In the last two hundred years, do you have any idea how many people have died from fires, floods, earthquakes, typhoons, and the like? From what are called natural disasters? Some 8 to 10 million people globally are believed to have perished from these random events.
But what of human-induced tragedies? Are you aware that some ten times the above number have died from transportation accidents in the same two hundred years? Or that an estimated 20 to 25 times that number, over 180,000,000, have died from war and human conflict during the same time frame?
We sometimes hear about our great strides in protectiong ouselves from wilds of nature, but who will protect us from ourselves?
On the subject of war, do you perhaps think that war is inevitable? Well, consider this reality: there is a nation on Earth that has not gone to war with anyone in over 200 years. It is one of the most stable nations, one of the most prosperous, one that delivers a high standard of living to its citizenry. What is really important when looking at this scenario is the simple reason this nation has not engaged as a contender in war – even when it was raging all around them. They didn’t do it simply because the historic leaders of this nation, Switzerland, chose to make it a policy to not do so. While they saw the necessity of a military protection position, they purposefully avoided aggression. Of course this approach may not always be the answer, but the point here is that is that in this case they chose this position and did not falter.
On the transportation side, consider this: the Shinkansen, Japan’s bullet train, has had over 10 billion passengers during the last sixty years, and not any fatalities attributed to crashes or derailments. Why? In a word, it is again because of choice. Yes, design and operational standards were decided by conscientious people who made and executed good decisions.
The moral here is to make the right choices in the people assigned to oversight at any level. Don’t just hand your support to anyone demanding it from you. If you have the privilege to live in a democaracy, choose wisely, choose the principled ones. If you don’t have such a choice, you can still choose wisely, for you can choose to be the principled one in any given situation. Yes, you can choose tp be the rainbow in the room!
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