Large Fierce Mammal

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” ~ G. K. Chesterton (Image source: https://wirralleaks.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/this-is-a-bullshit-free-zone-we-do-not-apologize-for-any-inconvenience.jpg)

“In 1866, a book was published titled Readings for Young Men, Merchants, and Men of Business. Fortunately for the world, this tome has been unearthed and scanned by Google bringing it back just in time to prove my point.

“This is a world of excuses where everybody needs to have one foot over the safety line and nobody can imagine any reason for ever working without a net. Achievers are looked on not so much as people to be celebrated as they are held in suspicion of rudely flaunting their gifts just to make the less motivated or adept feel bad about themselves. People aren’t responsible for what happens in their lives because it’s always someone else’s fault, and a person’s actions, no matter how vile and base, are reduced to unfortunate manifestations of some “syndrome” or “disorder”. The evil that men do has been supplanted by the sicknesses men have, and the unfortunate outcomes of bad choices cannot be spoken aloud lest one be adjudged a blamer of “victims”.

“So now, back from the void, comes this, on the subject of ‘ENERGETIC MEN’:

‘We love upright, energetic men. Pull them this way, and then that way, and the other, and they only bend, but never break. Trip them down, and in a trice they are on their feet. Bury them in the mud, and in an hour they will be out and bright. They are not ever yawning away existence, or walking about the world as if they had come into it with only half their soul; you cannot keep them down; you cannot destroy them. But for these the world would soon degenerate. They are the salt of the earth. Who but they start any noble project? They build our cities and rear our manufactories; they whiten the ocean with their sails, and they blacken the heavens with the smoke of their steam-vessels and furnace fires; they draw treasures from the mine; they plow the earth. Blessings on them! Look to them, young men, and take courage; imitate their example; catch the spirit of their energy and enterprise, and you will deserve, and no doubt command, success.’

“Bring this forward out of the day when men were thought to be doing most of the moving and shaking, look at the references to blackening the heavens and mining the earth as being what they actually represent; metaphors for the actions of people who will commit themselves passionately to a worthy enterprise, even in the face of ridicule, injury, death, financial ruin, or even, Gods forbid, getting dirty.” ~ What You Don’t Know

There’s an old saying — “Safe as houses” — usually spoken in reference to situations that were anything but safe, but not always. There have forever been people who lived their lives in a wide eyed and blissful belief there can be some place where pain and death won’t find you.

Enter the “safe space” which, interestingly, seems to be a phenomenon built by and for people of a vintage unaccustomed to the joys and perils to be found in working without a net.

The modern societal shift toward “safety first” represents another case wherein the utterance elicits a nodding of heads and stroking of chins as if it stands axiomatic for living a fulfilled life. If risk represents any impingement on safety, then it must be avoided at all costs.

Fie, I say.

Musashi quite wisely said, “Do nothing which is of no use,” and with that in mind, I prefer a return to first principles — the safety of an enterprise MUST have no bearing on the worthiness of its pursuit. Only upon the manner of its execution. Even then, this will be governed on a sliding scale running between proceed with caution and damn the torpedoes, depending on the urgency placed upon achieving the objective.

Any other mindset will see people peeing their pants in front of the door to the washroom labelled as most accommodating their genitalia while the one oppositely labeled stands vacant. Killed in a cross walk because the sign said “WALK”, so they did.

The mantra of “safety first” is the kind of bullshit that, blindly accepted, puts someone else in charge of your safety so you don’t have to own it. So you can be the “victim” who must never be blamed but always believed.

We teach our children to look both ways before crossing the street, not to avoid crossing streets altogether. Risk management is an industry term that, by its definition, represents a mindset recognizing that even though there are risks to life and limb inherent in an enterprise, they can be identified and if not circumvented, at least limited in scope or effect.

Here’s another old saying for you — the cowards never started, and the weaklings died along the way. If the framing of that sentiment confuses or offends, go back to the top and read it all again.

I’ll close with something I wrote just short of six years ago

When a person achieves what passes for success today, it is said that they have “arrived”, as though their journey has ended, and their status is to be admired. The yardstick that measures such success is made of treasure and property, and the power they represent is the power to consume, without fear of limitation or consequence. Few today are of the sort who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps and never forget where they came from. Who continually strive to be a better creature of Nature than they were yesterday, and measure themselves against that one rather than anyone else. Who truly seek understanding of the Truths that lie outside the artificial constructs of men, and express them through their passions. Who bring those passions to everything they do.

The art and meaning of truly striving is lost in a society that has managed to infuse the next generation of people, those who will be expected to do the work that needs doing, with an expectation of instant, easy success, mostly by permitting them to pass through the public education system on the basis of work that was “good enough”, if it was done at all. Likewise, “education” has been permitted to assume the mantle of a sentence one is forced to serve before the fun starts, rather than the lifelong, joyful process it’s supposed to be. Worst of all, in schools full of mediocrity, lacklustre has been rebranded and sold as the new excellent. ~ Art, Science, Life, and Reality – Certified Organic