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Invertebrate Humans
We are losing our backbone!
As a species, humans have spines, backbones. They keep us upright and are the centre of an endoskeleton that allows us to use our limbs and move about.
As a society, too many no longer possess a spine. That have become amorphous jellies, crawling around, unable to do anything except eat, sleep and (reluctantly) reproduce.
A few weeks ago a bunch of idiots undertook a deep-sea dive in a fragile and rickety submersible. The sub imploded and the passengers died. The response should have been a shrug and “they knew the risks” not the wailing, gnashing of teeth and immediate banning of any more such trips.
If people had not set out on dangerous journeys with inadequate equipment, if the inevitable loss of those people had caused the banning of any further attempts, then we would still be grubbing for bugs, robbing nests and eating berries in Central Africa.
No great enterprise can be undertaken without risk. No principle can be stood up for without action. Yet now we are held paralysed by risk assessments. Now we utter fine words but do nothing.
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
