Member-only story
Couple of weeks ago, I was walking back home from the grocery store near my neighborhood. A man was walking from the opposite direction. As he was getting closer to me, he turned his head and spat toward my direction (it didn’t come at me thankfully). Then he said “fu$king Chinese” quietly yet loud enough for me to hear.
I hear a certain group of people (Asian, mostly Chinese) becoming the target of discrimination lately around the world as they are associated with the COVID-19. Yes, the virus outbreak started in China but that doesn’t mean Chinese are the reason. It’s one random luck that it didn’t start in a small city in US or France or Chile.
The behavior of that man and many others who treated Asians unfairly is based on fear. When we are afraid, we resort to “easier” options, such as blaming others (“fight”), withdrawal (“flight”) or shutting down (“freeze”). It is how Amygdala, the central part of the limbic brain, reacts to threats or danger. While it’s natural to see our Amygdala reacting to any threats or dangers, it IS a problem when it “hijacks” our entire brain, making us fight, flee or freeze. Almost certainly, that man who spat toward me was the case of “Amygdala hijack“, as Daniel Goleman described in his book, “Emotional Intelligence”. Simply put, when Amygdala hijacks the brain, prefrontal cortex, the executive center of the brain, cannot do its job and does not let us see things in a balanced perspective. Hence, we fight, flee, or freeze.
