Friday, April 05, 2013

On being afraid...

This is interesting in a makes me want to break something kinda way, it must be hard getting by on just 31,000,000 pounds a year, and some truly sick and demented stuff...

It's funny, we're currently living in the safest time in recorded history but most people I know are driven by fear. If today's news feed is anything to go by it is only getting worse. Fear is the current hot commodity and it's selling like hotcakes!

Most of us living on boats are well aware that most of the fear issues about boats, sailing, and cruising are not really issues at all but you can still see a thread of fear running through a lot of the discussions of cruising destinations with people telling you not to visit an area because someone got robbed or some such...

If you were to check the crime statistics for where you're being told not to go and compare them to your home town or state, you just might find that where you're coming from is a whole lot more dangerous than the place you plan to avoid. Which is hardly surprising as these days fear is, more often than not, irrational.

The thing is, fear is a survival trait and, like any good survival trait, that spidey-sense that tells you maybe you should be someplace else is not a bad thing to have...

Of course, what passes for fear these days is more like an out-of-control cancerous tumor on steroids that started as a cell in your body whose job was to protect you from getting sick and is killing you. The problem is that fear of this sort quits being a survival factor and becomes just the opposite...

Listening to Grouper

So it goes...