Hysteria

People who live today can easily claim to be extremely different compared to, for example, the Europeans that colonized America. But is that really true? Changes between generations of living beings tend to be minute at best -- for example, there was no point at which a wolf became a dog, or, as minutephysics will point out in the video at the end, no point at which a proto-chicken became a chicken. There was no generation during which a colonial-era human gave birth to a modern-day human. So how do we know that we have changed? Well, maybe we haven't. In fact, in terms of actual behavioral change, we probably haven't changed much from our distant cave men ancestors. For example, we tend to feel adrenaline rushes while presenting to an audience. As a result, we are jumpy and speak quickly. So if the adrenaline doesn't help us, why do we have it? Probably because such mechanisms were useful in prehistoric eras when humans had to respond to unforeseen dangers quickly. But why am I discussing long term changes anyway?

Because we have made almost none. We still react the same way to the same stimuli as before; we just have more sophisticated titles for things that scare us. Witches and Communists are both equally unlikely to take over America, but we have responded with the same fear and finger waggling to both. It simply takes a target that many people hate combined with some over-zealous investigators as well as some high intensity accusation matches to cause the mass hysteria that engulfs and damages society.

Even now, we are still freaking out over entirely useless things. Things like the Illuminati. Or the shadow bankers of the Knights Templar. Or Majestic Twelve.

Or this guy.

Minutephysics discusses change/evolution

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a8pI65emDE