Thursday, November 21, 2019

Tame fear

In comments on a recent post, AVI wrote "courage involved embracing reality not adding in risks."

Which points to an interesting (to me) question I hadn't started researching properly yet. Pick rich countries in history. How many of them developed something like the roller coaster--an amusement that provides a safe experience of fear?

Maybe the Roman animal show counts--in theory the tiger could leap up into the stands, though I doubt they ever did.

And maybe ghost stories are related, though I don't know if other cultures treated them the same way we do. I suspect they were often more for warning than amusement--they certainly don't read like entertainment to me.

It's no trick to find people (mostly young men) engaging in risky behavior--a Maasai lad isn't a man until he kills a lion. But the danger is real, and is the point--it isn't safe.

Nothing comes to mind. Are we the only culture to provide tame fear?

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