Urban Tombstoning Will Save The World

Wow, just want to say how alive I feel after stumbling upon this urban tombstoning video in my Twitter feed today. You'll no doubt agree it's an incredible feat of guts, determination, schoolboy bravado and above all risk-taking. Or, if you don't, get all mealy-mouthed and hand-wringing about it like the local coppers did, you'll consider it a high act of stupidity, likely to end in serious injury or even death. If that's your opinion, you of course have lost the plot and are responsible for the insipid cultural environment we are living in.

The human spirit soars when it's challenged and survives an act of self-determined risk. The risk that many of us put ourselves at when growing up and adventuring with our mates. Here I make a distinction between personal risk and putting others at risk against their will. That kid will have felt 10 feet tall for taking on his fear and surviving, a mini-hero to his mates for doing something they were to afraid to do themselves, perhaps he'll be leader, in a wheelchair or dead by the time he's 17 who knows, but it's his life, his exhilaration and who are we to disapprove?.

Risk-taking is a vital human trait, the human race, would still be wallowing around a small area of Africa eeking out a living on raw shrimps and elephant grass without that instinct to step out and explore an unfamiliar and dangerous unknown. Almost every progression of humanity has by necessity involved risk, and the consequential injury and death to a few.

What has happened to society whereby we want to control and cocoon our children to such an extent that we will damage their ability to develop essential risk-taking skills to see them through their lives? I see it as the flip side of the appalling parenting that spawned those two little monsters in Doncaster. Just as their brains suffered incredible damage to their development and emotional hard-wiring through an abusive upbringing, the same is true of the car to school, no school if snow, you cant play outside on your own, 'weather warning' culture.

The human race has a lot to do to ensure long-term survival against the threats both real and imagined, from climate disaster to cultural and religious schizms. Only those with the bravery and hard-wiring to recognise the risk, see the reward and have the bravery to take it will survive and lead us into the future. It might just be the boy who jumped on the bus.