This article, I want to address a topic that I’ve wanted to write about for a while, yet, for one reason or another, have avoided. It’s risk aversion, and why we should all treat it with the same degree of repulsion that we feel towards stories of the Nazis. In order to get there, I will ask you, my esteemed reader, to bear with me, as this will be a genuine attempt to bring the world around to the ideal of “leaping without looking.”
Think back to a childhood experience when you were learning something new and scary. For many it may have bee riding a bike, or learning to swim, or even learning to live with a new pet. Why were you scared then? It would be hard to argue that the root of fear wasn’t a constant video playing in your head of you getting hurt, or even that little voice in your head screaming, “You could die!!” While these evolutionary defense mechanisms have proven extremely useful in keeping the human race around for all these years, most scholars studying what amounts to the science of happiness all agree that our best memories come from ignoring that advice, not obeying it.
And on a certain level, we all know that this is true. In an episode of South Park, Stan becomes a Goth kid because he’s sad, whereas Butters accepts the sadness since he knows that he needs to feel sadness in order to appreciate happiness. In many major and recent movies we value the reckless abandon needed to ignore that little voice, such as in the first of the Star Trek reboot movies. One of the most popular quotes I’ve heard either on various websites or from my friends is, “When you look back on your life you’ll regret the things you didn’t do rather than the ones you did.” Or perhaps phrased more succinctly, “Fortune favors the bold.”
Why do we so routinely identify these phrases as indicative of behaviors that we should value? I believe it’s because to some degree we all understand that variety really is the spice of life, and not leaping into the fray, not exposing yourself to potentially hazardous situations severely limits not only your breadth of experience but also your capacity for self-esteem. Think of the exaltation you felt once you finally were able to ride a bike. Or swim in the deep end. Or developed a deep relationship with a pet that can only be described as your best friend. And think about how much those things have now been incorporated into your own identity, and your own sense of self-worth.
In fact, it could be argued that throughout every major life experience and developmental period (early childhood, adolescence, etc.) the personal journey of life is defined by discovering and transcending your own limits, shattering the old paradigm of who you thought you were, and doing it all again.
So then my question is this: If we know these things about what makes us enjoy our own experiences, why wouldn’t we demand this same behavior from the society in which we find ourselves?
For example, if we examine the speech made by JFK that spurred the United States to the moon, we see a statement of profound importance, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” The things we feel best about are the things that demand the best of us. As optimistic as this may sound, it leads to a disturbing question. What is it that we’ve done in the last 40 years that has proven worth our while, that has demanded the very best of everything we as a nation and species have to offer?
In a Dec. 3, 2014 article by Michael Hanlon, our attention is drawn to the fact that the aside from marginal improvements on technologies that have existed since the 1970’s, we haven’t made much that’s truly new. The thirty years after World War Two encompassed an explosion in innovation and invention that led to the Apollo Program, nuclear energy, Civil Rights, the Green Revolution, the Pill, Feminism, numerous vaccines and cures, widespread indoor plumbing, mass media, unprecedented increases in education and mass availability of electricity among many other things that I haven’t listed here. The only notable exception that is mentioned is the Internet, but the basic theories, protocols, tools, and devices for implementing and understanding what the Internet has, and can become were all invented during this 30-year period. For more information regarding this analysis of the mentioned time period please refer to Thomas Cowen’s The Great Stagnation.
So in light of this, the answer to my previous question is unfortunately nothing. We haven’t done anything that has truly demanded the best of everything that we as a nation and species have to offer. But why haven’t we? My theory is that we as a country, as a greater global society have succumbed to that little voice in our collective head. Look around at mass marketing of new products and medicines. Instead of heralding new possibilities, products are saddled with regulations and product warnings, claiming safety rather than potential.
By no means am I asking for us to charge into new ventures without thought or reason. What I am asking for is a relaxation of current safety protocols. This is because life is itself risky. Everyday you run the risk of dying. Everyday you are dying. Instead of shielding ourselves and denying reality I think we need to recapture that youthful feeling of immortality and laugh in the face of danger. It wouldn’t be a laughter borne from ignoring danger, but from disregarding and overcoming it.
An example of this is smallpox. I would hate to think of the thousands that died in the pursuit of the cure for smallpox, yet how many millions more have been spared from even having to concern themselves with the disease due to its current nonexistence?
An example of this was going to the moon. How many people died in the V-2 rocket tests, the primary scientist of which was Wernher Von Braun, the man who created the Saturn V rocket? How many test pilots, cosmonauts and astronauts subjected themselves to incalculable risks, and died, willingly in the pursuit of landing on the moon? And in how many ways have we benefited today from the leaps and bounds that we made while trying to get there?
All great advancements are inherently risky, but if you don’t jump in and play the game, those advancements will never ever happen. Being secure in where you are, where we are will mean we’ll never leave it, and while that means nothing will get worse, it means that nothing will get better either.
So I would urge every individual that has made it this far to consider risks conscientiously, and take precautions, but never allow those precautions and concerns take precedence over the act of starting, because like learning to ride a bike, the thrill of accelerating down a hill necessarily involves more than a few skinned knees, and in some cases a broken arm.
The way we transcend the trap of risk aversion is to become comfortable with risk as individuals, and then demand this level of comfort from the society we find ourselves surrounded by. If you ask me, this is what Gandhi meant by his quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
However, this article is meant to be about the dangers of risk aversion. So to end things, I would like to leave with this question:
When you’re stuck doing the same thing day in and day out, stagnated, where would you rather be, still in the rut, or pushing yourself through some mild pain to reach new heights?
Risk aversion keeps you in the rut. Indefinitely.
