Be Afraid!

There are undoubtedly thousands, perhaps millions, of products devoted simply to keeping us safe in our everyday lives. Everything from car airbags, safety rails, bumper bars and guardrails all exist to make sure we don’t damage or injure ourselves or those we love. But shouldn’t we look at the actual things that we’re trying to defend ourselves from? Isn’t it worth considering the value of cars and industrial equipment that we can be certain will lead to the deaths and maiming of many people each year?

This is a tough question to ask, because while we know these objects cause massive amount of damage to humans and animal life, we need to keep them both for our own convenience and to maintain the economy of western countries alive. Imagine if next week the Government made a rule disallowing the use of motor vehicles. Obviously this would be a major inconvenience as many of us would have difficult getting to work and train lines would be massively crowded.

But that’s not even factoring in the way vehicles (or any oil-powdered device) are so heavily needed to keep our civilization going along. Consider that if we want to have food brought to cities from farms, it will need to be brought by trucks. If a home is burning, we would need a fire truck. In so many ways not normally considered, we’re reliant on the use of dangerous vehicles just to keep our bodies alive.

In the civilized world, we like to give ourselves a considerable amount of distance from the realities of death. Such realities are, obviously, still ever-present, but our capabilities to stay away from the truth that we could die at any moment are quite effective.

The fear is still present, of course, but it tends to grow displaced in different fears such as the fear of terrorism, shark attacks or criminal activity. When any of these is compared to the amount of damage caused by work accidents, or vehicle crashes, or diseases caused by smoking and alcohol use, the things we fear more are actually the cause of far less damage.

Imagine, for a minute, if we feared alcohol and cigarettes to a similar extent we fear terrorism. Anyone who said they support the use of beer or going to a bar would be shunned by their peers, those who claimed to enjoy smoking would be profiled by thier police, and anyone going down the street with a bottle of Jim Beam would be seen as a threat to national security. Of course, this is all a bit silly, but the statistical data show that the danger posed by these is more real by any threat we perceive from terrorists.

Fear is, by its very nature, irrational. If we can look at the realities of our current situation, and what real threats we may fall victim to, we’ll be able to make changes in our lives that can cause major improvements in the well-being of ourselves and those around us.