For years, I was a race controller for motorsport events. As a race controller it was my job to be the central point of contact for all race officials and safety staff, to keep the event on schedule, and to coordinate incidents when they occurred. I had to be the one person at the event guaranteed to keep a cool heard when shit hit the fan.
One weekend, I was running control for a regional motorcycle race. There was a bad accident in which one of the riders could have died. After I coordinated the incident, sent the rider off in an ambulance, and got the racing back on schedule, a friend or crew member of the injured rider, who was left to pack up his rider’s things in the paddock, came into the control tower very upset. He said “this shouldn’t happen.”
“What shouldn’t happen?” I asked.
“Guys dying or getting injured like that out there?” he replied.
He was still hot and bothered, and I had to focus on the track in case of another incident, so there was no point in engaging him philosophically, so I ignored him and kept working… but my question to him would have simply been “why not?”.
Motorsport is inherently dangerous and always will be. The advances in safety over the years have been profound, especially since the horrid Grand Prix weekend at Imola in 1994 in which there were three major accidents resulting in the death of two drivers, Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna. We can make helmets of carbon fiber, race suits fireproof and have airbags in them (for motorcycle racing), and give cars and motorcycles GPS traction control systems that will keep racers out of the gravel traps, but the danger of racing, as with anything, is not a quality of the activity itself — rather, it is intrinsic only to a person’s willful decision to participate in it.
The degree of risk is equivalent to the degree of mindfulness with which one participates. A professional racer who pushes the limits of the machine is also pushing the limits of his own mind. The goal may be to win the race at any cost. This consequentialist approach would yield unlimited risk, and that is the racer’s choice. On the other hand, if the same racer were to go out for a casual Sunday ride for the pure enjoyment of it, rather than for competition’s sake, then the risk would be far less because he will take safety precautions, including driving well below his mental limits, that he wouldn’t in competitive circumstances.
Anyway, that it “ought to be true” that racers not get hurt while racing competitively is the foolish claim of an underdeveloped empath.
There are no two sides. There is only truth. You do not judge the truth of something against its opposite. If something exists, then it has an opposite — a shadow — which is equally real. The benchmark for truth is Truth, and the degree of something’s accuracy is its proximity to Truth. Nevertheless, it stands that if something exists, then it is true. If it does not exist, then it is not true.
We cannot speak of something that is not true. To use language is to apply a logical structure to something that exists. We can misapply that logic, making our statement about that subject untrue. But the concept toward which that logic is aimed exists independently of that application, and thus the truth of it is not contingent on our ability to make linguistic sense of it. We often learn new things that existed prior to our knowledge, do we not?
Well, we ought to.
If we can speak of something at all, then we are at the very least playing a game who’s goal is to be approximate to something true. To be unable to speak of it does not imply that it does not exist, however. An idea, for example, can be understood by one person and not another. This may either be a matter of intelligence or wisdom, depending on the nature of the idea and on where each individual is on their truth journey.
So, what ought to be true? Only that which is — no more, no less.
Overthought Consulting 