Risks and Bath Room Reading

I've finally got round to reading The Economist profile on the World in 2003 (!). Kate ribs me about my insatiable appetite to read anything at any time: discarded newspapers on trains, breakfast cereal boxes, and out of date magazines in the bathroom. But occasionally this habit unearths a gem, and on this occasion it was the winning entry of their essay competition.

The assigned topic was how much freedom we should be willing to trade for security, particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. It's a wise and witty piece on the dangers of governments and individuals over-reacting to a variety of risks, from terrorism to free speech on college campuses, and "the wondrous crime of urine fraud". As the author puts it:

"For two decades and counting, we citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave have happily traded freedom for every scrap of bogus safety dangled before us. Indeed, we have devoted prodigious energy to inventing threats that demand the sacrifice of liberty, privacy and even basic human dignity"

But it's the context that so intrigued me: he ends by describing the voluntary and risky thrill of sailing in a thunder storm. Forgive the long quote, but it's a good one:

"Safety is a fine thing, but as an obsession it rots the soul. If I should live to be 90, and I am called upon to attest to the other nursing-home residents that my life was about something racier than guessing right on the butter-v-margarine conundrum, I will speak of that thunderstorm on Lake Superior. I’ll describe the touch-and-go struggle to keep the boat pointed just enough off the wind to maintain headway, and the jackhammer pounding of a madly luffing mainsail trying spill a 75-knot gale. I’ll talk about the way we huddled in the cockpit with our eyes rigidly forward because looking aft would mean another lightning-illuminated glimpse of the dinghy we towed, risen completely out of the water and twirling like a propeller on the end of its line.

Pleasant though many of them were, with the cheese and crackers and such, I doubt I’ll have much to say about the hours I spent on Superior with the sails furled, motoring in perfect safety through flat water and dead air."

Reminiscent of Ben Saunders's remarks that most of us only skate the surface of our potential. And an inspiring, but unsettling, prelude to the weekend.

The relevant Economist site is here, and the essay itself is reproduced here too.