Is living without risk really living at all?
Hysterical safety-ism is the mark of a society that has passed its peak
I read a great essay in the UK Spectator that sums up my feelings.
Lionel Shriver writes:
We’ve willingly traded prosperity, functionality, joy, good company and the productive futures of upcoming generations for short-term security. That’s a security narrowly defined as well: individual medical security, as opposed to the broader, more long-term security of a sound economy and a thriving community. Hysterical safety-ism is the mark of a society that has passed its peak. The West has subsided to a geriatric phase of high anxiety and low expectations.
When Covid was first being talked about and there was little data to be found, it made some sense for governments to be cautious. As more information came in, there should have been changes made and a pivot from apocalyptic predictions to ones based on information coming in on a daily basis. What we know now is vastly different than what was known in March.
The infection fatality rate of Covid-19 is nowhere near the wild predictions made by the modelers. The disease and pandemic is real, but it’s far less dangerous than previously thought. The stats have been seriously misrepresented. City and state governments are constantly grabbing chance to control citizens through fear - and the media exacerbates the panic. The media does what they always do with keeping the public in a constant state of terror, but the past 12 weeks has been a case study in media hysterics and manipulation of people’s emotions.
Many media outlets have made it seem as if we should never go out again. If we do, we shouldn’t be seen without a mask, should never touch another human being again because we have to stay six feet apart at all times, we all have COVID-19 and the virus is potentially going to kill everyone, especially grandma. We need to “stay safe.” What does that even mean?
We do our best to mitigate risk but life is full of them. We take them on a daily basis. When we go out of our door to take care of any task, we risk getting robbed, killed in a car accident, hurt on a commuter train, slipping and falling, having someone run into us in the street, or any number of things that might cause harm. We may catch a cold from someone who is near you in a supermarket. We may even catch the flu from them too! When we go out to eat, we have no idea who prepared our food or drink. We don’t know where it came from, nor how it is being handled. We may wind up with food poisoning.
I think about the risks I’ve taken over the years. I worked my ass off and sacrificed financial security at times to become a full-time performing drummer. I’ve made my way in one of the most competitive markets in the world - New York City. I could have played it safe and stayed in the 9-5 day job life. I left all of that behind twenty years ago to take a risk to get to where I am today.
If you look at all of the items around you, you’ll see products and services that someone invented. Those inventors took a risk to bring that to the market. Think about the mere fact you live in the place where you are. How did your family and their ancestors get there? Your family could have been those who left the south in the Great Migration, people moving west during the Dust Bowl Migration, families coming to the USA from a foreign country or even yourself, moving out of your parent’s home to go off to college in another state, graduating, then landing in yet another state to take a job. Maybe you could have stayed home and stayed with your parents “until it was safe.”
We live in a world of competing risks. There really is no such thing as perfect safety. We take chances with almost everything we do.
Lionel continues:
If early humans were too frightened to leave the cave to hunt for food, none of us would be here. What’s wrong with you people? What’s made this country so formidable for a thousand years, — being incredibly careful?
Meanwhile, isolating schoolchildren within chalk circles may have a negligible epidemiological effect, but a profound psychological one. We’re inculcating chronic fearfulness in our kids, who will skip from the helplessness of infancy to the neurotic hyper-caution of old age with no moon landings in-between.
Safety is fine as far as it goes, but it’s not the driver of a vibrant culture. Safety is about stasis. If all you care about is safety, you never leave the house, lockdown or no lockdown. Obsession with safety is the very opposite of ambition. No wonder China is flexing its muscles. The western response to Covid-19 is an ominous sign of civilizational senescence.
Perhaps in future we’ll adulate a whole different set of national heroes. We’ll give Olympic medals to gymnasts who realise that flipping around uneven parallel bars is terribly dangerous, and so have prudently sat out their athletic careers in a chair. The winner of the Tour de France will be the cyclist who never rides faster than eight miles an hour and remembers to wear sunscreen.
There are no such thing as “safe spaces.” Some say we have to wait until it’s safe to go back to work, play or being around others. That means never. Others say we need a vaccine. If you are in that camp, you might want to read this, and this, then watch this before you start putting your faith in a new vaccine.
Either people will end the pandemic by saying it’s over, or the virus will die out like others have.
Get on with your life. Open up EVERYTHING. The only way out, is through. If you are not a risk taker, no one is stopping you from staying indoors forever. The rest of us have to continue living.
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Clayton Craddock is an independent thinker, father of two beautiful children in New York City. He is the drummer of the hit broadway musical Ain’t Too Proud. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University’s School of Business and is a 25 year veteran of the fast paced New York City music scene. He has played drums in a number of hit broadway and off-broadway musicals including “Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical and Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill. In addition, Clayton has worked on: Footloose, Motown, The Color Purple, Rent, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, Cats, and Avenue Q.