I have just finished Risk: Why We Fear the Things We Shouldn't - and Put Ourselves in Greater Danger by Dan Gardner.
It is a book about risk and, more importantly, risk analysis. Humans are notoriously poor at both estimating and understanding risk. Much of the book is spent debunking commonly held notions.
However, Mr. Gardner goes well beyond simply debunking our cultural myths. He provides a paradigm for understanding both why the myths develop and why they persist.
In a paragraph that I think sums up a great deal of the argument in the book, he writes: "Put all these numbers together and what do they add up to? In a sentence: We are the healthiest, wealthiest, and longest-lived people in history. And we are increasingly afraid. This is one of the great paradoxes of our time."
The numbers that he was refers to include life expectancy. I have written about "average life expectancy" before. It is a dangerous number since "life span" and "life expectancy" are not the same thing.
Humans have a life span that has averaged around 60 to 70 years for much of recorded history. If you examine the historical record, such luminaries as Leonardo da Vinci and Galileo lived to be 67 and 78 years old, respectively.
Some historical figures lived longer and some shorter lives, but a human being could expect to live well into their 40s if - and this is the big "if" - they survived their childhood.
This is why the average life expectancy a century ago looks so bleak. A baby born in England in 1900 had a life expectancy of 46 years on average. However, this value results from the fact that 14 percent of all babies and young children born in 1900 died before their tenth birthday.
Making it past the age of 10 was a major accomplishment in the developed world a hundred years ago. That same number had dropped to just 0.58 percent by 1997.
Put another way, in England in 1900, for every 100,000 children born, 14,000 died by the age of 10. In 1997, that number was 580.
The consequence of this is that average life expectancy has improved dramatically.
Life span has increased dramatically as well. Typically, people are living into their 80s and often into their 90s now. Indeed, many more people are making it to 100 years old than at any previous point in human history.
This increase in life span is due in part to better medical care but it also arises out of having a healthier food supply, better access to clean water, inoculation programs against common diseases, and generally healthier lifestyles than at any point in the past.
We are living longer and healthier lives. No question about it.
And yet, as Mr. Gardner points out, we are also afraid. Very afraid.
Many psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers among others have tried to tackle this question. What is driving this fear?
There are simple - almost trite - answers such as the fact that we are living longer and therefore are less inclined to give up what we have. That is, if you were a fly with a 24 hour genetically determined life cycle, you likely wouldn't fret about "tomorrow" because for you there wouldn't be one.
However, with the expectation of having 80 or so years to live, you want to make sure that you get the full allotment. No one wants to die prematurely.
There is also a general culture of fear that pervades our entertainment and our news. The saying goes: "If it bleeds, it leads." And while many newspapers make a very conscious effort not to splatter the bloodiest of daily events on the front page, it doesn't take too much digging to find stories of murder and mayhem.
This, according to Mr. Gardner, is actually a built-in survival trait that has evolved with us. Stories of disaster are our way of knowing what we shouldn't do. If you are told that your neighbor was eaten by a lion when he went to a particular watering hole, you are much less likely to want to visit that waterhole. And, in turn, much less likely to be eaten by a lion at that watering hole. Substitute "gun-toting madman" for "lion" and you get the modern news story.
It makes a lot of sense to listen to stories of danger as they help us avoid dangerous situations. But too many stories can leave you paralyzed with fear and leave us fearful of things that are not likely to happen.
Finally, there is "confirmation bias". Once a belief is in place, we screen our inputs for information that affirms that belief. If we believe that we live in a time of fear, we will see things that make us afraid.
So, I say, "we are the healthiest, wealthiest, and most long-lived of all human generations." Believe it.
