On Safety

[gaudior]

I was in the T-stop yesterday when I heard shouting. Loud voices, young, and I couldn't tell whether they were shouting in play or in anger, so I decided to go investigate (there were a fair number of people on the platform, and one man was already moving that direction). I found a girl sitting on a bench, bent over in obvious exasperation, and swearing at two disembodied voices. I looked around, confused-- they weren't next to her on the bench, they weren't on the lower platform... and then with a cry of "Oh shit! Oh shit!" two kids ran out of the subway tunnel, just seconds ahead of the train. They were sixteen or seventeen years old, tall, Black, baggy-clothed and laughing their heads off. The girl glared at them, relieved. I was already right there, so, laughing friendliness, I yelled at them. "Do you know," I shouted over the roar of the train, "how much it would suck if you'd gotten hit?" One boy blinked at me. "What? Police?" I shook my head. "Don't get hit by the train!" He shrugged, smiling. "Don't worry," he reassured me. "We won't get hit by the train."

And what I find myself wondering is-- how does he know that? I mean, I'm sure part of it is bravado (can't admit you were scared, after all, not when you're seventeen...), and maybe part of it is the same sense of foreshortened future some of the kids I worked with last year had. But I imagine that a big part of it was simply the belief that no, of course they wouldn't get hit by the train. They were too lucky for that, too smart, too quick-- too, very simply, themselves.

The thing is, most people do that. I don't have to be a stupid teenager to believe, when I get up in the morning, that I'll get through the day just fine. I won't be hit by a car, I won't be knifed by a crazy person in the subway, I won't have a heart attack or a seizure, no meteorite will fall on my head. I wake up in the morning with a sense of safety.

This is, according to some psych theories, because we all carry the illusions of our specialness and our invulnerability, all the time. Even though these illusions go against all rational sense. We know, intellectually, that we'll all die. We know we're vulnerable to illness and accident and other people and plain bad luck. But somehow, we're able to put it out of our heads. We're able to trust that we can walk out the door and face the world, and be fine.

So my question is, how? How do we do that? What gives us the belief in safety in such an unsafe world? Is it faith in God? Our loved ones? Ourselves? Is it just that we've never died before, so why would we now? Where do these illusions come from?

And if we lose them, can we get them back?

--R

Reading: Hellspark, Janet Kagan. An Empty Spoon, Sunny Decker.

Comments

[tanatoes.livejournal.com]

I have a theory that this is a relatively recent social phenomenon. Historically most cultures have an acceptance of loss and pain that doesn't seem to exist today. Look at the art and sculpture of the middle ages or the un-sullied Grimm fairy tales. Life is cruel, capricious and uncaring and you are doomed to a nasty fate.

I think the sense of invulnerability is a result of CONSTANT exposure to games, television, movies and literature that features heroes escaping from impossible situations. No matter how dire the heroe's predicament we know that they will escape intact by the end of the show/movie/book. Since we are naturally the heroes of our own stories the unconcious feeling that the same situation applies to us.

I know that for myself I frequently have moments where I think "What if my life is a game or interactive fiction of some sort? That must mean that TODAY has some significance and events will take a strange turn sometime soon, because no being would pay to play my life. Everything I remember must be the pre-amble: the prolog that sets up the alien contact or inter-dimensional rift. I recognise that this is a result of my upbringing, but it also feels, on a deep and personal level, true. We expect our lives to repeat the experiences we have had time and time again every day since we were children, and then we are shocked when the world ignores what we expect and goes on being its completely uncaring self.

two notes:

1) Since the wolrd is uncaring it is important to surround yourself with people who are not. The only love and assistance you will get will be from people (well, and pets) who love you. Don't expect miracles or devine intervention, but do encourage, foster and reciprocate that love. (Which I think I need hardly tell you who has done such a fine job so far at that.)

2) What does it say that these teens are more affraid of police than being crushed by a speeding train?