I've been thinking some more about our recent conversations because of yesterday's tragic story from Texas.
This has to be the saddest possible event at a baseball game. A man goes to a ballgame with his son — it's the ultimate American experience — and he dies trying to catch a ball. It's hard to comprehend.The same is true for the poor motorcycle rider who was killed, of course: how many thousands of miles did he ride without any incident?
As for the need to raise the railings, or not throw balls into the stands ... that's the crazy part. How many thousands of games happen where nobody gets hurt, and now this?
We usually make reference to statistics in cases like this, as statistics allows us to overcome our actual experience. We may have the actual experience of having ridden thousands of miles in safety, but statistics show that the activity is dangerous in spite of abundant direct experience of safety.
Yet statistics are famously easy to manipulate. I've been reading up on motorcycle safety statistics since our discussion, to try and find out just how much helmets really do improve safety. Do they actually improve -- as I understand they do not, from conversations with other riders?
I'm still not sure, but I do now know that most surveys seem to be peformed either by (a) helmet manufacturers, or (b) groups that already believed that helmets were a good idea (e.g., Snell). Confirmation bias is a danger even for the hardest science; when political advocacy -- or profit -- is at issue, it's harder to rely on the claims of such studies. For example, I wasn't able to find anything like a dividing line on the speeds at which helmets seem to be effective at reducing risk of injury. That may mean no one thought to ask, or it may be that the question was intentionally not asked.
Finally, though, I've realized what it is about this discussion that has been bothering me. I've spoken of my friend the father of two special needs children, and how proud I am of how he soldiers on under this incredibly heavy weight. When we were talking about motorcycle riders, the point was made by several of you that a man who is a husband and father has a responsibility to limit his risks in order to continue to live to perform his duties to wives and children.
However, a life that has become a misery is a weight that is even more likely to kill a man than any motorcycle. Heart disease is strongly linked to stress, as are many other diseases; and a man who dies of a heart attack at 48, though he bore his burden faithfully, has left his wife and children just as completely widowed and orphaned.
I work hard to try and get my friend to come with me to the gym, or otherwise to find pleasure and exercise of vital faculties; but the man is run down. Without joy in life, death follows: and if an activity greatly brings you joy, even if it is a risky activity, it may be worth doing for that reason alone.
More, a miserable life is no fit reception to the wonder of creation. God may not be pleased with your sacrifice if you have taken the gift of life and squandered it -- not on risking death trying to catch a fly ball for your son, but on letting even the most wise and proper responsibility rob you of the joy and wonder that you should find in His creation. You needn't put that in theological terms to get the same point: Plato called this wonder, which was the beginning of all philosophy, thaumazein.
The good life, then, and our ideals about how to live it need to capture a space for that wonder and joy. This is a duty, and a moral duty, as imperative to the good life as meeting responsibilities. It often entails risk -- climbing mountains, riding horses, drinking beer of an evening with friends, standing up to dangerous men with evil in their hearts. These are the things that make life joyous, and therefore we must do them. When performing a duty, we take reasonable steps to mitigate risk -- but we perform our duty regardless of risk.
That seems to resolve the problem, and the paradox, from my perspective.
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