Give It Up
Aug. 14th, 2017 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyykiThere are many folks out there who try to make the world we live in a safe and open environment to live in for us, and for some of them also for the other creatures we share the globe with. They want to file the corners off of everything, conquer the risks, and pad the world.
Not only do I feel this is impossible, as we live in a world where pointy things abound, but I feel this is misguided. Life reacts to pointy things by developing into resistant or avoidant modes. It's like Phillip K. Dick said in one of his fun short stories -- the way to spark life in something is to annoy it so much it has to become conscious so it will move.
Life on this planet is about risk to some measure, and our efforts to abolish that risk have done a lot to also make people less able to function independently. Some would say it's made us less smart, though I lack the empirical evidence to judge that myself. Though I wonder about young people who walk out into the street with impunity, not looking for cars or anything else before stepping off the curb.
I feel that a bit of care in what I do is important. Of course I have some challenges about that, as I don't have eyes to use in avoiding risk factors, but though it makes me a bit more paranoid and keeps me from wandering around very much it also makes me a lot more mindful of what risks I expose myself to. So maybe my perspective is different from most modern people. But I value some measure of risk, because through risk stems inventiveness. I've got a piece of metalwork I need to do for my early percussion rig. I've got everything it'll take to get it done, so I've been deliberating about the safest way to make this happen. I need to cut a metal bar, file the ends, drill several holes, then cut the existing bracket, use it to drill more holes, and file the bracket before using a pair of bolts and wing nuts to assemble it. I'm not going to use a saber saw for this, as I don't trust myself to do that safely, so it'll be the manual hacksaw. Drilling the holes would be far easier with a drill press, but I don't have one, so instead I'll have to hand drill them, which has its challenges but I think I can work through those if I take my time. And no, this isn't completely safe for me to do, but I'm doing all I can to minimize the risk to myself and what I'm working on. And to me that's equivalent to looking both ways before walking out in the street. And I'll learn something while doing this too.
So if you're one of the people who won't be happy until there's no risk in our world at all please understand that you're not going to win me over to your side. We didn't evolve to our current place in the food chain by putting hand to paw to fin and singing Kumbaeyah. And I don't think or feel that it's time to give up on a world that can, if we don't respect it, kill us off and start over with the next candidates for dominance.
Not only do I feel this is impossible, as we live in a world where pointy things abound, but I feel this is misguided. Life reacts to pointy things by developing into resistant or avoidant modes. It's like Phillip K. Dick said in one of his fun short stories -- the way to spark life in something is to annoy it so much it has to become conscious so it will move.
Life on this planet is about risk to some measure, and our efforts to abolish that risk have done a lot to also make people less able to function independently. Some would say it's made us less smart, though I lack the empirical evidence to judge that myself. Though I wonder about young people who walk out into the street with impunity, not looking for cars or anything else before stepping off the curb.
I feel that a bit of care in what I do is important. Of course I have some challenges about that, as I don't have eyes to use in avoiding risk factors, but though it makes me a bit more paranoid and keeps me from wandering around very much it also makes me a lot more mindful of what risks I expose myself to. So maybe my perspective is different from most modern people. But I value some measure of risk, because through risk stems inventiveness. I've got a piece of metalwork I need to do for my early percussion rig. I've got everything it'll take to get it done, so I've been deliberating about the safest way to make this happen. I need to cut a metal bar, file the ends, drill several holes, then cut the existing bracket, use it to drill more holes, and file the bracket before using a pair of bolts and wing nuts to assemble it. I'm not going to use a saber saw for this, as I don't trust myself to do that safely, so it'll be the manual hacksaw. Drilling the holes would be far easier with a drill press, but I don't have one, so instead I'll have to hand drill them, which has its challenges but I think I can work through those if I take my time. And no, this isn't completely safe for me to do, but I'm doing all I can to minimize the risk to myself and what I'm working on. And to me that's equivalent to looking both ways before walking out in the street. And I'll learn something while doing this too.
So if you're one of the people who won't be happy until there's no risk in our world at all please understand that you're not going to win me over to your side. We didn't evolve to our current place in the food chain by putting hand to paw to fin and singing Kumbaeyah. And I don't think or feel that it's time to give up on a world that can, if we don't respect it, kill us off and start over with the next candidates for dominance.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-09 05:12 am (UTC)Yes, sometimes we ask for the moon. That is called a negotiating tactic to ensure that we get something a tenth as grand.