A philosopher on why we need to take more risk

In an article called Remarks on Risk, Danger, and Uncertainty, philosophy professor Lester Hunt notes the human tragedy: to be human is to act in this world with incomplete information. Insights on how to be courageous in the "obscuring smoke of battle" 👇

The theoretical man v/s the practical man: "The commander in the smoke of battle must decide, the historian forty years later must understand. Before the die is cast, you bet; afterward, you can only observe." It's safer to be the historian, but nobler to be the commander.

It's a "great temptation" to be an observer and not a "participant." The theoretician is trapped by the "bait of certitude and security." This shows us that "the motive that moves theory is cowardice." We should cultivate an action bias and avoid "the shabby trick of hindsight."

Hunt argues that biographers today love to take "a feet of sand approach to their helpless (because already dead) subjects." In Sam Clemens and Mark Twain, Justin Kaplan paints his subject like "an overgrown adolescent."

In the past, biographers were more interested in celebrating than in deconstructing: "In the nineteenth century, massive works like Thayer’s Beethoven and Marshall’s Washington were intended precisely as monuments, as grand mausoleums in which greatness is entombed."

Those who leave a mark on history are "forward looking agents" who are "off-balance and in the midst of things." Those who critique have the "unfair advantage" of being "backward-looking observers."

Today we have writers who fail to sympathize with greatness, warts and all. These writers "take a malicious pleasure in proving that it wasn’t really so great in the first place."

Becoming a parent makes us cowardly: "A state run by people who are parents will always tend to be a nanny-state, because parents tend to have the mentality of nannies." Today this nanny mentality pervades our society and we've become "less tolerant of danger and disorder."

The nanny capitalist economy is hyper-focused on reducing risk: "Hedge funds, insurance, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, seat belts, air bags, burglar alarms, safety nets, the police, the standing military, the welfare state with its many tentacles and suckers."

In the past, the general worldview was: "Life is liable to give you a terrible beating soon, and it won’t do to whine about it – or to worry about it too much, either." But the present is the age of whining and worrying "without ceasing." What will the future look like?