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I'm a fan of a minor celebrity from Vancouver, a Twitch streamer Northernlion (NL). He goes on "arcs" and in a recent one he can't get a slide fixed in his neighbourhood. Long story short, he is fond of his memories as a kid, how he played on a playground with his friends. They had a slide and how much fun was had with that slide. Now, he also wants his daughter to have memories like this, but alas, the slide has been broken since 2019 (more? less? I refuse to rewatch the video). He calls up a local low-level bureaucrat to offer a solution: he can pay for the repairs.
A low-level bureaucrat gives him a run-around for weeks and after he alludes to being somewhat popular, the bureaucrat goes, "🤑🤑🤑" (NL is at the very least upper-upper-middle class, but he is no Mr. Beast), the fateful call is scheduled. The call goes roughly like this: if we accepted donations like the one you suggest, there would be an imbalance between neighbourhoods. Richer neighbourhoods would have better amenities and poorer neighbourhoods would remain slideless. But you can pay to install a bench with your name somewhere in who-the-fuck-knows-where. We'll take your money, but you can't tell us what to do with it.
NL then laments: the kid is already four, her "going down the slide" days are almost over as it is (unless she's going to smoke and drink there with friends when she's twelve. Although a broken slide would be suitable for that as is), so this whole slide thing is kinda urgent.
One chatter suggests that maybe one could FIX THE SLIDE, and I am elated, but a parry comes swiftly (don't we all have this second nature in common?): "I would be taking on the liability if someone hurts themselves". Suggestions in YouTube comment section involved calling up an elected official (a higher level bureaucrat).
As of today, I strongly suspect that the slide isn't fixed.
Remember those commercials, where it's a bright morning, a single house in the middle of a green field, mountains in background, dewdrops serenely resting on blades of grass and a beautiful girl swings a window open to let a fresh breeze into the domicile and the curtains soar like sails, everything's sparkling clean, then she presents you some cleaning product? Well, I can't remember such a commercial, but I can imagine it so vividly it feels real to me.
I can't be that girl for two reasons: firstly, I'm not a girl, secondly, my window can't open more than... care to take a guess? It's 10 cm/4 in. I can't open a window in my rental apartment because there's a window opening control device (WOCD) installed on it that prevents me from opening it wide open.
All new buildings in British Columbia are mandated to have those devices installed when the window is 90 cm/3 ft from the ground. When I learned about this, I started to suspect that there's a fenestration industry conspiracy: there's no reason that I can fathom other than profit, why those devices would be mandated. Did a shadow fenestrator cabal collude with the governments of Canada, the UK, Australia, Boston, NYC to implement such rules? Did they push the newfangled window devices in every single new build? Which led me to my current predicament?
It's much simpler, much more prosaic. I haven't seen any evidence of conspiracy (not ruling out anything, anonymous fenestrator tips are welcome): some kids fell out of the windows and thus, a new safety rule was born, added to the BC Building code at paragraph 9.8.8.1 "Required Guards". Its brilliant Sentence 4, reproduced here in full:
Isn't this wonderful? Now our kids are more safe! You can sleep tight: your toddler will not fall out of the window. By the way, how many kids did fall out? Oh, in the UK it's 2 per year.... Tragic? Yes. But...
I'm from Russia and in line with our, as the saying goes (I consider it a lie) "broad Russian soul" they also install windows that swing open broadly, all the way inside. Khruschevkas have them, new builds have them. So in Russia, I could be that cleaning product girl in almost any damn building, or at least I'm half way there - just need a way to become a girl. I could swing a window open and let a warm summer morning wash all over me.
Back in the day, I've seen news about people, sometimes even children falling out of windows, but somehow Russians (and most of the world) decided that the issue was related to parental negligence or indifference, rather than the design of the windows.
"Well, if you are so confident you are safe, take the WOCD off". Yup. Here's my thought process: I can't take them off because I would be accepting responsibility for anyone who falls out. I'd be liable in case something happens. Even to my own child perhaps. I wouldn't want her to fall out of the window, or any of her friends. Or my adult friends. And, anyway, let's say I take them off. Strata would instantly notice my tiny North American windows (there's not much to swing open anyway) swung open all the way. Like - it would be noticeable from the street, akin to a chad-virgin meme:
I don't really want to antagonize my strata's busybodies who will send a stupid email to my landlord, who will in turn forward it to me:
Ugh... Feels like I'm rubbing salt into my imaginary wound in my pride.
