Safety

Thanks to Mark Klausen for coming over for breakfast and inspiring this post.

Life is filled with risk, uncertainty and randomness. In North America we have insurance to try and create a sense of safety amidst the chaos. However, those of you who have dealt with insurance companies will know that they may or may not actually be the source of comfort and support they claim to be since they are likely to make every effort to avoid paying (hooray capitalism). I think that we often can become obsessed with safety and that this leads us probably into isolation, and either anxious paranoia or delusion. Ultimately, no matter how much insurance you have, things can still go wrong in ways that will screw over your entire life. What did people do before there was insurance? Well two things: sacrifice to the gods, and depend on family/community. Before the false community that insurance companies created through the corporate idolatry of money - before that, people relied on real communities and actual relationships to support, protect and help them.

Safety can become a debilitating obsession. However, we also often use safety measures in order to take risks. It is interesting that often safety measures fail to make life safer because there is a tendency for us to absorb the risk. So if we are in a car with a five point harness, wearing a helmet, with a roll cage we are more likely to drive 'more dangerously.' This was statistically demonstrated during study of the addition of ABS brakes to a fleet of trucks. While in theory, if everyone were to drive the same, the new brakes ought to prevent some accidents and thus decrease the accidents overall. However, it takes very little time for drivers to adjust there driving to the new technology and thus the benefit is absorbed into efficiency rather than safety.

What we discussed over breakfast was the usually required social support to take the risks required to pursue dreams or even dream them to begin with. Without a safe community to dream in and be encouraged by it is all too easy to get stuck in the dead end job - because dead end jobs, more than anything else, provide safety.

We escape dead ends with the help of friends.

Also since insurance companies are like churches, in that they don't really sell anything tangible and often prey on people's fear, they should, like churches, be not for profit organizations.