Oh So Comfortable

One of my favorite childhood memories was playing Risk with my Dad and Uncles--often on New Years Eve or other holidays. This is a game where there are long stalemates, until a player reaches a threshhold where the odds are in their favor, or maybe they're just bored, and they make a risky decision. Perhaps they go on the attack or fail to defend a position and they gain or lose a lot very quickly. Ultimately everyone is defeated except for one vanquisher.
 
This is life: you can sit back and watch momentum build up around you, or you can go out the door and get a piece of that pie yourself.
 
Risk-taking has so many contexts, and it has everything to do with the extent to which you trust in the world. If you don't trust your neighbors, you have no problem pissing them off. In NYC I watched youths take risks because they thought they had nothing better to live for: jaywalking in really dangerous places or buying guns and pulling stupid pranks  (here is Austin's version). In a country where you're likely to die of AIDS anyways, why not have unsafe sex? In a war-torn country where a 12-year-old might get recruited into an army if he stays in the village, it makes sense to sign up for Al-Quaeda, with promises of the glory of battle and eternal life with virgins. All of these are youths who feel that there's not much worth living for and therefore make decisions that do not benefit the larger community.
 
On the other hand, if you trust that things will work out, you sit back and let things take care of themselves. A politician in a safely-gerrymandered district or early in a six-year Senate term also has little to lose from outlandish political views or poor life choices.

Stick your neck out! ©Rick Weller 2011

Economists have always sought to quantify risk in the risk-vs-reward context. Investors frequently risk millions of dollars on a product that people will want--knowing that the odds of losing all of the money are significant. The hope of a large reward is worth the risk. In the end, if people demand the product, then inherently the world will be better off. These decisions are made in the same metric used by kids of the Bronx or Somalia.

Graham Green said that "it is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself." Is risk-taking a matter of not involving others? A go-it-alone attitude? If you Trust in God do you just sit back and not take risks?

I, for one, want to get out and make the world a better place, but this hammock is so damn comfy....