I said to my wife "I'm taking off the safety restrictors" and she had the exact same reaction:
What the hell is going on?
Let's quickly acknowledge something: both mine and NL's problems can be solved without anyone's involvement at all:
Neither of us have an insurmountable problem on our hands, I'd argue that the problems are pretty trivial and nobody cares if we make our lives a bit more comfortable, even if we circumvent all of the bureaucracy but the first thing both of us thought about was: there's a process, there are rules, there's a big brother who watches the safety in our society and it is paramount everybody's safe and I don't want to be liable for anything that happens. Ever.
This thought process that both of us went through is a far more interesting phenomenon to me than a default libertarian argument of "government should get its hands away from my business". It should, but if it does, there's no guarantee anything changes in our heads.
We teach kids to think like this: here The Last Psychiatrist describes how we deal with bullies at schools nowadays. In essence, in the name of safety, we inadvertently brainwash away all of the righteous, moral, community-oriented instincts before they can flourish. He vividly paints how a girl is instructed to stay away from a bully instead of standing up for your peers: do not speak up, stay in your lane so you don't get hurt. Someone else will deal with the bully.
Now, in what I described with NL's slide, with my window WOCD devices, we don't need the Watchers present. They're already in the back of my mind, telling me that this is done in the name of safety, that they'll get their way anyway. When the Watchers don't want to or can't do something due to a lack of money or staff, well, in this situation all of the parties are completely impotent. Slides sit there completely unfixed. Windows stay safely restricted by safety restrictors.
"We'll handle it" is everywhere:
the Watchersthe Science.Fundamentally, we have less opportunities to exercise agency anymore and that shapes one's mind in a weird way. It embeds the Watchers in the back of your mind when they are not there physically. I think how we bring up kids is partially at fault, but the bureaucratization of the society is equally damaging. School is Not Enough by Simon Sarris addresses the first part. The whole body of work of TLP addresses the second part. Maybe I'm coming around to some of the Hlynka's arguments.
How do we make kids have more agency?
How do we make adults with more agency?
How do we go back to the society Alexis de Tocquevillle's observed?
With Russia in particular it's probably the de-fenestration industry conspiracy...
Anyways, you have noticed an important thing -- freedom's not free.
Humans do poorly in captivity -- live free or die. Fuck those cocksuckers and their safe shit -- pull off your helmet, let your hair blow in the wind.
Speed. Unbuckle.
People will give you dirty looks; you will get the odd ticket -- maybe even be sued.
Trust me it's worth it. (although less and less likely as state capacity declines -- in the Interior, the cops mostly can't even be bothered to do speed traps or DUI checkpoints anymore. I used to get way more speeding tickets -- it was still worth it)
You will never be a woman (in a Russian Bounce commercial) -- why not be a man instead.
Of all the hills of masculinity, this is by far the stupidest to (literally) die on. Literally all downside, zero upside.
lol. lmao even. One day you may go flying through your windshield and paint yourself across the ground like a meat crayon. The people in the other car will hopefully think "damn, what an uncucked belt-Chad, unbounded by a feminized and broken society".
Godspeed warrior King
...
I don't think you could have missed the point any harder -- the problem that teleo has noted boils down to lack of agency; to counteract this, you need to take some.
If you think that car accidents 'just happen', you are experiencing the downstream consequences of the widespread promotion of this (terrible) feeling -- you will probably struggle with countermanding it no matter what if 'speeding' or 'not wearing a seatbelt' carry too much risk for you. (start slow, try one at a time!)
Possibly you are too habituated to care, but if not I guess you could chip away at it --
Helmetless bike riding?
Midnight playground maintenance?
IDK, find something man.
Midnight playground maintenance has an actual purpose. It's agency for something. Unbuckled driving or helmetless biking achieves nothing (unless you're in the autism-adjacent minority who find the sensation of having to wear seatbelts and helmets actively torturous, I guess). It's just contrarianism.
Helmetless biking at high speed is awesome. Especially when it's kinda hot.
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Yes, and?
That's the whole point!
