We human beings are a pretty funny and strange lot. I'll elucidate the same by contextualizing it with the recently launched metro services in Bangalore.
So yes, Bangalore just witnessed her first stint with the metro after so many years of toil and political lethargy. And through this entire process, right from its inception to inauguration, we've seen truck-loads of mishaps and untoward incidents unfold. It's but natural for people to suspect and be wary of this infrastructural feature - what with stories of concrete slabs falling off from the heights they did with traffic underneath, cranes upturning, workers dying and so on.
However, when the metro rolled out on October 20th, every one did breathe a sigh of relief. There's finally a mode of transport that is fast and can *finally* give the dastardly Bangalore auto federation what it truly deserves. It's swanky (for the time being) and isn't monotonous. We don't need to beg, bargain and bray. Not for Phase 1 at least.
On the other hand, there were quite a few people who gave the metro a miss, especially on the first few days. Why? To test how safe it truly is by waiting it out and seeing if something goes wrong (like it stalling mid-way thanks to a power cut) or if something more drastic like the concrete blocks getting dismantled, or worse, the metro taking a fatal turn and falling off altogether (God forbid!). Yes, there were people who waited to see if any of the above would happen. Ghastly, I know.
I go back to saying we're a funny and strange lot because of the way we think and categorize our world and experiences. We build our experiences and retain our memories based on something called the 'availability heuristic' which is nothing but a strategy of making judgments on the basis of how easily certain kinds of information come to our mind. So we base our thoughts and judgments on events that are more sensationalized and big than events that are, say, more 'regular' in nature, if I may.
Therefore we'd tend to remember events like
and
making them much more vivid in our mind and that much faster for us to recollect over an automobile accident, cancer or a hospital death.
We're more wary of a flight or a high-security alert, and perhaps have every reason to be, even though statistics prove that more people die from car and/or bike accidents, smoking and say, diabetes on a daily basis. We're a funny lot, the way we think.
*The post is intended to comment on how we think, and not pass any judgments on smoking or other recreational activities/habits.
So yes, Bangalore just witnessed her first stint with the metro after so many years of toil and political lethargy. And through this entire process, right from its inception to inauguration, we've seen truck-loads of mishaps and untoward incidents unfold. It's but natural for people to suspect and be wary of this infrastructural feature - what with stories of concrete slabs falling off from the heights they did with traffic underneath, cranes upturning, workers dying and so on.
However, when the metro rolled out on October 20th, every one did breathe a sigh of relief. There's finally a mode of transport that is fast and can *finally* give the dastardly Bangalore auto federation what it truly deserves. It's swanky (for the time being) and isn't monotonous. We don't need to beg, bargain and bray. Not for Phase 1 at least.
On the other hand, there were quite a few people who gave the metro a miss, especially on the first few days. Why? To test how safe it truly is by waiting it out and seeing if something goes wrong (like it stalling mid-way thanks to a power cut) or if something more drastic like the concrete blocks getting dismantled, or worse, the metro taking a fatal turn and falling off altogether (God forbid!). Yes, there were people who waited to see if any of the above would happen. Ghastly, I know.
I go back to saying we're a funny and strange lot because of the way we think and categorize our world and experiences. We build our experiences and retain our memories based on something called the 'availability heuristic' which is nothing but a strategy of making judgments on the basis of how easily certain kinds of information come to our mind. So we base our thoughts and judgments on events that are more sensationalized and big than events that are, say, more 'regular' in nature, if I may.
Therefore we'd tend to remember events like
and
making them much more vivid in our mind and that much faster for us to recollect over an automobile accident, cancer or a hospital death.
We're more wary of a flight or a high-security alert, and perhaps have every reason to be, even though statistics prove that more people die from car and/or bike accidents, smoking and say, diabetes on a daily basis. We're a funny lot, the way we think.
*The post is intended to comment on how we think, and not pass any judgments on smoking or other recreational activities/habits.
But that's because a plane crash or a concrete block falling is not under one's control, but stuff like smoking is.. right?
ReplyDeleteI'm not talking about what's in our control and what's not... I'm talking about how we sometimes attribute events to more 'sensational' ones and act accordingly. So one wouldn't really think twice about riding a bike without a helmet or just going in a car as much as they would think about taking a flight, sky-diving/bungee jumping or taking the metro in this case, and so on.
ReplyDeleteAnd if we were to take the example of health, research shows that more people would think ten times about say, a new vaccine, than about smoking, ingesting more sugar related products or eating unhealthily even though more of us clearly die from results of the latter than a new vaccine, in this case.