by Editor’s note: Shift Your Mindset is an occasional series from CNN’s Mindfulness, But Better team. We talk to experts about how to do things differently to live a better life.
Watch any zombie movie, and you’ll likely see people panicking and turning on each other to prevent the undead from snacking on their brains. But researchers recognize that those answers are just myths.
In crises, most people respond with compassion, care and cooperation. It turns out that people have been working together to deal with disasters since the earliest days of civilization.
In researching my book “Saved at the Seawall: Stories from the September 11 Boat Lift,” I spent hundreds of hours interviewing individuals involved in the spontaneous evacuation of nearly 500,000 people from Lower Manhattan on boat after the World Trade Center attacks. I heard a lot about the horrors faced by dust-clogged, stranded civilians who boarded any available craft. But everyone I spoke to denied any panic, pressure or shoving. In fact, the crowds parted ways to allow the seriously injured to evacuate first.
Meanwhile, marine crews have repeatedly put themselves in harm’s way, pointing their bows back toward ground zero to pick up yet more passengers desperate to escape Manhattan Island. Researchers have found examples throughout history of “disastrous compassion” that leads people to volunteer during disasters.
“In times of disaster, people usually go into a very cooperative mode,” explained Athena Aktipis in her book “A Field Guide to the Apocalypse: A Mostly Bad Guide to Surviving Our Wild Times.” Look at any recent cataclysm and “we see that more people are stepping in to help and provide assistance, and that chaos and taking advantage of others is the exception, not the rule.”
I spoke with Aktipis, an associate professor of psychology at Arizona State University, who urges people to keep this in mind when preparing for disasters of all kinds—especially when building a “Z-team” for those we want to be behind. of. face an apocalypse, zombie or otherwise. (Z stands for zombie, of course.) Aktipis is a cooperation theorist and social psychologist who has studied cooperation, human generosity, and conflict for more than 20 years.
Seriously preparing for the Big One (get his survival kit recommendations here), Aktipis is determined to “make the apocalypse fun again.” She wrote that she hopes her book will move readers from “the fear of future uncertainty to being ready to restructure your life to create a more sustainable and resilient future for all humanity.”
After all, she argued, “deep down, we all want to save the world,” and collaboration is the time-tested guiding principle.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
CNN: What do you mean by the apocalypse?
Aktipis Athena: The ancient Greek definition is “revelation,” so apocalypse is any event that reveals the risks we face. These provide us with opportunities to learn and protect our vulnerabilities so that we can survive and thrive in increasingly apocalyptic times.
We don’t just have an apocalyptic future; we also live in an apocalyptic present. Apocalypses are going on in the world all the time. There are always terrible things somewhere.
When we approach the apocalypse mentally, we are given the opportunity to figure out what is really important to us and build a community that helps us buffer against risk, whether apocalyptic or everyday risks.
CNN: What has your work taught you about how and when people help each other?
Action: Through my fieldwork, experiments with human participants in the laboratory and computer modeling, we have seen that situations of uncertainty, unpredictability and crisis bring out people’s instinct to help each other, without expecting anything in return. back.
Informal risk pooling is established through assistance in times of need. Evolutionarily, it is more important to have a safety net of mutual aid than to make small progress.
CNN: Does this mean that humans are inherently communal?
Action: There are elements of both collectivism and individualism in this tendency. The farmers we studied in southern Arizona and New Mexico are a paragon of independence who live on vast expanses, miles away from their neighbors, believing strongly that you should take care of your own challenges. But if an unexpected problem arises – if someone is injured or sick, or there is a death, or an unpredictable equipment failure – they pitch in to help each other with no strings attached.
Our willingness to help is often based on the simple knowledge that we have the ability to alleviate the need we see. And when we feel interdependent with the people around us, that makes it easier to step up.
CNN: What role have apocalypses throughout history played in what you call people’s “apocalypse resistance”?
Action: We have been dealing with apocalyptic situations for our entire history – even before we were human. All organisms have evolved to deal with risks. Environmental changes, migration, wars have been part of our societies for a long time, and people have evolved to deal with risks collectively.
Not only do we adapt when situations in our environment change, but when we emerge from the crisis and the process, we also learn. The most important human ability to deal with crises is cooperation. Next is our ability to communicate and share information and connect with each other, genuinely caring for each other’s well-being. All those things help us get through, as they are during our evolution.
CNN: Given all the crises in the world today, how do we move beyond a sense of powerlessness that might keep us from taking action?
Action: It is important to have an understanding of adventure! It is easy to fall into a state of fear about the changes that are happening around the world, but we can look at these challenges as opportunities to learn and grow, to better understand our world, and to move forward. Instead of waiting for bad events to happen, we can figure out ahead of time at least some simple things we can do to be more resilient. That can pay off big when a bad event happens.
People are often told to manage their own stress mindfully, but we need mechanisms to deal with the collective stress many of us feel. Collaboration, communication and working together in the community is essential. The arts are wonderful, incredibly important ways for people to deal with ambivalence and anxiety and to imagine possible collective futures together. Stories provide this really cool way to bring shared attention to realities, futures, and other possibilities that help us coordinate possible movement in new directions.
CNN: Is our evolutionary apocalypse resistance enough to face today’s disasters?
Action: Today’s apocalypses play out on a massive scale that we have not yet evolved to manage. The great existential risks we face are on a scale that we cannot tackle as individuals. To meet challenges, we must meet them with a level of human cooperation, cooperation, communication that matches the enormity of the problems. Coordinating our abilities requires working together deliberately to find solutions in a way that makes people feel positive.
We need collaborations between people with very different ways of understanding the world — so that scientists, artists, doctors and policy makers can share ideas about how to change our collective behavior. Our brains are amazing at processing information, so we, as individuals and as a collective, have a large number of capacities that we have not fully utilized to deal with the challenges we face. There is a great opportunity.
One amazing thing about human evolution is that we have evolved to do things that we have never done before, individually and collectively. This is ultimately a reason to be very optimistic about the future.
CNN: You recommend a Z team of people you want to take with you in an apocalypse. Who does the job description fit?
Action: The Z team is a network of people you can rely on in times of need. To form your Z-team, do a thought experiment. If zombies were scratching at your door, who would you want by your side? Who can you rely on to deal with challenges? Who can stand up to an apocalyptic event?
The Z team members you have chosen are probably people you already want as part of your social network. Building relationships with people you can rely on not only increases your resilience in disasters, but it can also make you feel safer and less lonely.
Preparing for the apocalypse offers solutions to multiple problems. Many of us feel lonely, disconnected or our lives have no meaning. We also feel anxious about dealing with everything that is going on with the world. These feelings can be alleviated by building a team of people we can trust in challenging times. Then, together, we can explore the risks we face, with curiosity and a sense of humor. Maybe some fun with it. Even if you’re just joking around, ask, “What special skill would you bring to the zombie apocalypse?” This can be a lighthearted way to deepen your connection, even if you’re not dealing with a real disaster.
With so many demands on us, it can be difficult to prioritize spending time to connect with the people in our lives. Chalking this up as part of the pre-apocalypse preparation can be a great way to pass more time. Socialization is how we invest in the relationships we value fundamentally. It is also a way of cementing bonds of mutual help, where we know that others will be there for us and we will be there for them.
Jessica DuLong is a Brooklyn, New York journalist, book contributor, writing coach and author of “Saved at the Seawall: Stories From the September 11 Boat Lift” and “My River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work That Built America.”
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