Trying To Kill Me

During our mandated indoor time, I’ve managed to catch most of the series, How The Universe Works. I haven’t succeeded in watching an entire episode from start to finish, but over the last few months I think I’ve captured damned near all of the series in ten or maybe fifteen minute increments.

The astroboy and astrogirl narrators are enthusiastic about enhancing the viewers knowledge of the universe, so that we too may share in their wonder and awe.

And so they tell us of Quasars and black holes and super Nova’s, and dark matter and super charged ion clouds. Ion clouds that give off vast arrays of energy as they orbit not black holes, but super black holes. Apparently black holes aren’t menacing enough so the universe provides super black holes.

After watching the programs I’ve concluded that the underlying theme of the show is that everything in the universe is trying to kill us. For the moment our sun is apparently protecting us from cosmic rays with some sort of gravitational bubble, and so that’s a bonus. But our home star is only keeping us alive until it feels like killing us itself. Either with a multitude of flares, or if that doesn’t work, then eventually it will just turn itself off, slowly compress and then explode. But that’s a billion years from now, or some stretch of time that’s ridiculously far away enough that we don’t give a shit. In fact, the odds are probably better that we’ll get smoked by a killer asteroid long before the sun decides to pull the plug. Giant zooming space rocks. Another marvel of the universe to contemplate.

I was relatively unfazed by the homicidal nature of the universe though, and that struck me as odd. But, after thinking about it for a bit I decided that everything on the planet we call home is also trying to kill us, and so we’re used to the situation. The human race has just accepted the fact that quicksand and poisonous fruit is a thing in the inner space we currently occupy. We’re accustomed to the concept that a painful death is perpetually lurking in the background of every day to day activity that we perform. We’re inured to the fact that our planet is populated by serial killer viruses, plants, sharks, spiders and grizzly bears. So, we’re not really surprised that no oxygen, and minus 275 degree’s is par for the course in the outer space that we don’t occupy.

And it’s not just the Terran creatures that are lethal either. The planet itself is a giant kill zone. Two thirds of the Earth is water and with the exception of Jesus and Aquaman, it’s a pretty hostile environment for humans. As an added bonus to drowning, you will perish from dehydration while floating in the middle of a thousand kilometers of Pacific water. Because why not fill the sea’s with sharks and jellyfish and giant squid and also make the water undrinkable?

Our planet is a remorseless psycho killer on the land as well. Avalanches, earthquakes, tornadoes, wildfires, drought, flooding and volcanoes have always lurked unpredictably nearby, as we try to not step on a Black Mamba while walking to the crocodile infested watering hole.

Also, on a regular basis, the sea and land team up to kill us. A planetary surf and turf collaboration that serves up hurricanes, typhoons, tsunami’s, monsoons and the occasional side order of rogue wave.

And yet we thrive. Mostly because we breed like rabbits. But there’s another key to our survival.

We’ve adopted the mother planet’s tendencies. Traits most eloquently expressed by one Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Predator, where he famously stated, If it bweeds we can kiwl it. That attitude has turned out to be a fine survival tool for humans, but it’s also likely reason enough for aliens to vote no to allowing us entrance into the galactic federation.

Because our instinctive first though when encountering another life form is, can we kill it? Then our second thought is, can it kill us? Then our third thought is can we eat it? And I’m not sure that’s the type of attitude the intergalactic crowd is looking for in new members. Also, if we’re being psycho-analyzed by aliens I’m guessing they’ve taken notice of the fact we’ve adapted admirably to our planet’s homicidal tendencies.

So well in fact that we’ve accepted almost unanimously that kill or be killed is an acceptable philosophy. I should clarify that the aliens would note that this behavior isn’t all of the people all of the time, but it most certainly describes some of the people all of the time. The number of people behaving this way and their reasons for their actions are also likely to generate some consternation from an advanced civilization. For example, murdering a fellow being because you want their possessions might raise a middle E.T. eyebrow whilst judging our rationality.

The comfort level we have with death is an odd situation though. It’s obvious we fear the moment, but at the same time we’ve sub-consciously accepted that there will be casualties for every human endeavor. Cars are a good example of this phenomena. We’ve decided that fatalities will occur, but that’s the price you pay for speed and convenience, and the risk reward ratio is acceptable. Same story with planes and trains.

