In the last post I emphasized how despite all the technological advances (and actually because of), we do not live in a risk-free world, and never will. I love hearing people quote anecdotal stories of gramps who smoked 40 cigarettes a day and drank a quart of whiskey a day and still lived to be 95 years old. There may indeed be people who can get away with that kind of lifestyle choice, but It is also true that for the one who lived an unhealthy lifestyle, there are a great many who will develop lung cancer from being around people who smoke and mild social drinkers who get cirrhosis of the liver. For any health problem there is a population bell-curve where one end (Standard Deviation 2-3) are people highly sensitive to the problem and the other end that apparently seemed unaffected. The kicker is that no one knows on which end of the curve they will fall until they are affected, or not! So, the sensible course for a healthy minimized risk with a healthy life is to live as though you are sensitive. It’s a bit like looking both ways when crossing a one-way street, because you can never be sure that some idiot isn’t driving the wrong way – my wife was in an auto-accident once when a young driver came at her going the wrong way in a one-way street. Or, like checking that cars are actually stopping at a pedestrian crosswalk before stepping out into the road. As I was taught, just because you have the legal right to cross doesn’t mean you have to be dead right.
No matter how good we make our technology and how many safeguards we put into place, there is always the human factor that somehow manages to override the best efforts of engineers to limit technological problems. There is a simple equation that describes any system’s reliability, which is equal to the technological reliability multiplied by the human reliability multiplied by 100. Even if we could get 99.9% reliability on the technology – everything always has the potential to break or fail sometime – the best that social risk specialists can come up with for human reliability is 0.75 (essentially 75%) because humans are incredibly fallible – no matter what the training and selection, in any situation there are people who are steadfast and calm while most others are reduced to panic. As I just said, when you need people to remain calm there are ways to select those that are most likely to do so. I heard of a test for Navy officers where they wore blacked out masks and were dropped unaware into an area of kelp and sea weed to gauge how they reacted. As writer Isaac Asimov once wrote: on a starship with the engines malfunctioning, the ‘thing’ has just gotten loose out of the hold, and the crew is running around panicked, that is the time you really need a ship’s captain to be coolheaded and able to manage the risks in an expedient manner.
In adventure sports, such as climbing, skiing, or mountain biking, the element of risk is part of the attraction. But it is risk by choice and with whatever mental algorithm we use, it is calculated risk, and for whatever reason, we feel somewhat in control. We are usually accepting of these risks. We might have moments of sheer terror when something unexpected happens, but that is part of the ‘gamble’ we accept. Having said that, I recall a story of a mountaineer in the Pacific Northwest who fell and injured himself as a winter blizzard was beginning. He lay there for two days before a mountain rescue helicopter pilot risking his life and craft flying in atrocious conditions managed to winch the injured man off the mountain and to the hospital. The man then sued the volunteer mountain rescue group for leaving him in distress for two days. If the man had won his lawsuit it would have meant the end of all kinds of volunteer rescue groups. Thankfully, the man lost his lawsuit, but I think it does illustrate how some people are unwilling to accept consequences despite knowing the risks. That and the need of lawyers needing to create business has made our modern society (especially in the USA) one of the most litigious ever.
Now let’s talk about risks that are imposed up on us. Our conditioning makes us accept certain authorities that we trust. At the end of the last post I listed several questions to use in considering the hazard of a situation. Most people assume that these authorities we trust do this on our behalf but anyone that makes a point of reading more deeply into any situation eventually becomes aware of a different situation than the one perceived – like taking the red pill in the Matrix film. Once cognitive dissonance sets in, one can see how our current lifestyle, pushed on us by the mainstream system, includes choices we make that have high levels of risk involved. While we can easily recognize how manufacturing and industrial byproducts and waste are creating health hazards, we trust that authorities (as in governmental regulatory agencies) are trying to minimize them for us. And for some reason, most people cannot comprehend that many businesses, especially the bigger corporate ones, would deliberately allow people to be harmed just to make a bigger profit. (Remember, corporations are legally obliged to maximize shareholder return, e.g. see previous post Reconditioning Ourselves: Alternative Perspectives 10 – Part 2 Changing the Narrative about our lives.)
It is only relatively recently that many people are now realizing how businesses spend a lot of money whitewashing and greenwashing what they do in order to keep people in the dark about the hazards being imposed on everyone. Our food and health systems are typical of this type of problem. They are big cabals of businesses, indeed, two of biggest in the world each with one pathological goal – to make more and more profit. It’s not that everyone working for these businesses are pathological but that the whole system itself is centered on a pathological need to increase profit. I will highlight this more in the next post.
But to end this post, what can we do? Recognize that what makes the headlines is not usually the stuff that will likely hurt us. But it is up to us individually to find out what does? For starters, recognize nothing is risk free, but ask not “is it safe,” but rather “how risky is it compared to other options.” Do you have control, or some level of control (such as in rock-climbing) over the risk? If so, minimize the risks as best as you can and quit worrying what can’t be controlled or the minor risks that exist in everything – you can trip on the sidewalk and crack your skull falling flat. Life involves risk but you can minimize those risks while still enjoying a vibrant and exciting life. As Albert Einstein said “A ship is always safe at shore, but that is not what it’s built for.” We can choose our risks. What we must now do is recognize how much of modern living involves risks being imposed on that we can control much more.
More about understanding how risk is imposed on us by a psychopathic system in the next post.
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