How to Live Dangerously
Why we should all stop worrying, and start living
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
We live in a society governed by Fear. Packets of peanuts ‘may contain nuts’, our children are locked away safe indoors, and we are encouraged to fear risks that previous generations took for granted. The result is a temptation never to leave the house. How to Live Dangerously is a sane, straight-talking, wonderfully entertaining manifesto that assesses the real risks of modern-day life*, and encourages us to embrace a new freedom in the way we live. Sometimes, sh1t happens – but you may as well get out there and enjoy yourself while you can because, in the end, you’re a long time dead.
*Don’t like your children much? You’d have to lock them out of the house every day for 186,000 years before they were abducted (and even then you’d get them back within 24 hours)
*Afraid of flying? If you really want to die in a plane crash, you’ll need to take a flight a day for the next 26,000 years . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cairns' droll, entertaining book examines how we've become a world of people afraid of the world: "survey after survey shows that most people, nowadays, believe the world to be a far more dangerous place now than it was in the past." Not only do we worry too much, we worry about the wrong things. With a witty, occasionally whiny British inflection, Cairns catalogs the innocuous things that grab our attention (airplane crashes), the real dangers we rarely consider (hundreds of thousands home gardening accidents), and the real victims: the children. Along with many funny, outrageous anecdotes illustrating a society whose members are no longer willing to take responsibility for their own safety or well being, Cairns makes many salient points about litigation, obese children and the pacifying effects of the safety state (ironically, the safest course of action may be the one that seems the most dangerous, since we become more cautious when we perceive danger). Cairn's lighthearted approach is informative and easy to read, in spite of occasionally obscure British references, and should briefly alleviate anxiety, if only because it's hard to worry and smile simultaneously.
Customer Reviews
Some interesting points.
An interesting book which raises points that make you think. Indeed it has made me realise that my own fears and worries, real though they are to me, are largely unfounded. I felt however that the author rather rushed towards the ending which was a shame.
A very readable book, nonetheless, and I recommend it.