in praise of living on the edge

on diversity of safety and tolerance of risk

People regularly shock me.

I’m neither shocked nor appalled when I see some odd, screwed up, cross dressing twenty something with a personality disorder on the internet or in person. Though I believe them to be suffering from a neurotic adaptation, caused by a pain that can never be healed, I play along with their delusions. It’s my way of being polite.

I don’t believe what you say you are, but I’ll go along with it as your life has likely been pretty shit for you to want to mutilate yourself like this.

It’s the normies who really get to me.

The worst part about a corporate normie?

They believe that how they are living and the paradigm they exist with in is ‘correct’.

When we moved into our current home, the insurance company insisted on sending someone to inspect our house. They wanted to make sure there weren’t any hazards. Believing that we were hazard free - at least reasonably hazard free, I gladly complied.

Insurance companies are not reasonable. Either that or their too reasonable.

Powered by actuaries, aka deathcountants, these groups profit by minimizing risk to themselves and coming out on top. They want to protect themselves from having to pay out. In doing so, they attempt to protect people from harm.

Insurance companies are basically composed sales people, people who try to find reasons to say no when you make a claim, lawyers and accountants. The lawyers and accountants tend to run the roost. With their interest in preservation and safety, these tend to be highly conservative people who attract the officious.

Our insurance inspector was a fit young man at least a decade and a half younger than I am. When he walked up the concrete stairs that approach the walkway to our home, he mimed grabbing for a hand rail.

It looked absurd.

Then?

He pretended to stumble and fall.

Geeze, it’s a good thing I didn’t trip and hurt myself coming to your house. I could have sued you ya know.

That was our introduction.

Things got worse. Everywhere he went he found problems. Our banister - a 1940’s classic wasn’t tall enough. The stairs were too slippery. The worst thing though was my mess in my workroom. Apparently the exit wasn’t safe.

I protested. But I can get through the door.

His reply was immediate. That doesn’t matter. What if I were to trip?

Well, I’d laugh at you and call you an asshole for not listening to me when I said don’t go there.

Sure, but what if I get injured? What if I miss work? Where does my money come from? Who pays for your mess.

My answer was clear: You should you little minging testie.

I have never wanted to punch someone in the mouth quite as much as I did this man.

Well, the courts would rule otherwise. You’d likely lose due to neglect.

I was losing my patience. Then step the fuck away from that door you fucking cunt.

He seemed to find that word more offensive than my wife does.

Theres’s no need for abuse.

There’s no need to be a cunt. You’re more uptight than my mom. My 93 year old nanny isn’t nearly the ninny you are. Imagine what an impotent twat waddle you’ll be in another sixty years.

Look bud, I’m just trying to look after you. Don’t you want to know how you could be held liable?

I didn’t say a word but the look on my face was clear.

Even if you don’t use this door and guests don’t come through here, what happens if someone breaks in and breaks their leg, or worse, their neck?

That was an easy one?

Ideally? I’m not home and they bleed out on the floor. My cats eat their face and we sue their family for the clean up?

Apparently, it’s important to keep your entrances clear. If a burguler were to be harmed whilst breaking into your home, you could be sued for their pain and suffering if it can be demonstrated that you don’t have the proper hand rails and safety systems in place.

I don’t make the rules bud, I’m just the messenger.

For a messenger, he sure had a hell of a grin on his face.

I’ve directed a lot of hate at insurance companies, HR people, accountants and lawyers. It’s deserved. They create standards based on the lowest common denominator. In a world that calls more and more for diversity, we’re becoming increasingly controlled.

Every time something bad happens, people sue. Because of this rules get made to prevent the bad thing from happening again. Does this occur to save pain and suffering?

No.

The prevention of pain and suffering is a byproduct of our litigious culture of safety fascism. These ‘never again’ innovations get created to save money. These constant rules are both inhuman and inhumane.

In Hunter in a Farmers World, Thom Hartmann adds a new value that’s not on the balance sheet examined by actuaries and attorneys. He looks at Maslow and the hierarchy of needs. At the base of Maslow’s hierarchy are the needs for air, water, food, and sleep.

The next order of needs are safety needs including personal safety, financial safety and health and security. Above that are the ‘love and belonging needs’ followed by the ‘esteem needs’ and up the chain they go to ‘self actualization’ needs.

It’s a bit bunk as Hartmann argues that we humans have a basic need to feel aliveness. Every technological advancement whether it’s ‘sensitivity training’ at work, the mechanics of the assembly line or the organizational machinery of our educational industrial complex takes the basic human need to feel alive and lively and sublimates it in order for safety to be maintained.

The accountants with the lawyers standing behind them enforce this insipid culture of conservatism. They take their risk aversion and let us know the costs of risk. They take their sums and totals without taking into consideration that life is: 1: A terminal condition and 2: meant to be enjoyed by the living.

In Being Mortal, author and physician Atul Gawande describes a scene where exotic birds were brought in to be given to seniors living in an older holder facility. The rec staff let out the birds. There was an issue. There were no cages to put them in nor ways to catch the birds.

Gawande describes the bedlam that followed. Residents were up on chairs and tables in attempts to get the birds down. Others chased them, shuffling along more quickly in their walkers than they had in years.

We all have a different sense of responsibility. We all have our own unique tolerance of risk.

On the day of the birds, the staff at the older holder described the experience as ‘terriflying’ What if someone falls and breaks their hip? What if they die?

I dunno about you but when it comes to nursing homes, not many people gradate back into society. Most don’t emerge from ‘care’ alive. But the medical world, according to Gawande see death as a failure of medicine.

Call me foolish, but I tend to believe that death is the end of and therefore completion and perfection of life.

The residents had an entirely different experience from the staff. They reported that it was the most alive they’ve felt in years. Life is not life without risk. When we make the world more safe and prolong life, we create the condiditons for less livelyness and less pleasure.

Now, I’m sure there’s some gooey little muffin munching asshat out there whining and pissing and moaning right now

Wahhhhh What about the people who are left behind when people take risks and die? What about them?

Fuck them.

If I died when I went skydiving when it was 18 and my family had to live with the loss of my life?

Fuck them. It’s my life. I will play small for myself as I see fit. I will not play small for them.

Everyone needs different levels of stimulation. Everyone has a different tolerance of risk. Again, some can experience satisfaction with a cup of weak tea, a gender bending CBC murder mystery, a gentle breeze and a pale painted house.

Me? I like riding my bike so far into the woods that there’s a risk of bears or coyotes. I love being there and knowing that if I get injured, we have no way to call for help and getting out will be really really tough. I live for loud wall paper, old trucks and hurricanes.

I’m an adrenaline loving thrill seeker. It’s my wiring. But we’ve created a world that wants to remove the spice of risk. In doing so, those that pretend to care are creating a world that’s less diverse. Diverse experiences and stimulation needs typically don’t make it to HR based DIE trainings.

Of course this is reasonable. My behavioural diversity is a threat - a threat to the pocket books of those who have far more money, power and resources than they know what to do with.

And the useful idiots in HR, law and the actuarial arts, they are goose stepping along with the fascists making the world safe and livable for the ninnies who really are not living.

Love the people who love you.

And fuck the fucking fuckers working to eliminate risk and pain.

Life is not life without risk.

And half of life is loss so get used to pain.

But better yet?

Learn to enjoy it.