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It's about Risk --10/11/99

I was playing pool last night with Reed, and each of us did somehting that is analogous to certain other behavior in my life. At some point while playing, each of us attempted a shot which, whether it managed to sink the ball we were aiming at, or even if the shot went horribly awry, would almost definitely end in our scratching. Yet in each case, we proceeded to attempt the shot, and in both cases the cue ball did manage to go into the pocket we predicted that it would. Even though we knew that it would happen, and even though we could have attempted a different shot in each case, we still did it.

How many times do we tend to attempt things like that in our lives? How many times do we know that one particular outcome is inevitable, and yet we carry through with our intended action? For instance, I know that if I stay up late, I will be very sleepy at work the next day, yet still I stay up late at a party. If I put off paying my credit card bill until later, I'll likely forget about it until I accrue another late charge, but it's such a hassle to deal with right now. If I play a particular practical joke on someone, most likely they'll play one back, but it'd be really funny. If I commit a crime, I'll have to deal with the consequences, but I want to do the crime. A phrase I commonly hear in such circumstances is, "I couldn't help myself." And you kinda have to stop to think, "did I really want to help myself?"

Yet inherent in the phrase is the idea that you need help of some sort. That what you did led to negative consequences you did not desire...so why do it in the first place? Is this a fatalistic attitude? The idea that something is fated to happen, so it's pointless to try to keep it from happening? Or is this simply another case in which we feel that the positive results outweigh the negative ones, that the definite immediate gratification is more important than the possible long term consequences? I mean, speeding is definitely going to get me from one place to the other faster (on average), because I always speed, and the cops have only caught me a small percentage of the time. And sure it might be wrong, but the ends justify the means, right?

We set priorities, and we say that, hey, I don't want the consequences, and if I had equal odds that I'd get either the pleasure or the consequences, maybe I'd act differently, but it's so much more likely that the consequences won't happen that I think I'll risk them. Only a small percentage of the time will a woman get pregnant on her first time. 9 out of 10 condoms work. People drink and drive every day and don't get in wrecks. Lying can generally be covered up, or forgotten about. Flying is safer than driving, most bungee cords don't break, thousands of people ski without suffering serious injuries. There are five empty chambers and only one that's full in Russian Roulette.

On the flip side of that, we tend to give up certainties in order to attain possibilities, every day. Sure, I'll almost certainly scratch, but if I don't, it'd be an awesome shot. If I spend a buck, I might win a million. Maybe if I marry her she'll change, maybe noone will notice if I tell them I'm somebody else, perhaps I won't get addicted if I only try the drug once. Almost everyone gets caught if he commits murder, but maybe I'll be able to get away.

Yet depending on the stakes, most people do tend not to take the chance. Fer instance, I'll buy a lottery ticket, since it's only a buck, and I really can't do anything with that buck, other than make a 20 minute phone call or buy two sodas or ten pieces of gum. But what if the chances didn't improve, but the cost was five bucks? Or twenty? Or fifty? I don't think so. More people will have sex if the only risk they see is having a child, but once you add the risk of getting a treatable STD, the frequency decreases, and if AIDS is the risk, even fewer people will risk it without trying to decrease their chances. Parachuting is grand when the risk is that one in a million people die from doing it, but increase the chances to one in a thousand, or one in a hundred, or one out of ten, and you start to see significant drops in the number of people willing to risk it. In fact, while someone might risk a one in a hundred chance that he'd suffer negative side effects from using viagra, that same person won't risk a one in a billion chance that he would die splattered all over the concrete after his parachute doesn't open.

Priorities.

Life is such a beautiful thing. Even a life that contains less excitement, less mobility, less pleasure is considerably better than no life at all (at least for most people). When the risk is death, the cessation of any possible future activity on this plane, it tends to result in considerably more careful contemplation and planning before an individual will willingly take that risk. Defensive driving, taking self defense courses or owning a gun, being monogamous in sex, packing your own parachute and learning how to land properly, triple checking any engineering equations, etc, all are examples of more careful planning.

Yet regardless of this fact, while almost everyone does take precautions about his or her life, many people totally forget his or her afterlife. Oh, sure we take precautions such as going to church and believing in some kind of god, but our belief often tends to be exactly like that of the ancient Romans who had a temple to the unknown god, just in case they were missing anyone, they didn't want to offend that god. How can we risk our afterlife with so much less thought than we use when risking our life?

Ok, so maybe we're agnostic about things, and perhaps we're skeptical that there is an afterlife, but hey, is being skeptical, even if we're ninety-nine percent sure that God doesn't exist, do we want to risk that one percent chance that we're wrong? I can risk the chance that I'm wrong if I know that the only thing I'm risking is temporal pleasure, and perhaps having a less expansive or experiential life, but can I truly say I wanna risk roasting in Hell for eternity simply for the definite immediate "pleasures" I could get?