He was on a job at a well known large hotel with another older more experienced electrician who felt he didn't need to take safety precautions before plunging his hands into an exposed electrical box. The ego of this man prevailed: "I know where my hands are at all times."
Giving credit to my 25 year old son-in-law for being less egotistical, he warned the man to wear safety gloves like he was supposed to even offering to go get them out of the van. No, the older more experienced electrician felt more than confident in his abilities. The next sound was an explosion. The older electrician's hands were severely burned (I guess he'll have a greater sense of where his hands are at all times now). Luckily, my son-in-law's face and body was spared any serious injury, much to my daughter's relief. This man's bravado not only risked his own life, but other people's lives. Risk assessment decisions often do.
Not to be blunt, but I will -- we are born to die. Our ego will not let us accept this realty, however. Otherwise, we would not continue to forge on through our daily drudgery.
The "it won't happen to me" attitude is our ir-rationalization for being able to get out of bed every day, drive our cars on dangerous highways, work at jobs where we risk our lives, eat deliciously vein clogging food, smoke (please we are still smoking, if not cigarettes, then way too many still smoke the "healthier should-be-legal" stuff), pop mood and sex drugs, have unprotected sex, and drink alcohol. And that's just everyday life. Think about the risks we take for fun, jumping out of airplanes, riding roller coasters, skiing, bungee cord jumping, surfing, and the list goes on. Each of these activities involves risk to our lives.
The question is which one will kill us.
Here's a paradox. We have to eat to survive, yet about 3,000 people die every year choking on their food. And let me give you a reason to be a vegetarian. About 90% of those deaths are from a piece of juicy meat. Even our favorite president, W, had a brush with death from a pretzel. I can only wonder how history would have changed if it was steak. The reality is, except for models, we have to eat to live.
Granted, the risk of dying by the fork are statistically negligible, but add lack of exercise, high cholesterol, high fat foods, overeating, high salt diets, lots of refined sugar, and alcohol and this risky behavior contributes to more than an estimated 300,000 deaths a year. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the US. While a small portion of deaths from heart disease are congenital, most are due to poor lifestyle choices. These eating behaviors all involve freedom of choice at least for adults. Some might argue the poor have less choice in this matter since the unhealthiest diets are typically the cheapest. Even that is another ir-rationalization because most low income families eat fast food and junk food, and neither are cheap, but that's another article.
Let's call the food diet risk a passive long term risk. But what about actively aggressive imminent risks? Riding motorcycles, diving off roofs into pools, building houses in fire, flood, and hurricane zones, or any conscious decision we make that increases the risk of dying in an accident or natural disaster. The 5th leading cause of death in the US is unintentional injuries, accidental. The statistics are even sexist because when we look at men versus women, men win hands down with accidental deaths being the 3rd highest cause while it's 7th for women.
Recently there have been stories of hikers who died after an avalanche, or hikers who got lost, or hikers who broke a leg and couldn't get help. These are activities that cost society thousands and thousands of dollars for rescue missions, and we gladly pay. We need to hear about these stories, whether they live or die. We want the gory details and explanations of what happened and how it could have been avoided. We need the information to save ourselves, to know what to do or not do in the same situation.
All this ir-rational risk taking in society drives me crazy. Why are people so stupid? But then in my usual analytical way, I don't settle for the hasty generalization. I search for the reasons this behavior actually helps us survive as humans because, after all, risk taking behavior is not new and we are still thriving. And so, it's not about those who die, not to be callous, but it is about those who survive the risks and live.
Whether it's passive or active risk, our society needs the genes of the survivors to be passed on to the next generation. Those that survive risky situations hold the DNA needed for survival. Evel Knievel lived until he was 69 years old, and he came pretty close to breaking a bone for every year he lived, 40 of them. True to survival, he produced Robbie Knievel to carry on the risk taking legend. I can only hope that my son-in-law's escape from harm was due to good survival genes for the sake of my grandchildren. In the end, it's our ego that makes us think "it won't happen to us" so that we act, so that we live. Nature just weeds out the bad genes by killing off those that can't beat the odds. Sorry, was that too blunt?
