Retirement – A risk-averse culture

Just as you get to a stage of life when you think you know a thing or two, along comes an avalanche of new information and regulation. And only some of it is useful.

Health warnings on food packets and wine bottles, even more gruesome on cigarette packets, are fair enough. So too are hospital notice boards full of assurances that you’ll be treated with dignity and respect and your whanau will be welcome; though they’re hard to swallow after a three-hour wait in an understaffed ward. And how effective are the signs in shops and supermarkets that tell you abuse from customers won’t be tolerated, other than suggesting the staff have been having a hard time of late. As for the recorded message at the start of a business phone call advising your conversation may be used for staff training purposes. Well, you can only say no by ending the call. More entertaining are the often out-of-date checklists posted on construction sites telling staff to pick up litter and watch out for overhead wires. (I guess that’s for tall people.)

There’s more than a whiff of virtue signalling and back protecting going on. Risk prevention slides easily into risk aversion, which is why it’s so hard now to find school and holiday camps for kids. Our new world is ruled by an abundance of caution, beautifully expressed by that symbol of safety first on steroids – the road cone.

My generation grew up in an old world where you had to learn to trust people, keep yourself safe and carry the consequences if you didn’t. I never saw a road cone until the 1980s.

Today’s new culture, heavy on threats and warnings, light on trust and common sense, is a mixed blessing. For older people brought up to give each other the benefit of the doubt, and take a chance on those who might not come from the right address, it’s downright disconcerting.

The etiquette of the online world we must follow to avoid being scammed is all about suspicion and distrust. Only use trusted, known addresses, don’t disclose any personal details, don’t answer calls from strangers. Believe everyone is out to get you, until proven otherwise.

You can’t borrow a book from the National Library until you have established a RealMe identity; easy for a seven-year-old, but exhausting for someone with my IT skills.

Tales of scams that hit or just missed are as common as medical adventures for everyone in my age group. We celebrate with those who survive the hell that hackers cause, and commiserate with those who got burnt.

Maybe add a word of admiration, too. For trust is still a virtue even when it is abused. Trusting, like loving, can be costly. But better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.