs. Maybe that's because they don't have the ability to make these terrible things. If we were still chucking spears and rocks at each other, the worst that could happen is that, over a decade, thousands die in a war, instead of millions of dying in the blink of an eye. A city gets leveled in the time it takes for you to make a phone call. Does that sound like progress to you? I get off topic a lot, if you haven't already noticed, and if you're still reading, thank you for keeping along on my tyraid.
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I definitely agree with Jennifer's post below. I also think it has to do with a fear and wonder of the awesome power of nature.
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