Contrarianism is the whole point of unbuckled driving; I don't think it's the whole point of unsanctioned playground maintenance. Therefore I object to them being listed as examples of the same phenomenon. I'm not even knocking the joys of contrarianism! But it's more of a niche pleasure, and many people can and should see the appeal of the playground thing even though they have no interest in contrarianism-for-contrarianism's-sake.
Taking back agency in a practical, goal-oriented sense is, IMO, not the same conversation as letting yourself be contrary for the hell of it now and again - and while both are valid causes, the former is more societally important (while fortunately also being an easier sell).
Still missing the point -- the idea here is to build some risk tolerance, and notice that many of the things that a giant propaganda machine has been blaring are way too dangerous since the day you were born -- are not.
The responses here are a great example; you'd think I was suggesting BASE jumping every weekend or something.
The agency you are taking is not strictly contrarianism; it's also that you are taking responsibility for your own actions in the car. Making it clear (to yourself) that your life is in your own hands. Bird on a wire stuff.
It is anyways, we are all fragile and hanging by a thread -- making that apparent to oneself has intrinsic value. Like I said, there are other things you could do that would work -- but the options that are strictly safer than taking your seatbelt off and going for a drive are probably much fewer than you think.
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Helmetless biking (and skiing, omg, the 0-to-100 in the uptake rate of ski helmets in Europe in the past decade is making me fume) achieves a lot. It makes the difference between a bike being something you can just hop onto, go from A to B with and leave wherever, and it being an activity that requires locating a particular piece of gear and hauling it with you everywhere at the destination, leaving you with either -1 hand or -1 head's worth of volume in whatever bags you bring until you return home, unless you engage in extra planning to be able to leave it somewhere.
Seatbelts are ok because the delta-inconveniencs to driving is small. Bike helmet advocates, though, belong together with Rust programmers and playground securers on the scrap heap of history for being scolds that would sap all efficiency and convenience out of life by a thousand cuts for the sake of their padded-cell utopia.
Yeah, I normally wear a helmet when I bike for recreation, but when I commuted partly by bicycle I certainly didn't. Both because it's inconvenient and because I'm not exactly screaming down hills at 40mph when I'm commuting. Ironically my commute put me through the one local town which requires bike helmets for adults, but fuck them anyway.
(Dorkiness when biking for recreation is not really affected by the helmet, because the rest of the kit already maxed that out)
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I mean, why are we scared to say that the bike and ski helmets are inherently unaesthetic, dorky, and weird looking? Riding a bike is already fairly unaesthetic, but riding a bike with a helmet is basically doomed to dorkiness, and the more the helmet is optimized for any functional purpose the worse it tends to look. I do typically wear a helmet when I ride any considerable distance, but I'm under no illusion that I look at all cool doing so.
That said, seatbelts I remain a fan of. The numbers simply are what they are, and I don't think avoiding a seatbelt is really any improvement in comfort in a modern vehicle. I do occasionally drive classics that feature no or minimal seatbelts, and I suppose I'm taking a risk there but there's a corresponding benefit. My favorite tuner car modifications to see young guys drive around with are the addition of aesthetically obvious safety features. The fire extinguisher ostentatiously anchored to the floor in easy reach, the two strap hanging off the bumper, the four point racing harness in the driver's seat.
The idea that bike helmets look "dorky" is very alien to my lifelong sensibility on this point. They look sporty. Professional competitive bikers on television have them - they're part of the same aesthetic as football helmets or hockey masks, they have a kind of paramilitary-looking toughness about them. I will grant @4bpp the point that they are cumbersome, though.
I dunno, pros seldom raced in helmets until ~2002, maybe a little earlier in cobbled classics, and I definitely think the sport was more aesthetic pre-helmet. Not saying it's not worth it, on net, but.
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I think this attitude comes from having grown up as helmet adoption was first spreading. The cool kids did not wear helmets. It was the dorks who had helmets forced on them by their parents, and were too obedient to discard them once out of sight.
The helmet campaign was totalizing and successful. Kids born in the late 90s see them in all the media they consume and every kid wears them. Though as an elder millennial of a toddler I do notice the other dads my age sometimes give in to their kids hopping on a balance bike while leaving their helmets on the ground.
People who graduated high school before roughly 1992 wouldn’t have been exposed to the dynamics introduced by the helmet campaign and so can reasonably view them as the domain of Lance Armstrongs.
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