And we use that risk reward formula for everything. Although there’s another factor when determining risk vs reward, and that’s immediacy. Smoking for example can kill us eventually but an active shooter can kill us immediately. That’s why we bitch about people smoking but we run from people shooting. Come to think of it there’s another calculation we make concerning risk vs reward that’s actually a flaw.

Let’s call it the law of exclusion.

When we’re casually accepting that, yeah, we’re going to lose some people, to whatever event is about to befall us, we invariably exclude ourselves from the body count.

Because deep in our hearts we’re all optimists, and we’re confident that someone elses plane is going to be the one that crashes. So, if we mix unbridled optimism into the risk reward formula then the numbers sort of get skewed. Unless there’s a huge dose of immediacy then that damned optimism keeps the risk reward ratio within acceptable limits.

And that’s why we keep doing stupid self destructive shit all the time. Like poisoning our food deliberately with chemicals. Or, manufacturing a billion cars that produce emissions that are going to kill us, or going to a million person religious festival in the middle of Covid. Or, drinking copious amounts of alcohol for years on end, or deciding that meth is a decent lifestyle choice.

I think a person could argue that we all have a death wish but only some people pursue that wish with vigor. I mean, why would you bungee jump just as an example? I think we like the risk and the concept of cheating death, but we still like to make sure that the odds are in our favor and what we’re contemplating isn’t straight up suicidal. Adrenalin junkies kind of explains skydiving and a variety of other human activities, but what about all the rest of the shit we do on a day to day basis that we don’t even recognize as dangerous?

Those risk ratio things I mentioned earlier. Potentially deadly things that don’t even register on our threat meters.

I’ll illustrate.

I live in a Northern climate. For about six or seven months of the year we live with an hourly controlled natural gas explosion in our basement. I’m going to guess that about half of the people I know do zero or next to zero inspection or maintenance on their basement explosive device. I don’t think we ignore furnace maintenance because of a latent death wish but rather because we’re lazy, it’s kind of technical, and we’re simply used to the peril price we pay to stay warm.

As I said earlier it’s a risk we’re willing to take, and we’re fond of risk taking.

We need to eat and all kinds of people are allergic to all kinds of food. If shellfish doesn’t kill us because we had an epi-pen in our pocket, then there’s always the chance that we’ll choke to death unless someone nearby knows the Heimlich maneuver. That’s assuming the food isn’t poisoned with Salmonella or Clostridium perfingens or some other toxin we inadvertently added to the burger. Peanuts are killing us for Christ sakes. In fact. peanut related anaphylaxis kills more people each year than American cops at traffic stops.

So, essentials are essential. We need food and water and oxygen and all three of these necessities are trying to kill us. But if we don’t have those essentials then we expire from starvation, thirst or oxygen deprivation.

This is the human risk calculation, and it shapes all of our attitudes and perspective.

Our recreational activities are built around risk as well. Any sport can kill you. Some sports are more entertaining to an audience because they have a higher risk of killing the participants. That’s the only reason I can think of to justify Nascar fans. They’re waiting for a good ole boy to hit the wall at two hundred miles an hour and explode in a Go Daddy fireball.

Do you want to go hiking and be one with nature? Sure you do, and that’s why we have air ambulances and search teams. Because all of the best hiking trails are remote, or run along the edge of a waterfall or a mountainous cliff. Also, assuming you don’t twist an ankle and tumble into a gorge, there’s always the chance you’ll get mauled by a cougar or fanged by a rattler.

But, we give zero fucks.

A mountain with avalanches and a forty five degree incline. Perfect, lets ski on that fucker. River rapids with undertows? Perfect again, get the kayaks and canoes. Maybe when we’re finished with the river, we can climb a sheer rock face free hand.

How about motorbikes? We could easily produce four wheel stable vehicles but nah. Lets make them tippy, invisible to half the automobile drivers and lightning fast.

It’s as if we’ve sub-consciously accepted that the universe and all things in it are trying to kill us, and so we’ve said fuck it and joined in on this homicidal behavior. When in Rome right?

And the universe chuckles at our disregard for being terminated. Because the universe knows that each and every one of us is only allotted a limited number of trips around the sun.

And if you survive all the peril that the earth offers and manage to avoid a shitty result of your own making, then the universe is still waiting patiently for your last orbit to show you what end of times really means.