danger – Observations and Misunderstandings

“See it. Say it. Sorted” says a message on the loud speaker after telling passengers to report anything suspicious. Don’t get me wrong there have been situations involving public transport in the past but the constant need to remind people of the fear they should be in, the potential that there could always be something to look out for, makes me far uneasier than any possible – I’m assuming terrorist – danger does.

I just missed my mouth slightly and spilt beer on my face mask. We can add that to the drawbacks list. I’ve never quite understood why when drinking alcohol is illegal in outdoor public places, on buses, even as a passenger in cars apparently; it is perfectly fine to drink on a train. I can only assume it has something to do with them being able to sell alcohol themselves and it being impossible to regulate train beer from carry on beer. Maybe it’s just a throwback to dining carts. I’m not complaining. Few countries in the world seem to allow such things and I see it as a genuine positive of what is already probably my favourite form of transport. I’ll take a bus if I have to, I’ll avoid the train if it’s too expensive and I’ll take the plane if it makes more practical sense but there’s still something I enjoy about a train that I’m yet to put my finger on entirely. Comfortable, fast, easy, goes through scenic areas. Maybe I should go on one of those long train journeys like the Trans-Siberian or across America, the Andes, Australia and anywhere else that begins with ‘A’.

Despite spending the last few months delivering bread and working in a bakery and pizza shop I seem a little more nervous about this virus though. The little Northumberland seaside village and the Scottish countryside of my parents feels like a little bubble I’ve stepped out of. I’ve gone south where bad things happen. I’m now in the real world. A world with dangers.

I can still only smell beer. This is going to make me paranoid. Is it me, do I stink of beer or is it simply a drop on my mask leading to a false reading. I’m not sure if I can spend the next twelve hours breathing beer fumes.

I’m on the move again then. Off to Greece. I’ve mentioned it previously but I doubt anyone reads every post every day so this is me informing you all I’m off to Greece. I had a short break in Dublin over Christmas but it does feel like I’ve not been abroad for a year now. This virus really has made us change our way of existing. I’m a little nervous actually and I’m curious how I’ll feel about it. I have a habit of wishing for the sedentary life when I travel a little too much and the travelling life when I’m in one spot for too long. Considering it has been a long time since Christmas and an even longer time since my last adventure, the wishing became a slight insanity.

It can be hard to leave though. We become comfortable and after all these years I do wonder if maybe I am getting a little old for all this. Ten years ago I did meet people in their thirties just starting out so perhaps age has little to do with it. We just experience things in a different way. I do find it harder to leave my parents each time though, especially now in this present virus related fear period. I don’t give a shit about potentially suspicious packages, I give a shit about my loved ones coming into contact with a deadly virus. Leaving them at the train station questioning whether it will be the last time I’ll see them but knowing I have to leave regardless. The truth is, life goes on. The whole world ground to a halt for a few months once already and now we just have to get on with it. It is easy to blame the economy and capitalism but it’s human nature. We can’t stand still. Sometimes it’s not always easy though.

We as a species have an inbuilt response to new things, we fear them. There is a practical reason for that and it is rational; new is unknown and unknown could mean danger. As a species we have managed to survive, adapt and evolve to the point we’re at in our evolutionary cycle. I don’t doubt one reason for our success so far has been down to instinctively following that practical approach mentioned above. Is it instinctive though? When we are young children we try to touch or eat anything new, it appears we sense next to no danger in anything, yet as adults we have become cautious if not neurotically fearful. That would suggest we are taught to fear new and unknown things but then puppies and adult dogs mirror human growth fear patterns too. Perhaps puppies learn new can mean danger because sometimes they experience the pain of discovering new things, like the taste of a wasp, or a dogs parenting is just not something obvious to my untrained eyes. Can we then take that further and use it to explain why we are so weary of new sources of information, or even new information that may contradict our previously held beliefs.

I suppose it is probably quite a straightforward idea, we distrust new sources because they are unknown and we haven’t built up a relationship of trust with them. We reject new information because our current beliefs are known to us and with them we have so far survived to this point in life. With them we have safety and life, potentially this unknown new information may lead to danger and the taking away of either our safety or in the extreme our life. There is also the issue of narrative to take into consideration, what doesn’t fit our narrative we are likely to dismiss but I’ll not go down that avenue this time.

I was sent a link to a video on YouTube by a friend who has a differing set of ideals and beliefs about how best we should approach the world than I do. I rarely bother engaging him in discussion anymore because neither of us come close to seeing the others perspective and I always end it feeling exhausted and frustrated that I’ve wasted an evening arguing with a brick wall. When I received this video I assumed immediately it would relate to one of his points previously made, which it did, and in my mind I had already rejected it before even contemplating watching it. My initial response was to see it was a YouTube video and dismiss it as worthless. There are many useful videos on YouTube and I have taught myself how to do all sorts of things through them, but videos of a political or social nature are quite often just a pile of tosh. I had already rejected the point because of the source platform. I decided to watch it a little, not the full one hour because I have better things to do, and did some research on the speaker and his organisation. Seemingly they are of a different persuasion to me but I still watched and tried to listen to the message. After ten disagreeable minutes I gave up because I found him frustrating, it appears you can’t argue with a pre-recorded person. I do understand why angry people comment now but I still refuse to get involved in that game. Ultimately my point is that I like to think I gave the speaker the opportunity and I listened with a clear mind but it’s not easy when you already think the platform the information is on and the source of the information are unreliable and bullshit.

Absorbing new information is clearly an incredibly challenging task. We struggle to absorb anything that is new because it is unknown and potentially dangerous, and we struggle to accept anything contradictory to our present set of beliefs as it challenges what has so far kept us safe. The YouTube example above is an easy one to dismiss because the contents and the platform are like the Daily Star of video journalism but sometimes we get contradictory information from credible sources and this can be hard to accept and equally dismiss.

The more I delve into these things the more I’m starting to realise just how hard, if not impossible, it is being some kind of discerning, moral and decent person. Here I am, just like yesterday back to the fallible human. Is failure what makes us human, or perhaps the ability to recognise and improve on our past failures. It is okay to be fallible. It is unavoidable clearly, but is it only acceptable if and when we try and avoid repeat failure. Being conscious of our previous failures, accepting that they are inevitable and pushing on in the search of perfection, or at the very least an acceptable success. Don’t try and taste the wasp twice, it’s all so simple now, if only I had realised that earlier.

Tag: danger

On The Road Again