Somewhere deep in my head is a small but urgent voice warning, 'Don't do it! It's dangerous.' The voice sounds parental, and lately I've been wondering how much it rules my life. Quite a lot I think, as I have risk averse parents. Kind and loving, certainly - but pioneering? No.

It's there somewhere, even in my parents. I can feel it buried in my bones: the urge to take a leap of faith and do something different. But time and circumstances can nullify such traits and make us overcautious, setting us in stone. The risk averse are missing a trick here: it's risky to avoid taking risks.

To me, life is a miasma of paradoxes, and this is probably the daddy of them all. Sooner or later we all end up evaluating our life options. Should I date that girl? Ought I to move? Is it wise to eat that purple thing over there - possibly with custard? Are purple things good, or do they clash with my lifestyle choices?

All too often that critical voice I mentioned boomingly asserts itself. 'Don't touch. Don't talk to strangers, don't...' I know you understand what I mean.

But, the voice has missed something out. 'Do talk to that person. He, she, it, might be friendly; and if you avoid the situation you might end up alone.' Isn't that a risk too? What kind of life can you live if it's filled with prohibitions?

Or perhaps this: 'If you eat that purple thing over there, it might immunise you against some strange encroaching evil.' Or it might actually kill you, turning you into an overnight newspaper headline. What will the neighbours think?

But perhaps, just perhaps, chronic risk avoidance is a sort of death. The early death of hope and renewed possibilities. Short crimson curtains closing behind the coffin of your dreams.

Years ago I had a similar conversation with a friend. I said I'd realised how prohibitive my upbringing seemed. 'Don't swim in the river; rats pee in the water and you'll end up getting ill.' In reply my friend quoted something which I've never managed to track down: words from a short story he'd read.

The crux of the story was that a young man had been brought up to avoid 'dangerous' situations, but he'd finally rebelled. 'Don't swim in the river, said Tom's mother with a stern expression. But Tom swam in the river and was refreshed.

'Don't talk to strangers,' warned his mother. But Tom spoke to strangers and made new friends. 'Don't stray too far from home,' but Tom visited a nearby town and his curiosity was enlivened.

Those are not real quotes; they are just meant to capture the spirit of our conversation. I think it sounds like something by Mark Twain, but in reality I don't know.

To avoid taking a risk is to avoid making a decision. When I'm feeling self critical I ask myself, 'When did the wolf become a puppy, and who made it that way?' Wolves are no more dangerous than your granny - but people think they are, and that's my whole point.

- Sleepyjohn

Hmmm, choices, eh? We all have to make them...forgive my brevity, but these are the choices as i perceive them...

* take out a mortgage/rent

* salubrious area/less salubrious area for said mortgaged/rented abode

* work/ live a glorious life laced with bliss when emancipated

* purchase new car to enhance or validate status/ settle for an old clunker or use alternative transport

* acquire the biggest and best of every gadget and accessory that money or visa will provide/settle for used or discarded items that have no enahancement value to the herd

Simple really. Any knucklehead that is hostage to his/her own grubby capitalistic aspirations deserves every sadistic moment in the gulag of their own choice...fuck work, in every context and permutation, unless, of course one has to do as little as possible to be avoid being rendered starving and living in a gutter somewhere ...

- Allan Wallace

On the secretive side of things;

I've been in relationships with women where it's just easier to get out of the way during the daytime, and allowed them to believe I've been working hard to earn a crust when in fact I've been dossing about. I explained in the "room" thread how I would give some space and time to my woman to idle away the afternoons> I guess some people have a guilt thing about idling? Easy for me to play along with that. To be up-front too much provokes the questioning about where I've been and who I've been with if I haven't been working. Being an idler means above all a relaxed life and to sidestep any shit after all.

Another reason for secrecy is to do with work and business. One very wealthy 18 hours a day, seven days a week businessman who puts a lot of very well paid work my way, would lose all respect for me if ever he discovered the truth. So as an idler, I like lead a quiet relaxed lifestyle. And if people make assumptions about me, it's a small thing for me to indulge them.

Which brings me onto; Where to idle if not at home? and if needs be in secret?

