[pct-l] Sorta OT - Reaction to Abby Sunderland's Rescue

[Eric Lee]

Gary wrote:
>
... who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end
the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least
fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold
and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
>

As I've written before, if people want to take huge risks with their life
then that's their prerogative.  I'm not going to stop them.

Where I really have problems is when they take huge risks, fail, and then
pull a bunch of other people into their risky situation in order to bail
them out.  In Abby's case, she forced other people to engage in a risky
boat-to-boat transfer in rough water in which I understand the captain of
the fishing vessel was actually thrown overboard but was fortunately pulled
out again without harm.

Should we (as a society) rescue dumb people from their mistakes?  Sure,
otherwise we wouldn't be able to live with ourselves.  But I think we're
entitled to feel a bit of resentment toward the people who created the
situation in the first place through their thoughtless choices.

Eric