
I wish there was a way to get all the people who are trying to eliminate all possible risk from everyday life, whatever the cost, and make them read this strip and then just sit and think about it for a while. Maybe, just maybe, a different way of presenting the message might make them understand that they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Kage Baker has a series of novels about The Company, aka Dr. Zeus. Somewhere in the future of all the time-travelling, time-communicating protagonists is what they call "the silence". Nobody knows what it is. They just know that there are no messages, no word, nothing, from farther in the future than that time.
I have a theory, because as the timeframe of the books moves more and more into the future, more and more is banned because it's hazardous. Meat. Coffee. Chocolate.
You know what I think the Silence is? I think the safety nannies finally managed to make life so free of risk and experience, so utterly BORING, that no-one could be bothered any more. "Not with a bang, but with a whimper" ... or just with a sigh of complete, supreme apathy.