How To Stay Safe
There are undoubtedly thousands, perhaps millions, of products devoted simply to make us safe in our day to day lives. Everything from car airbags, safety rails, seat belts and guardrails all exist to make sure we don’t hurt or injure ourselves or the people we love. But shouldn’t we look at the actual things that we’re trying to defend ourselves from? Isn’t it valuable to think of the value of cars and industrial equipment that we can be certain will lead to the deaths and maiming of hundreds each year?
This is a tough question to ask, because while we know these objects cause large 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 cars, trucks and buses. Obviously this would be a major inconvenience as many of us would have difficult getting to work and train lines would be very crowded.
But that’s not even considering the way vehicles (or any oil-powdered contraption) are so heavily required to keep our civilization going along. Consider that if we want to have food brought to cities from farmland, it will need to be driven by trucks. If a house is burning, we would need a fire truck. In so many ways not normally considered, we’re dependent on the use of dangerous vehicles just to keep ourselves alive.
In the civilized society, we like to give ourselves a certain amount of distance from the realities of death. Such realities are, obviously, still ever-present, but our capabilities to stay away from the fact that we could die at any time are quite effective.
The fear is still present, of course, but it tends to grow displaced in different concerns such as the fear of terrorism, shark attacks or criminal activity. When any of these is judged against the amount of damage created by work accidents, or vehicle crashes, or diseases caused by smoking and drug use, the things we fear more are actually the reason for far less damage.
Imagine, for a moment, 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 community, those who claimed to like smoking would be profiled by thier police, and anyone walking down the street with a bottle of Jim Beam would be seen as a threat to national security. Of course, this is all pretty silly, but the statistical facts show that the danger posed by these is more real by any threat we perceive from terrorists.
Fear is, by its very definition, irrational. If we can look at the realities of our current situation, and what actual 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.
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