For some people, the risk of death is already “priced in”. Economists use that phrase to talk about events that won’t move the financial markets, because investors have already assumed it is likely.
So my suggestion that you have, quite likely, already priced in the assumed deaths of many fellow humans will likely both alarm and offend you. Because, of course, you’re nowhere near that callous.
But wait. Imagine for a moment a hypothetical scenario:
Imagine tomorrow a disease was discovered. A disease that would induce waves of paralysing fever and, in some cases, kill you within 24 hours of you realising you were sick.
Imagine now that this novel virus killed over 600,000 people in the next year, with 75% of those deaths being children.
How alarmed might you be? How dismayed? How urgently might you be spurred into action?
What if I told you that disease was called malaria? You’ve likely heard about it. Most people have largely forgotten about it day to day, precisely because it is so familiar.
We spend, globally, about $4.3 billion each year on eradicating this disease, which doesn’t evade detection nor skip continents. It kills, quite predictably, about 600,000 people each year. For reference, we spent almost $250 billion fighting COVID, which is now, for many, a hazy memory. A fever dream.
So why am I harping on about malaria? Not simply because you should donate to it (though you’re welcome to). But because malaria, and our reaction to it – our co-existence with it – is emblematic of so much more in our lives.
Malaria happens so perpetually and predictably that it’s easy to take for granted. Much like bombs in the Middle East, much like corruption in politics, much like a million small things in your life which are objectively bad, but you’ve already gotten used to.
Most of what truly scared us about COVID was the fact that it was new.
If your boss, who had otherwise been calm and kind, suddenly became nasty and rude, you might justifiably be upset. You might raise some alarm.
If your long-time partner overnight became aloof and uncaring, you might not abide it.
If your health and habits suddenly deteriorated, you might seek out a doctor.
But if any of these things happened slowly, built up gradually over the course of months or years, it’s quite likely that you would eventually price it in. You would habituate. Accept it as the cost of doing business. Accept it as “just the way things are”. A condition you are forced to stomach.
We accept many things in small doses that we wouldn’t all at once, like proverbial frogs in water slowly brought to boil.
We let small harms accumulate and let bad situations persist.
The good news is that the myth about frogs staying in hot pots is false. And you can decide the same is true for you.
Look around you at the various waters you’re swimming in and, today, dare to take the temperature.
If you find that the heat has, over time, reached a temperature that is simply not sustainable… jump!
