Quality, not quantity
I've finally worked out why I loathe the dominant 'safety culture' of our society so much.
It's not just that it limits and restricts, curtailing our need for adventure. Or that it manipulates and conditions (as opposed to educating) us into certain patterns of behaviour. Or that it just makes life dull, giving far too much power to headmistressy busy-body types to tell us what is or isn't acceptable behaviour. Or that it reduces a sense of self responsibility, based instead on the laughable idea that someone else is always to blame (and thereby sue-able) for our misadventures. Or that it infantilises an entire society.
No. What really gets me about the 'safety' obsession of today is that it assumes that the objective of life is to live as long as possible. That's it. Nothing more.
In other words, that quantity overrides quality entirely.
In a society where people live relatively short lives (say an average of only 30 or 40 years) you would be forgiven for thinking that longevity was something desirable in itself, and that anyone who made it to 60+ was probably doing
something right at least. Make it to 80+ and you would be considered semi-divine. The Anti-Pope Benedict XIII was almost 90 before he finally gave up the ghost. In the XIV century it was taken as a sign by his supporters that he had been right all along in his stance against Rome.
But in a world where life expectancy has risen so much, dying in your 90s or even later is no longer note-worthy: it is becoming the norm (at least in the developed world).
So you would think that in such circumstances we would focus less on simply staying alive and more on giving our lives some sort of meaning, or real quality.
Yet the reverse is the case. Hence all the laws brought in 'for our own safety', trying to smooth out all the rough edges of life, to help us slither unhindered towards an ever more distant end.
All this does, as I think we sense, is to kill us at some level. We may be physically alive, but what kind of life are we actually permitted to forge for ourselves? What is the point of living so long if you never really have a chance to live at all?
As a society we have been blinded by greed, perhaps - a greed for more life. Like a kid in a sweet shop, we have a taste of something we like (longevity) and we want more of it, ever fearful that it might be taken away from us.
But sweets in themselves are not food. And life should be measured in more than simply years.
How awful, we cry, when a talented artist dies young. What a waste.
Perhaps. Or perhaps not.
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Isn’t it all about companies and authorities avoiding being sued? Our blame culture means people aren’t prepared to take responsiblity for themselves and accept accidents happen if you don’t pay attention. Though which came first, organisations trying to make everything “safe” or people looking for comensation, may be debatable.
Its definitely about longevity, but the compensation culture exacerbates it.
A whole generation who has’nt been allowed to experience failure and disappointment – growing up thinking that no matter how many mistakes they make , someone else will be responsible and that a never ending, healthy life is an absolute right.
What a shock the real world must be to them and shame on the schools/government/parents (take your pick!) who have allowed them to grow up so unprepared.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject – who did come up with the ‘unit’ of alcohol or the ’5daily’ – dont get me started on government ‘advice’!
Thanks for the great articulation of something I have to think about every day in our government briefings when we do a mandatory “six minutes for safety” discussion. I always want to initiate a six minutes for productivity discussion when we finish. Six minutes for de-programming or de-conditioning would be effective as well.
Isn’t it just part of the tyranny of the unimaginative? Law, allied to bureaucracy (and the fear of being sued, quite right), makes a mockery of life. The eternal cotton-wool swaddling.
Jason seems to me to be quite right about the need for meaning: without it, whether you live to 35 or 95 makes no odds now, that old age is so commonplace. And being so commonplace, is little respected, and even, as a state of existence, greatly dreaded…….
At best, medical groups etc say: ‘Of course, you want to be as healthy and active as possible in your old age, too!’ It’s just asinine isn’t it?
The great artist who dies young: perhaps, indeed probably, he would have declined in his later years, even in middle-age.