A woman has been rushed to hospital after a shark attack at a Sydney beach, and the media are duly wringing their hands. But let us resist the temptation to join the hysterical chorus. Instead, let us consider what this incident reveals about the state of our civilisation.
For here, in the warm, welcoming waters of Australia, we see the return of a primal fear that our Victorian forebears thought they had banished. They built empires, laid rails across continents, and tamed the wild. Yet the ocean remains indifferent to human ambition.
British tourists, accustomed to the tame, orderly seas of the Home Counties, are now being urged to exercise caution. But caution against what? A shark?
Or the broader, more insidious dangers of a society that has forgotten how to confront risk? We are repeatedly told that such attacks are rare, that the chances of being bitten are infinitesimal. This is the false comfort of statistics, a balm for the modern mind that cannot abide uncertainty.
The truth is that every time we enter the sea, we enter a wilderness. That is the price of the beach holiday. We have become a people who demand safety guarantees from a world that offers none.
The Victorian explorer would have laughed at such timidity. He knew that the wild was a test of character, that risk was the seasoning of life. Now, we are a nation of worriers, our travel advisories growing longer, our appetite for adventure shrinking.
The Sydney shark attack is not a tragedy to be grieved; it is a reminder that Nature does not negotiate. British tourists should indeed exercise caution, but not because a few teeth have punctured the flesh of a stranger. They should do so because they have forgotten how to be brave.
And that, dear reader, is the true crisis of our age.
