Helmet Theory

[penfield]

"There are many things you can point to as proof that the human is not smart. But my personal favorite would have to be that we needed to invent the helmet. What was happening, apparently, was that we were involved in a lot of activities that were cracking our heads. We chose not to avoid doing those activities but, instead, to come up with some sort of device to help us enjoy our head-cracking lifestyles. And even that didn't work because not enough people were wearing them so we had to come up with the helmet law. Which is even stupider, the idea behind the helmet law being to preserve a brain whose judgment is so poor, it does not even try to avoid the cracking of the head it's in."
- Jerry Seinfeld (American comedian and megalomillionaire), SeinLanguage

In the early morning of Saturday, February 16, eight people were killed when a Ford Crown Victoria plowed through a crowd of spectators watching a drag race. A follow-up story in today's Washington Post (featuring this gruesome passport-style photo above the fold) chronicles the "survivors'" reactions upon their brush with death. At no point in the article do any of these individuals acknowledge, much less lament, that they were standing in the middle of the road like morons, watching an illegal activity at three in the morning.

I'm not saying that these unfortunate people had it coming, exactly. But at the same time, drag-racing spectators belong to a class of "victims" that I don't feel particularly sorry for -- people who are hurt or harmed while doing something that is obviously dangerous, stupid and pointless.

In addition to drag-race spectators, this cohort includes: mountain climbers, alligator wrestlers, lion tamers, safari participants, hunters, boxers, human cannonballs, David Blaine, gangsta rap entouragia, Britney Spears and her sexual partners, those morons who run with the bulls at Pamplona and assorted other daredevils.^[1]

These activities are often couched as "adventure" or "extreme sport," generating a "rush" of "adrenaline" that "invigorates" you, at least until a "bear" rips out your "intestines." This macho, thrill-seeking, limit-testing, alpha-individualistic idiocy is intellectual seed for Social Darwinism. It probably explains the ultimate extinction of the dinosaurs, who are historically noted for their fixation with Ultimate Fighting.

I just won't allow myself to feel sympathy for these people. If they don't care enough about their lives or their families to avoid or abstain from head-cracking activites, why should I care about their resulting plight?

Of course, the victims of this drag-racing accident are in a particularly pitiful subdivision of losers: they weren't even participating in the illicit activity. They were just watching it. I mean, we're talking here about people who do not even posess the intelligence or survival instinct of squirrels.

So please, drag-race victims, drag-race victim apologists and drag-race victim sympathizers, stop trying sell us your tragedy. I'm not buying it.

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[enchanted-pants.livejournal.com]

Members of the armed forces are notably excepted; while war is dangerous, stupid and often pointless, a nation's soldiers uphold principles of honor, duty and justice. It is a sacrifice for their country, even if they also receive health and retirement benefits.