It will not happen to me
Extreme misfortune when it comes, comes as a surprise to most of us. Why me, why us? Why has the Good Lord singled us out?
The fatal car accident; the death of a child in the family; these are things that happen to other people but not to us.
Similarly with natural disasters: volcanic eruptions; major earthquakes; droughts and famines. These too are misfortunes that befall others, usually far away, and usually in exotic and alien places.
Political disasters are also generally seen to be reserved for others: the fate of less civilised nations, not our own. Debates about constitutional checks and balances on power are regarded as tedious, particularly by those who have been fortunate enough not to have had their civil rights seriously violated within living memory.
But political disaster is often much nearer at hand than you might think, and it need not take a readily recognisable and violent form.
Prior to the military overthrow of 1973 by General Augusto Pinochet, the citizenry of Chile had seen themselves as one of the most stable democracies in the region, on a par with any other contemporary democracy. The unprecedented return of a radical Socialist regime through the electoral urns in 1970 had been hailed as evidence of the civil and political maturity of the nation. In the early 21st century, the growing influence of Christian fundamentalists on the government of the United States, and the entrenchment of political correctness or progressiveness in Britain, are examples of the non-violent capture of the State by groups whose agendas and values may be inimical to the long term civilised survival of humanity.
Disaster does not need to be remote or improbable for it not to be seen or for it to be ignored. The wonderful ability people have to salvage hope and optimism against all reason from patent adversity can be a significant handicap to survival. Neville Chamberlain, British prime minister from 1937 to 1940, is now derisorily remembered as the fool who went into negotiations with Hitler assuming best intent[1]. But he was by no means alone in his wishful thinking. How many Jews in Nazi Germany with the means to leave chose not to in the forlorn hope that they would ride out the storm?
How many punters riding the euphoric wave of a booming share or housing market have not, in their optimism and their greed, held on just that one day too long?
'Hope for the best, expect and plan for the worst' is a sensible maxim of which many only practice the first half.
There is a curious and generalised disdain for those who prepare for unlikely calamity.
Those who are actively involved in Civil Defence and in contingency planning for large-scale disasters tend to be socially awkward or officious individuals. They are probably the very last people to have in charge at times of genuine crisis.
But the earnestness of such individuals should not blind us to the need not just to be prepared for the unexpected cataclysm, but, where possible, to forestall it.
Preparing for the possibility of misfortune diverts effort and resources from the immediate needs and opportunities presented by today. There are therefore limits to the effort we should go to to be prepared. These limits should be defined not just by the cost of the effort in relation to the probability of the event, but also in relation to the severity of the event, should it come to pass.
Those of us who can afford it insure ourselves against accident, theft, and fire. We do this as a matter of routine and think little of it. We insure against those events that will affect us personally and that, on the scale of a human lifetime, have a significant probability of occurrence.
We push to the back of our minds the macro disasters of reasonable probability that would affect whole communities and societies - these are somebody else's problem - while global cataclysms of low probability are relegated to fiction and largely ignored.
Cataclysmic events[2] that occur on geological or cosmic timescales are so improbable on a human timescale and would require such inordinate effort to avoid or ameliorate, that it is difficult to convince living humans to prepare for them.
But while the probability of occurrence within one's own lifetime is low, the probability of occurrence for a human species with its horizon set on infinity[3] is absolute. More importantly, the potential downside to our human civilisation of a global cataclysm is so great - the cost is so high - that even a very small probability within the lifetimes of the now living, warrants Us devoting significant attention[4] and resources to it.