In that energy of “Can I eat it or will it eat me”, we feel very alive, Jansma notices. In modern urban society we loose a part of this feeling of aliveness. People need to feel risk again; by watching sports in a soccer stadium for example, people feel they share the experience of the hero they watch, as if their neurons mirror the ones of the hero they watch. Watching sports, like playing sports, triggers the sense of risk. When the player, who is your favorite, gets hurt, you feel it almost physically. Of course one person likes soccer and another likes film to feel ‘alive’ again.
Tuned to assess risk
Jansma argues that we live in a society in which risk is reduced all the time: by the government, by the municipality, by employers. On the other hand, as a biological entity, the human being has been shaped over millions of years into a perfect machine tuned to assess risk and assess possibilities.
