“Saw a commercial for travel today.”
“Yeah?”
“Showed bungy jumping. High bridge, river below. Screaming tourists on their way down; the bungy cords tied to their ankles.”
“I did that once.”
“Really? Weren’t you worried that the cords would break?”
“Nah! They check that out.”
“Oh! You mean the way the rocket engineers checked out the Challenger Shuttle—right before it exploded. Yeah. That works. And you have an expert elastics engineer to check out the bungy cord’s reliability. Kid probably spent years working with such materials in the lab. But then, so did all those rocket engineers who worked with rockets and O-rings.”
“What’s your point? That we shouldn’t go bungy jumping? Or that we shouldn’t ride in space shuttles?”
“It’s more general. This is a planet of risks, but people ignore that they are vulnerable. So, yesterday, during this March’s spring break, some West Point cadets went to Florida, decided they would do a bit of cocaine, didn’t know it was laced with Fentanyl. Go figure. Guys who volunteered to enter the military, where risk is even greater than in ‘ordinary’ life, and they overdose on a drug. Guess every generation has its share of fools. My point isn’t to avoid bungy jumping on vacation; it’s not to avid military service; it’s to avoid bungy jumping or its equivalent just for the acquisition of a little dopamine. In a world of risks, just surviving is a job. I’m not advocating locking oneself in one’s room for life, but I am advocating caution. We can’t eliminate risk because life on this planet is risky.”
“Sure, but maybe a little fun…”
“With forethought. I saw a video of a 70-year-old guy go up to a bison in Yellowstone. Beast gored him and threw him into a tree. He survived, but only luckily. Think a guy 70 would have garnered some wisdom about wild animals with horns, but no, had to learn the hard way—and at 70!”
“I see videos like that all the time. I’m not one of those guys.
“Yet, you went full bungy. Of course, there are levels of risk, and I understand that. But we’ve become so accustomed to ‘virtual worlds’ and to fiction in which Wiley Coyotes can fall, but not suffer death, that our brains have become conditioned to, or immune to, the sense of risk. It’s as though we have bypassed the functions of the amygdalae. Face it, evolution retained that part of the brain for reason, probably because we evolved those other brain parts that tell us it’s okay to bungy jump just because we can.”
“I think I see your point.”
“Yeah?”
“Showed bungy jumping. High bridge, river below. Screaming tourists on their way down; the bungy cords tied to their ankles.”
“I did that once.”
“Really? Weren’t you worried that the cords would break?”
“Nah! They check that out.”
“Oh! You mean the way the rocket engineers checked out the Challenger Shuttle—right before it exploded. Yeah. That works. And you have an expert elastics engineer to check out the bungy cord’s reliability. Kid probably spent years working with such materials in the lab. But then, so did all those rocket engineers who worked with rockets and O-rings.”
“What’s your point? That we shouldn’t go bungy jumping? Or that we shouldn’t ride in space shuttles?”
“It’s more general. This is a planet of risks, but people ignore that they are vulnerable. So, yesterday, during this March’s spring break, some West Point cadets went to Florida, decided they would do a bit of cocaine, didn’t know it was laced with Fentanyl. Go figure. Guys who volunteered to enter the military, where risk is even greater than in ‘ordinary’ life, and they overdose on a drug. Guess every generation has its share of fools. My point isn’t to avoid bungy jumping on vacation; it’s not to avid military service; it’s to avoid bungy jumping or its equivalent just for the acquisition of a little dopamine. In a world of risks, just surviving is a job. I’m not advocating locking oneself in one’s room for life, but I am advocating caution. We can’t eliminate risk because life on this planet is risky.”
“Sure, but maybe a little fun…”
“With forethought. I saw a video of a 70-year-old guy go up to a bison in Yellowstone. Beast gored him and threw him into a tree. He survived, but only luckily. Think a guy 70 would have garnered some wisdom about wild animals with horns, but no, had to learn the hard way—and at 70!”
“I see videos like that all the time. I’m not one of those guys.
“Yet, you went full bungy. Of course, there are levels of risk, and I understand that. But we’ve become so accustomed to ‘virtual worlds’ and to fiction in which Wiley Coyotes can fall, but not suffer death, that our brains have become conditioned to, or immune to, the sense of risk. It’s as though we have bypassed the functions of the amygdalae. Face it, evolution retained that part of the brain for reason, probably because we evolved those other brain parts that tell us it’s okay to bungy jump just because we can.”
“I think I see your point.”
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