One of the joys of having a youngster in the house is the excuse to check out the young adult section in the library or bookstore. One of my granddaughter's favorite authors is Lemony Snicket who writes "A Series of Unfortunate Events."

Snicket begins each book with the warning: "There is nothing to be found in these pages but misery, despair and discomfort ... you still have time to choose something else." Needless to say, the kids love it.

So here is the flip side of my "feel good" column of two weeks ago. You've been warned. You can still toss this paper in the recycle bin.

My last column introduced readers to "The Rational Optimist" by Matt Ridley. He believes the world is becoming more prosperous, that people are better off today than ever before and that, by- in-large, they are also becoming more benevolent and more humane. So far as it goes, I agree with Ridley.

But here's the catch. The reason this is happening is because of specialization, trade and increasing interdependence between diverse groups of people. And as people have become interdependent and share in worldwide prosperity, they also share in worldwide risk.

To understand what I mean imagine the following: A lottery in which a large number beans — let's say a million - are placed in a box. There are 999,999 white beans and 1 blue bean. Anyone who wants to participate in the lottery can draw out a single bean, and if it is white, he or she will receive a million dollars.

The odds are pretty good. But, draw out the blue bean and you and your family will die. Just the same, the risk is so very small, who's going to turn it down? Think what you could do with all that money.

And this isn't just greed. You could help a lot of people. You're really doing this for your family. You can send you kids to a better school. Your parents will be able to retire while they are young enough to enjoy it.

You reach into the box, draw out a white bean, and go home a wealthy individual.

The word gets around. People line up to draw a bean out of the box. The reward is so great and the risk so small that by now hundreds of people are standing in line. Eventually it happens: Someone reaches in and draws out the blue bean.

That person must die and so must his or her family. But who constitutes "family?" Spouse, children, and parents. Aunts, uncles and cousins, too? Yes, everyone ... everyone who is related to that individual. In small rural communities, that's almost every other person, and it spreads as distant connections are found.

Eventually it extends to billions of people because basically, we are all related. We are the Family of Man, homo sapien, and it doesn't matter if our ancestors were Adam and Eve or some upright primate who developed a more complicated frontal cortex millions of years ago.

Because no one asked who constituted family, because the consequences of drawing a blue bean weren't examined, because our imaginary players didn't understand the risk/time factor, tragedy was inevitable.

As specialization and trade improve the life of the individual, individual risk is reduced. Life becomes more secure. But in a modern technological society, as risk goes down, the consequences of a mistake go up.

Those consequences — when a death bean is drawn — fall on larger and larger groups of people.
Once the decision to drill deep in the ocean bed was made, untold numbers of men and women, fish and foul, ecosystems and lifestyles were put in jeopardy. It was only a matter of time. The same can be said of nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. If we don't understand risk, it is only a matter of time.

Joan King lives in Sautee. Her column appears biweekly on Tuesdays and on gainesvilletimes.com.