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Date Posted: 09:55:07 02/06/03 Thu
Author: mvd
Subject: Safetifying our world
In reply to: Adilbrand 's message, "Why is America so determined to make life so darn safe?" on 21:07:48 02/05/03 Wed

This is a movement that I have addressed before, too. Of course, there is nothing wrong with creating safety measures that can save lives. The seatbelt is a wonderful example. All discussion about the seatbelt aside, it has been proven to save lives. The question that you seem to be driving at is: Why did we create them in the first place, and even more to the point, why do we make everyone else wear them?

It is my belief that Americans are childish in their thinking regarding death. There is a voice within our culture that says that death doesn't actually happen, as if it were against the law. We raise great outcries against the needless needless death, as if it were something that could truly be avoided. The first thing you hear after any disaster is: "Could it have been avoided?" Then, "And if it could have been, who was responsible?"

It is a common human trait to do all that is possible throughout life to forget about death. This is why we love the illusions of safety, religion, science and even modern medicine. Yet, there is also a great faction among us that is out to conquer death. It is also my belief that all civilizations are based upon the knowledge of death. To explain:

Agriculture and business as it sprung up in early times had mostly to do with providing abundance and prolonging life. All institutions have the basic resources used to provide for and prolong life as their foundation. How proud are we in this country that our life expectancy is greater than most other countries in the world? And so we pump great amounts of time and money into projects and structures and institutions that have one thing in mind: prolonging life. No matter that the life we are prolonging is one obsessed with prolonging life at the expense of living it!

Safetification, as I call it, is a natural outgrowth of the species' desire to prolong life at any cost. In American society, with its "rights" and "liberties", this desire for safety is perceived to be a right! We have a right not to be put into harm's way, we have a right not to be endangered, regardless of how small the danger is. We demand to be protected from burning hot coffee to falling down stairs, from drunken drivers to terrorists. It galls us even more when our safety measures fail because we have spent so much effort and time enacting them! This is why we must produce and stay so busy! Someone has got to keep the windmill spinning. And, dammit, isn't there someone watching out for us? Where is god? Where is my protector? Where is the State? Where is my lawyer?

So much effort to avoid a thing we fear. So much effort to avoid a thing we (most likely) won't have any knowledge of after it happens! Instead of truly facing death and accepting it as an inevitability, we choose, rather, to avoid facing it. I wonder...

How different might our culture be if we simply embraced death, then got on with living? I fancy that people would be a bit more contented. But, we all know what contentment breeds, that single most detestable quality of a culture obsessed with production and safety: Laziness.

In some strange, warped sense, an idea that must have been spawned in the brain of a true madman, we are not supposed to be content.

But, I think I have rambled just a bit...

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