The Geometry of Fear

Описание: Episode Transcript: So I was in this Airbnb for the last month where there were bumps in the night. And, you know, they didn't freak me out. My first thought was, this is just the place settling. And then I thought about if I actually believed in ghosts, that I, by all rights, should be terrified. But I stopped and thought about it for a little bit. And I realized that even if I did believe in ghosts, I wouldn't be terrified.

And I wondered why that was. And I thought about it and I realized it was because the place was quite small. It was a studio apartment, maybe 400 square feet, something like that. And I think that if you're in a studio apartment with a ghost, it stops being a horror movie and it starts to kind of just be a sitcom where you have a bad roommate. Because, you know, the monsters that you can see are never as scary as the monsters that you can't.

And if you think about it, the haunted archetype of places that we commonly think of being scary, they're always large, right? Mansions, insane asylums, hotels, etc. And Hollywood directors, they know this. They've mastered the concept of dread versus terror. And dread is sort of the lead-up concept to terror, right?

Terror is gripping. Terror is when the monster actually pops out, right? Which in these movies, these horror movies, is usually only 10% of the movie. Whereas dread is 80, 90% of the movie—is that lead up, that anticipation. So if you're in a mansion, a haunted mansion, right? You never know if a ghost is near you or not. It could be in a different room. Whereas if you're in a studio apartment and it's haunted, you always know you're in the room with the ghost.

Anyways, I think that this maps really well onto life actually and problems in our lives and in business, right? We think that we want space and distance from our problems, but space or the unknown is actually what breeds fear. And a lot of times that fear prevents us from going and tackling those problems head-on.

So the thing about problems is humans are adaptable and can get used to nearly everything if it's a known constant. Humans are very resilient and the life that we have in the modern world is objectively better as far as quality of life goes than for pretty much all of human history. But in today's world, we deal with lots of uncertainty, which leads to fear, and the fear makes us want space from our problems. Whereas if we can get over that fear and just attack our problems, we'll find out that the monsters that go bump in the night are not that scary.

So think about it like this. If you've ever had a boss or a romantic partner say something like, "We need to talk," you'll know that that's one of the worst sentences in the English language, right? And that's because of the uncertainty of it, right? If they said, "We need to talk, you're fired," or "We need to talk, we're breaking up," right? In all senses, that should be worse, but in many ways, it's a freeing statement, right? And it feels better because there's certainty. You know what's happening, right? You know how you can fight back. You know how you can surrender if necessary.

Anyways, just wanted to record this and I think it would be good, you know, for everyone to think about the things that they are trying to create space from in their lives right now, which they should be attacking head-on.