1/24/2016

TED Talk

This TED Talk entitled "What Fear Can Teach Us" by Karen Walker discusses the relationship between fear and storytelling.  She argues that the fears we imagine have the same structure and ideals of a story but can help us prepare for situations.

Walker explains her proposition that fear and storytelling are similar by analyzing the components of each.  She states that fear has the characters, plot, setting, and author that a story possesses.  Characters in our fears include ourselves and occasionally others while the position of the author can be changed.  Walker says that we can view our fears as either an artist or a scientist in that an artist becomes enveloped in the creative aspects of fear.  A scientist however evaluates fear with a clear mind and judges whether the fear is likely to become true.

The imaginative aspect of fear was also important to Walker's argument as she explained that fears are the creative side of trying to predict the future.  She says that as children our fears are extremely vivid are unlikely to come true but as we grow older they become less eccentric and more applicable to real life.  However, fears are imagination based no matter our age so they are unlikely to come true.  But every now and then, our fears do occur and how someone views them determines their actions. If we view them as an artist, we are likely to perceive the most outlandish fear as a possibility while a scientist would consider the likelihood of something unrealistic happening and would not be terrified of it.

She also says that fear is similar to storytelling in that all of the events that occur can cause a chain reaction.  Walker explains that as an author you have to think about how one change or event will cause something else and something else until there is a chain reaction.  She says that this is the same in fears because people start with something small and then it grows as one detail causes another until the fear is obscene.

Walker supports her claim with the example of when 20 American sailors sank in 1819 in the Pacific Ocean.  These sailors had three choices of how to get to safety:  they could sail the short distance to Tahiti, the longer distance to Hawaii, or the longest distance to South America.  All of these choices had fears attached as Tahiti was rumored to have cannibals, Hawaii would have lots of storms, and the trip to South America was so long that the sailors could starve.  The sailors decided that the cannibals were far too terrifying and sailed toward South America.  By the time that the sailors were found, half of them had died because they didn't take the shorter trip to Tahiti due to a misguided fear of cannibals.

The purpose of this presentation is to convince the audience that fears and stories are similar and how we interpret them influences our choices.  Walker makes this her purpose to teach the audience something about fear and that it doesn't have to be a weakness or block but if used correctly, something that can help us.  She wants the audience to be able to analyze their fear and to make correct decisions based off of it.

The speaker persuades the audience to her point by using ethos and logos.  Ethos is used as Karen Walker is a fictional writer and therefore has a lot of experience telling stories.  She gives examples of how she determines what happens after an event occurs creating a chain reaction and her own experiences as a child afraid of Californian earthquakes.  She gives vivid imagery of her experiences as a child and describes them in a way that makes them relate to every person, which adds to her credibility.  Walker also uses logos to support her claim because she analyzes the structure of both stories and fears while comparing them.  She states the components of a story that most everyone knows of, such as plot and characters, and applies them to fears in a way that is logical and well supported with the example of the sailors.  I would however say that a weakness to her argument is that Walker doesn't give any counterexamples and provides limited examples.

This talk appealed to me because of both the title and how it can relate to me.  Fear is something that we all deal with on a daily basis whether we acknowledge it or not and is always unconsciously present in our thoughts.  A lot of the decisions we make our influenced by what we are afraid of and I wanted a different perspective on how we can interpret fear.  Fear has been a part of my life recently as I am about to make life altering decisions and don't necessarily feel prepared to make them.  I will soon pick what college I attend, what career path I venture towards, and where I want to live whether I am ready to choose or not.  Fear of choosing the wrong thing is a large part of these choices.  How will I know that I chose the right path for me and what if I decide something that turns out to be wrong?  This fear will influence my decisions but being able to think of them as stories and to see that one thing leads to another might change my future from being a roadkill collector to something that captivates my passions.