How do we view danger when we have to accept that there is some danger in virtually everything we do. The motor car journey, the airline trip to a holiday destination, the dingy sailor or the kayak enthusiast, the rock climber or the downhill skier describe the variations in human acceptance of danger.
Danger today is different from the social acceptance we had 50 years ago in those days we encouraged our sons and daughters to go out and experience new adventures on the basis that danger whilst present could be negotiated and good old common sense was a good antidote. Our children were used to escaping the parental overview. Kids would go, on their own, to meet up with friends to climb trees, and ride bikes, would tease each other to do things which had an increased risk. We were out all day in the fields and woods and if you lived in a village we worked and played amongst farm animals helping the farmer, especially at harvest time when we were of use gathering the bundles of hay and stacking them together. The combined harvester was not a special threat, the cows in the milking shed, the pigs in their sty, only the bull was off limits.
The risks today is that if I go for a walk I might meet someone contaminated with the virus, I increase that risk if I go into a crowded shop and therefore I treat the risk, given my age differently, as someone who is continually at risk of becoming seriously ill. I can cut out the risk by deciding not to go out or I can decide to take a risk, just like I do when I travel by car or fly and ignore it.
Of course we, as a society are not disciplined like the Japanese or even the Germans, we are more likely to thumb our collective nose at authority and have a built in aversion to being told what is good for us. The process of wearing a mask and cleaning surfaces in a store each time a client has transacted business is foreign to us, it seems to fly against our sense of reserve and our independence.
The large gatherings last weekend at a series of beauty spots and on beaches, was an example of the Innate ignorance and bloody mindedness of a poorly educated society and a perfect example of many people's approach to risk, ignore it.
The mass gatherings against police brutality is another case in point. The risk of transmission is magnified by a factor of 10 in a large crowd and yet we were out in our thousands protesting, its as if there is a dual reality going on. The stern admonishment evoked by the politicians regarding social gathering was contrasted by the inevitable disbelief we now have that what ever a politician says is a lie and leads a segment of society to raise two fingers towards the political system. Many people have lost trust in their leaders and also the so called scientific experts who flank them. This lack of trust has been a long time coming and reflects the British way of circumspection with facts, not trusting the publics reaction to bad news, they obfuscate and manipulate rather than share. "The we know better" divide has always been amongst us, a divide accentuated by a divisive education system which encourages the 'them and us mentality'. Through the corridors of business and commerce, education and social interaction we carry and even encourage this belief in the divide. Is it any wonder when we need everyone to pull together that the divide raises it ugly head.
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