Why do you keep idling secret, and what and where are your favourite places to idle?

- Digital Vegetation

I suppose I keep it a secret from some people who seem to be very wrapped up in their own direction. People often seem certain of their 'direction' where as I often question peoples 'direction'....and why they are certain of such a 'direction'...

Mind you, more recently, I cant be bothered to get caught up in that so I just steal time and head off. I try to think of my movements or lack of movements during the day as opportunities to ponder or read or draw or watch or sit and watch etc

I have found that 'stopping off' on route from A to B may mean parking while the sun is out and taking a stroll or brewing a T on my stove.

Its just a different way of utilizing the time during the day.

I often go to bed early these days as sleeping is pleasant, and I feel sharper mentally during the day.

- Belly Button

I tend to tell people what they want to hear. When they ask what I have been up to, I go into great detail about various projects that I'm working on. They like to think I'm busy 'doing' things. Doesn't really matter what, just as long as I'm occupied. Obviously, there is some truth in what I tell them, but I might embellish a little.

As for places to idle away from the house, I like the park during office hours. Full of happy people giving each other that secret smile - knowing we have the right idea; enjoying the day in the fresh air, instead of cooped up in the office, shop, house or lecture hall.

- Chinny

In a lot of "professions", expensive qualifications lapse after one or two years. When you're in work you're employer pays for you to get (or brush up on) these things, unless they're cheapscates like my last lot, but when you're oota work you're on your own. Part P for electricians, that sort o'thing.

I used to "believe in" work a lot more than I do now: I used to say it unites people, it brought women more rights, it gets you free from landlords/etc because you can get your own place, you learn stuff doing it, now I still sort of believe all that, but cancelling it out are two huge drawbacks with work as it presently is:
1. Most of it is pointless. Doubly so given that practically all commercial work involves directly or indirectly knackering the environment in order to provide people with goods-or-services that don't improve their lives, and a lot of "public sector" work involves cleaning up the commercial sector's mess.
2. Now more than any time since the war I suppose, working people are treated like machines. Even in fields like research, people are working to "targets" and suchlike, and really I think there are better ways, given that most of the vital physical work is done by energy/machines, that we could all be spending our time. The trouble is most people are so out-of-practice at doing so!

- Lunchista

A human being in the eyes of government and industry is nothing more than a beast of burden to be exploited.They will work us until we drop,pay us the least they can get away with,drug us with the latest in a string of pretty baubles dangled before our eyes and mire us in a swamp of debt and interest in pursuit of it then laugh all the way to the bank as they watch us scrabble and leap towards their rotten carrots.As long as they are living in, in their own terms, the lap of luxury and their children are safe and sound they really don't give a shit about the rest of us,and the more they say they do the less I'd believe they do.

Meanwhile they use the precious and limited resources of the planet we all live on to churn out their feted buy it today break it tomorrow get the next bigger better shinier one on friday consumer garbage even before it reaches the landfill bollocks.

And ultimately ,who's fault is this? Ours for buying into it.They cannot sell us what we do not want but they will have a damned good go at manipulating us into thinking we do want it.

Ultimately the majority interest rules and if the majority have been drugged by the cocaine of capitalism and they want more of their fix,the rest of us are ultimately screwed.

There will be no end to this until the eco system collapses the seas die and vast swathes of the planet become uninhabitable by our own hand.Frankly and I'm not saying this with any relish,it saddens me greatly, I think the human race needs a bloody great fright,I think we need to be scared shitless before we will act as one and I doubt even that ,human nature being what it is.Wonder ful Wonder  ful Copenhagen will they sort anything out? HA!Will they fuck,they'll just agree to think about it YET AGAIN!

I need to clarify the details of this,times and places.It may be apocryphal but it hardly matters,but I was recently told by a Croatian friend that at the height of the Balkans crisis when food was scarce and people were starving there was a leap in heroin addiction.How was the heroin getting in when it was so difficult nay impossible to get anything else in or out? Aid trucks.Fucking aid trucks.It doesn't matter if that's true or not but it would surprise me not a jot if it were.There's always a buck to be made as long as you've had your moral compass surgically removed eh?

- Mr. E.C.R. Lorac