Risk

[unixronin]

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.

Comments

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

We are forgetting how to "Boldly go where no one has gone before." The nannies are even thinking that Manned Space Flight is Too Risky. And trying to stop NASA from going to Mars. We are losing the Spark!
Must be the same people who stayed in England when the colonies were settled. Or stayed in New England when the West was Won. There are always safety nannies.
The Founding Fathers warned us about this. So did Ike Eisenhower. Now there was a Real Republican.
And we need to keep letting the Rebels shake it out of us.
Are you ready to Rumble?!?
Alaric, you are one of the Futurists. Keep pushing the Rest of Us out of complacency.
Thanks. Really.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

You know the last book has been released, right?

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

Yes but I don't think he's read it yet.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

The only ones left are the Reavers. ;)

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

I think is was A. C. Clark who wrote Against the Fall of Night. Exactly the same theme, but from the other end. After the safety nannies have won, what is left to do? Die?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

My memory concurs with yours that it was Clarke. I first read it in an Ace double with The Lion of Comarre (which was also Clarke), but he later expanded it into a full-length novel, and I read that version too.

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

I battle with this balance daily. What's the risk/pleasure tipping point?

I feel sad for folks that are so scared of living. sigh. I can't live like that. It's too exhausting. And yet, I must battle with myself not to seek out security as a goal. It's a never ending struggle with myself.

I don't want to leave a pretty corpse with lots of money. I want to know that I was so grateful for the gift of my life that I embraced it fully and squeezed out every drop.

David, who is the least "safe and secure" oriented person I know, jokes that the last phrase in his brain will be "Ooops...that was really dumb David."

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The best security is that which I provide for myself. Because any security that I rely on somebody else to provide can be trusted only as far as I trust the person or persons providing it — which, in the case of the government, is scarcely at all.

David, who is the least "safe and secure" oriented person I know, jokes that the last phrase in his brain will be "Ooops...that was really dumb David."

"Y'all hold mah beer and watch this now!" :)

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

I rather like the "Wow! What a ride!" concept but it bothers me because some of us are planning on living forever and well, I'd like to keep the body in good enough shape that it'll be comfortable to be out there at the edge of time. Unless we can figure out the Time Lord regeneration trick.