The Vine

Gregory Berns has written a fantastic piece in today’s NYT about the neuroscience of fear and its paralyzing effects on our judgment, decision-making, risk assessment, and willingness to explore new opportunities. In other words, its tendency to promote a bunker mentality and stifle the very traits needed to overcome a crisis.

He writes:

We are caught in a spiral in which we are so scared of losing our jobs, or our savings, that fear overtakes our brains. And while fear is a deep-seated and adaptive evolutionary drive for self-preservation, it makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but saving our skin by getting out of the box intact.

Ultimately, no good can come from this type of decision-making. Fear prompts retreat. It is the antipode to progress. Just when we need new ideas most, everyone is seized up in fear, trying to prevent losing what we have left.

Furthermore, there is a dangerous snowball effect to fear-based behavior. “[W]hen our brains sense pain, or anticipate loss, we tend to hold onto what we have,” he observes. “When everyone does this at once, the result is a downward economic spiral.”

Clearly this is not a time to throw caution to the wind. But it is a time to be exploring and preparing for the opportunities that will emerge from this mess. Because two things are certain: 1) they will emerge, and 2) they will not look the same as they did before.

The only way this is going to happen is by distancing ourselves from irrational fear. That means tuning out fearmongering media. It means disabling the stock market widget on your desktop. It means prioritizing and promoting a culture of exploration within your organization, where new idea-sharing is safe and encouraged—and idea-hoarding is taboo.

And it means, above all else, maintaining a rational, long-term view of risk and opportunity…even when our brain’s wiring tempts us to do the opposite.

NB: Berns, a pioneer in the emerging field of neuroeconomics, has also written a fascinating book on this topic.

If there isn’t a market for McMansions on barren hillsides…if conspicuous consumption is no longer fashionable (to say nothing of affordable)…Maybe, just maybe, something different is needed.

—In Oakland, Forest City’s Uptown development offers residents free annual membership to Zipcar, free public transit passes, and access to bikes.

—At SOMA Grand in San Francisco, TMG Partners provides Smart cars for residents to use through the local car sharing service, City CarShare.

—In Sacramento, where foreclosure rates are among the highest in the nation, sales at Whitney Ranch dried up until Standard Pacific Homes put solar systems on a group of new models. When those sold out, the builder then installed panels on all of its homes in the development.

—At Trilogy Central Coast, about an hour north of Santa Barbara, Shea Homes has earned national media attention (see here and here) for building a community that revolves around wine and food, catering to 50-plus buyers’ interest in the social aspect of cooking.

—In Palmdale, an hour north of Los Angeles, KB Home has overcome a market reeling with foreclosures by dropping larger floorplans and focusing on smaller, more affordable homes, bringing monthly payments down to levels that are competitive with rental rates in the area.

To be fair, it’s not just McMansions like the one above that aren’t selling. Vinester Mollie Carmichael comments that even the most desirable communities “likely aren’t making money; they’re just bleeding less.” This is today’s reality.

But in the drive to innovate our way out of the current mess, which approach are you betting on?

Will we restore equilibrium by inventing smarter, better, more thoughtful forms of housing, holistically integrated into healthy, vibrant communities?

Or will we be “Open Weekends”?