From: Christian Weisgerber (naddy@mips.inka.de)
Date: Fri Aug 01 2003 - 10:58:11 MDT
Emlyn O'regan <oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au> wrote:
> How about a poll...
>
> Who on the list personally knows someone affected by terrorism.
(I don't.)
> More subjective: would you rate yourself now (hopefully based on some kind
> of quasi-empirical guestimate, at least) as more or less safe than you were
> 10 years ago?
No change.
> 20 years ago?
I feel much safer now. Back then, I was living with the quasi-certainty
that WWIII would eventually happen, and even if it had turned out
to be only a limited nuclear conflict--the USA really wouldn't have
risked their annihilation over a piece of European real estate,
would they?--I would have lived right on the primary battlefield.
> What are the major threats to your continued
> existence/lifestyle? How about 10 years into the future?
Currently, traffic accidents. Twenty years down the road cardiovascular
disease and cancer will start catching up fast, unless we see some
major medical advances in the meantime. In the long term, the
statist and anti-technology forces in the western world are a direct
threat to my personal survival.
On a very personal, identity-threatening level, I'm also increasingly
worried about mental hardening and mental faculties rapidly diminishing
with age. Relatedly, I'm increasingly suffering the impression
that social progress is directly related to the old dying away.
Terrorism is a very distant background threat, in line with rare
kinds of accidents and diseases. If you want something to worry
about, go and read medical journals. This will awaken the latent
hypochondriac in most people.
> Just for a bit of extropian perspective, remember that it is still the case
> that we all have a death sentence hanging over our heads, and will be until
> someone fixes it.
And a good many people have no qualms openly stating that this is
a good thing and that you should die. And this is unlikely to
change until they are dead.
-- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de
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