Living on the slopes of a volcano
August 6th, 2007People living in Tokyo, San Francisco, Naples, know that maybe their house will be destroyed tomorrow and half their family will be dead. Yet they carry on with their lives. Many of them even manage to live happy lives, while they never forget altogether what might happen.
How about the rest of us? Those of us who do not live in a country at war, who do not live near a volcano or a fault or a dyke or the seashore or in an avalanche or tornado corridor? Does it mean we can be care-free because nothing is going to happen to us?
What about bird flu, oil crisis, global warming, water wars, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, rogue asteroids, cancer, diabetes? Nobody is out of reach of terrible misfortunes, but we often act as if we were protected somehow, as if being protected from misfortunes was among the fundamental human rights. Our western world is so afraid of death and so eager to hide it under the carpet that we had rather wear blinkers than bear to see it lurk in the corner of our field of view.
I wish I could live, laugh, love, and watch children grow just as if I was living on the slopes of a volcano.
Read on
We do not really want to live long
The happiest person in the world
They can’t take that away from me
Mellow moments
Hey Mandarine,
I think people have a marvelous capacity to ignore that which doesn’t affect the next hour of their life. I know I do. Each hour that goes by without tramatic incident is another pat on the back for the blinders.
My mother, on the other hand, lives in perpetual dread of many things. I attribute it to her addiction to CNN, MSNBC and a host of other 24 hour cable news channels that take fear-mongering into the stratosphere!
Live long and prosper!
Doug
I hope I might live long in some sort of intermediate state where I am not scared, but not oblivious either. Can this be done at all? Time will tell; and I’ll keep you posted.
Human beings have an amazing capacity to distract themselves from the inevitability of death and to do extremely dangerous things without thinking much about it (like riding around in metal and glass machines at extraordinary high speeds, because then they can venture much farther away from home than if they had to rely on their own two feet). I often wonder if other species do this.
Airplanes are intrinsically strikingly dangerous and we have somehow managed to take safety measures well beyond what was reasonably needed, so that ironically they are now the safest way to travel (way safer than with one’s own two feet). I wonder what would happen to cars, rifles or medicine if we started to require less than one accident in a hundred million hours of use.
About other species and risky activities: I’d love to hear how many dolphins drown themselves by diving too deep, how many mountain goats break their necks when idly jumping around in cliffs, how many cheetahs smash themselves at 50 mph against a tree, how many chimpanzees end up paralysed after a nasty fall because of a rotten branch, etc. I think all animals have a history of disregarding any risk below one in ten. We are no exception, but fortunately, we have invented … tadaa … probability and statistics.
By the way, a probability riddle that will make you the queen of mathematics in any circle:
Suppose I toss three coins. Two are bound to be the same side up. The third one has one in two chances of being the same side up. Therefore, the probability of having three heads or three tails is 50%.
Now there is no wondering why we are so bad at judging risk: we are about as bad at probabilities as chimpanzees at arithmetic.
It always amazes me how many people I’ve met who are terrified of flying, but who have no worries at all about getting into a car, which is statistically far more dangerous.
I watch the squirrels every day in the big tree in front of my office window. They leap among the branches and use the tree to scurry up onto our roof. So far, no accidents, but I’m waiting for the day one of them missteps.
I’ll have to share your probability riddle with some of my authors.
I have seen squirrels fall from trees when they miss their branch. They spread their legs and tail out to get as much parachute action from them as they can, and when they land, they sit there for a minute. Then they sort of shake themselves and run up the nearest tree.
If only we could survive our inevitable fall into global warming with as much grace. But I fear water wars, and food riots, and massive death from famine is in our future, none of which sound particularly graceful.
Possibly. And yet, it’s like when you live on a volcano: you can fear the worst, but you can never really know what will happen.