I was imagining recently what it would be like to work as a Coroner in the sardine world. Aside from there being no remains to examine, every single death certificate would show the cause of death as "Eaten". Eaten eaten eaten... Sardines don't fall off ladders or get struck by lightening. They aren't gunned down by an ex-lover or succumb to the effects of obesity. If a sardine gets a little sick he might swim slower and, as a result, become a prime target for a predator. He will die of barracuda long before the common cold takes him. Life. Death. Not much in between.
So there it is. The sardine goes about his business, swimming with his school, right up to the moment he becomes lunch. He probably doesn't even see it coming. In the dense schools that sardines travel, each fish is reacting to the fish beside him in an instant chain reaction moving inward from the outter-most fish. Any given sardine in the middle is just thinking OK, we're turning left now. More left. Sharp right turn. What the hell?! I'm eaten! Shit! Right up to that point the sardine's life was pretty good. He just hung out with his friends, feeding on zooplankton without a care in the world. The main reason the sardine lived without fear is that he knew he was protected by the greatest form of safety one could ever choose, what I call Sardine Safety.
Sardine Safety is the principal that you are but one fish in a vast school. If a dolphin dashes in to eat a sardine it is very unlikley it will be you. The larger your school, the less likely still. Even if the dolphin trys to target you specifically he will starve to death during the chase as you easily disappear, again and again, into the camoflage of a million identical sardines.
The Lion Fish swims alone. He is protected by venomous tenticles and, being a rugged individualist, he likes things that way. But the major short-coming of this is that whenever trouble comes it is coming for him. He might be handy with his weapons, but any predator worth his sushi will take the sting as fair trade for an easy lunch and move on.
Us humans enjoy sardine safety. There are billions of us. Just counting the United States, our school adds up to 320 million sardine. But somewhere along the way we forgot about this. We are told on a daily basis about some new threat we should fear like home invasions or a roller coaster crash, and the telling is done with such personal concern that we come to feel vulnerable, certain that it is just a matter of time before we too perish in a carnival accident. Little surprise that most of us see ourselves more as Lion fish, dreading the inevitable and just hoping to get in a few good licks on our way to the digestive tract.
On a personal scale this introduces a host of anxieties to our lives which are often neutralized by sardine safety, but no one mentions that part. Just as often, we are told to fear fish that don't even swim in our waters. This robs a great deal of joy from our lives while doing nothing to make us safer. There are whole industies that profit from telling us to be afraid. The insurance industry, politicians and the various forms of media are prime offenders. There is a great deal of money to be made in telling people to be afraid and, for reasons we will explore later, there is zero profit in telling them not to be. So no one bothers. Until now. Sardine Safety will serve as a counter voice to these forces, and to assure the integrity of what it is written here, Sardine Safety will not accept donations or sell advertising of any kind (O.K., a nice bottle of wine would not be unwelcome). All Sardine Safety wants is to reduce the anxiety in your life by way of facts, logic, and humor so you can get back to being a happy sardine. swim swim swim.
On a collective scale Sardine Safety hopes to influence the choices we make in the allocation of public funds. Too often our elected officials spend money on things they know we already perceive to be a risk because it has been covered extensively in the news cycle, like terrorism or Ebola. Who could ever fault them for spending on such obvious threats to our safety? Yet, the actual risk is quite small when compared to lightening strikes, which kill about 1,000 americans per year, and the flu, which kills over 30,000 americans annually. If 2% of the budget for fighting terrorism, which kills 300 americans per year, were used to provide free flu shots to every man, woman, and child in the U.S. we might easily save 15,000 lives. There should be a conversation about these choices. Sardine Safety hopes to be a part of that dialogue.
