Fear and anxiety

One of my favourite quotes is by Dan Gardner (Risk. The Science and Politics of Fear, 2008) who said that "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."

This manifests itself in a number of ways. I am bothered by how many times I hear statements such as "we have had legal advice and we can't...". This bothers me particularly when it stops us from giving advice that we genuinely believe to the correct advice based on experience and the best knowledge at our disposal.

An example of this emerged after the terrible bushfires we had here in Victoria last February. I read about one local council that said they wanted to put in bunkers in their community but didn't because they could not indemnify themselves against any future claims. Leaving aside whether we think bunkers are a good idea in bushfire prone areas, what we seem to have here is a council that believes they are the best protection for their residents - but who can't or won't put them in because of the legal/insurance problems that they might cause.

While I understand their reticence, I am concerned that they felt they were unable to implement a policy that they felt provided the best protection for their residents because of what a court might do in the future.

This approach is now entrenched as the default position. Decisions made not based on what the best policy is in a given situation, but on whether the decision maker can shift the risk to someone else - and in this context I am talking about legal risk (liability) not actual risk.

When and how did this happen? It is all pervasive and I suspect it has snuck up on us.

I want to be clear that I am not advocating recklessness here - but the pendulum has swung too far in seeking to apportion blame for every accident and incident in society. Yes we want to learn from mistakes that are made and where it is proved that negligence caused the incident then yes there should be consequences. But when we as a society become afraid to do what we believe to be right because we are so concerned with being legally liable - then we have surely gone too far.

Are we raising our children to be frightened?

I was recently in the airport waiting to fly home when I heard a mother yell at her daughter, who was about 5 years old, "don't wander away or you will get snatched (kidnapped), kids get snatched all the time you know". The child had moved about 2 metres away from her mother and the comments really grated on me. Maybe we have always invoked the bogeyman to get our children to do what we want them to - but I am not sure it is either effective or appropriate.

Apart from this not being true (kids getting snatched all the time that is) - it did make me think about how much we as a society focus on fear. This is particularly important for us in Victoria after the tragic bushfires of 7 February this year.

With the experts telling us that climate change means we can expect more extreme weather events in the future, there is the very real possibility that we may have a public loss of confidence in the bush. If this leads to even more people staying at home on their PlayStation's or Nintendo instead of getting outside then I think the long term consequences will far outweigh the actual risk of being outdoors in nature.

To respond to this heightened anxiety we will need to focus on the benefits that come from being involved in outdoor programs, while at the same time being able to demonstrate that as an industry we have responded to the changing environment and that we have taken all reasonable steps to ensure our programs are safe and that we have reviewed and revised our programs accordingly.