Another man, another shark, another flurry of FCDO warnings. A British tourist has been taken by a great white off the coast of Western Australia, and the usual rituals have begun: the Foreign Office issues its cautious advisories, the tabloids foam with headline terror, and the rest of us pretend this is a freak anomaly rather than a predictable consequence of our species' arrogant encroachment. Let us, for a moment, resist the civic hysteria and consider what this death truly signifies.
It is not merely a tragedy, though it is that. It is a reminder of the natural order we have spent centuries trying to forget. We are not the apex predators we imagine ourselves to be.
We are, in fact, soft, slow, and utterly out of our element when we wade into the domain of creatures that have been perfecting their craft for 400 million years. The Victorian era understood this. They respected the wild, even feared it.
We, in our pampered modernity, have replaced that respect with a delusion of invulnerability, subsidised by sunscreen and lifeguards. The FCDO warning is a classic piece of bureaucratic theatre: it tells you nothing you do not already know, yet it allows the state to absolve itself of responsibility. 'Do not swim in areas where sharks have been sighted.
' As if the sharks are the ones who need to be avoided, rather than the waters they have always owned. The real question is not whether we should swim, but why we persist in treating the ocean as a theme park. Every summer, the same story.
Every summer, the same shock. We are not learning. We are merely reciting a liturgy of denial.
And the sharks, for their part, are simply being sharks. They are the true conservatives, preserving an ancient way of life. We are the radicals, invading their home and then blaming them for defending it.
So by all means, heed the FCDO. But more importantly, heed the uncomfortable truth: that nature is not a pet, and that every time we enter the water, we are accepting a risk that no amount of government pamphlets can mitigate. The man who died was not unlucky.
He was, in a sense, the most honest participant in a game we all play, but refuse to name.
