Don't Panic (?)

While the witty Douglas Adams placed this little gem of wisdom on his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we have to ask ourselves why not?

We live in a time where there’s plenty to panic about. There are global items, like global warming and theories of peak oil and that California is long overdue for a giant earthquake that will eventually split us off from the rest of North America. There’s local stuff, like the fact that both Obama and McCain don’t seem to be all we thought they were, or the state of the economy and the housing bubble bursting. Then there’s personal stuff. You’re moving up in life, getting a job, moving out of the house, heading out to college. Face it, there are plenty of good reasons for why we might go running around the neighborhood grabbing dried and canned food and buying plenty of weapons and ammo and a shortwave radio.

Of course, we haven’t yet. Most of us believe that there’s no reason to go nuts. It’s either in the future so we’ll worry about it then, or we can handle it, or there’s nothing we can even do about it. After all, giant meteors crashing into Earth is a very real threat, but the probability of it happening is close to nil and there’s not much you can do if it does come along. Same with the Sun going supernova, although they expect we’ve still got a couple million years to go, and we should have intergalactic space travel by then.

But here’s a question. Should we panic more often? Or, conversely, should we never panic at all?

In the past, there was a famous theory that the population of humans would increase exponentially, and the food supply only linearly. Basic math indicates this would have caused a giant famine, and the only way we would survive would be by portions of the population dying by war, famine, or disease. Well, we’re still around. Why? It is because we’ve been able to increase the food supply to match the needs of our exponentially growing population and not because we’ve managed to kill each other off for that little bit of food. Ah the wonders of science.

Economists have often been called the scientists of doom. Inflation will not stop, and eventually things will spiral out of control as the inflation compounds upon more inflation. That is, at least according to classic economic thought. Mind you that’s a huge oversimplification, but we’re still alive. Sure the inflation rate is high, the dollar is getting weaker, and oil prices are higher than we’d like, but there hasn’t been a giant communist revolution nor have there been huge upheavals of the economic system. Well, unless you count those couple of stock market crashes.

One might argue that the only thing that fuels science, or any advancement in general, is fear, and to an extent a bit of panic. Or, to borrow another saying, necessity is the mother of invention. If there is a need, and someone cares enough, it can probably be fixed. Except if the need is faster than light travel (or some FTL drive) without the folding of the space time continuum. We’re pretty sure that’s impossible. Thus, it is sometimes a good idea, and even healthy to panic just a bit.

Let me give a more practical example. There’s a saying around Mudd that you should take your high school GPA, subtract 2 points, and then you have your new Harvey Mudd GPA. Probably you’re panicking about getting a 2.2 GPA average and how horrible that will look to the scholarships and graduate schools. So, what should you do? If you allow yourself to panic just a bit, perhaps you’ll work harder and exceed that prediction and maintain a 3.5 GPA instead.

On the flip side, there’s stuff you shouldn’t panic about. Meteors are a prime example. Even the Harvey Mudd GPA curse isn’t that big of a deal. After all, the average GPA is closer to about 3.2 at Mudd, and graduate schools are glad for Mudd not having grade inflation. It makes those grades have weight and they can understand much better your abilities just from a look at your GPA. They also understand that there have been less than 10 students who have graduated with a 4.0 in the history of Harvey Mudd College.

So, what am I getting at? Fundamentally, a little bit of panic and worry is healthy. It keeps you going and helps put stuff in perspective. There are things you should panic about, like the energy concerns or nuclear war or your checking balance. Then there’s stuff you can loosen up a little bit once you know all the facts. Trust me. Those headlines on the newspaper are just to sell pages. If you actually read the whole article, thing’s aren’t quite as bad as you may be led to believe. Especially with some of those more slanted papers. But I digress.

In closing, be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

In moderation.