Dawkins

I'm reading "The Selfish Gene" at the moment. Dawkins (I think it was in this book - I might be confused) outlines the idea that our evolved brains can't differentiate between things presented by the news and things that are really happening to people in our immediate lives. We evoled to live in a world where we have contact with a few hundred people in the whole of our lives. If one of those few hundred people see a tiger walking about we need to be on tiger watch so that our kids don't get killed and eaten.

When we watch the news we are presented with disasters that have happened to someone somewhere in the world so we think that there is an immediate threat to us whereas there is very little real risk to us. I'm not saying that we shouldn't empathise with people outside of our immediate social network. I am saying that getting all worked up about it and carrying your tiger shooting riffle is an inappropriate reaction.