Fatale Abstraction

Twiddling the knob on the radio Wednesday, I heard a commercial that sort of stuck in my craw.



I'd flipped onto a talk radio station, and there was a commercial for some sort of insurance which stated that apartment renters were something like 10 times more likely to have their homes burgled than single-family dwellings, and that insuring their possessions through the advertised company was a way to even the odds on this "unfair statistic."



Um, since when is it fair for anyone's home to be burgled? I mean, it's not as though there's some US recommended lifetime requirement that one's home be burgled 1.3 times. Misery loves company, I s'pose, and people like to know that if they have to endure horrid things, that at least these horrid things will happen to other people, too. *much eye-rolling here* This trucking with the notion of fairness in how the smackdown is meted out reeks of schoolyard-levels of reason and maturity, i.e., not very.



Come to that, the whole notion of insurance (and we can't live without it, can we?) is ridiculous, in fact. The idea that trading x hours' salary a month will protect you in case something crappy happens seems tremendously wrong-headed, to me.



I love Terry Pratchett's version of the in sewer ants polly sea in Discworld novels. It's treated with the very incredulity it deserves. If only we could shift gears and adopt so sensible an approach, but we never will-- we're besotted with the misleading vision of lala land and the need for impossibilities like fairness. And there will be a never-ending string of takers who will whisper pretty words and assurances of security in exchange for filthy lucre, and still, there will be no guarantees of positive outcome. How is that insurance?

Bad things will happen, no matter what. Grow up, already.