Invisibilia

Last night on my train ride home I was listening to the NPR Podcast Invisibilia. I have recently become obsessed with this podcast and I'm sad that it only has 6 episodes. Hopefully season 2 comes out soon as I have one episode left to go.

Anyway, this podcast was about the power of categories. People want and need to be placed in categories- are you a dog person or a cat person? Are you male or female? We are very uncomfortable with people who don't neatly fit into one category or another, and the person that doesn't fit into a category feels uncomfortable as well.

Towards the end of the podcast, the hosts were talking about an Indian retirement community in FL. The founder of the community decided that he didn't want to go back to India to live out the rest of his life because his family was here in the US (amongst other reasons), so he thought that he would create a mini-India retirement community in FL, complete with yoga classes, mediation, palm trees, Indian decor, etc. He started to sell the units right as the recession hit but instead of having issues selling the condos when bigger condos were being sold for less right across the street due to foreclosure, he quickly sold out and had to build more units (which then sold out quickly as well). Turns out that when people fear death or see death coming sooner rather than later, they become racist and want to be with people like themselves.

The host spoke to a psychology professor that has researched what happens when people are facing death. Experiments like asking what happens to you when you are physically dead or asking questions outside a funeral home tend to make people more negative towards other cultures and become more nationalistic. The professor seems to think that it is something about the threat of disappearing. But if you are surrounded by people like you, either in culture, religion, or something else, then you still matter, you are still here.

This is fascinating and most likely why Donald Trump's racist thoughts are resonating with the older white group here in the US. I would argue that all of the Republicans are running on a platform of fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of people taking our jobs, etc. makes his supporters want to surround themselves with people just like them. Thus they all believe that our country needs to ban Muslims and curb immigration from other countries (especially those south of us because they don't look like us either).

This isn't to give an excuse to all of the people supporting these insane proposals, but it does give me some insight into why they might be doing so. I don't have anything to wrap up this post in a neat and tiny bow, but just thought that this was a fascinating podcast that was very relevant to the past few weeks!