Watching my personal "Fear Factor" double feature -- Bush and Big Brother -- reminded me of a conversation I had during the 2004 campaign with Dr. Daniel Siegel, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist whose book Mindsight explores the physiological workings of the brain. He explained that the Bush campaign's unrelenting fear-mongering had left voters "shrouded in a 'fog of fear,'" reacting not with their linear, logical left brain but with their lizard, more emotional right brain.
Deep in the brain lies the amygdala, an almond-sized region that generates fear. When this fear state is activated, the amygdala springs into action. Before you are even consciously aware that you are afraid, your lizard brain responds by clicking into survival mode. No time to assess the situation, no time to look at the facts, just fight, flight or freeze. Fear paralyzes our reasoning and literally makes it impossible to think straight. Instead, we search for emotional, nonverbal cues from others that will make us feel safe and secure.
http://nevernwo.blogspot.com/2007/06/on-fear-lizard-brains-and-1984-fear.html
