But I would question this assumption. Why do people ride motorcycles? Is it to increase safety? Why do people snow ski, or climb mountains? As I have posted earlier, the research clearly shows that children who are not exposed to real risk–which in any large demographic will lead to real injury, even death–are less meaningful (my word) as adults, less able to wrestle with ambiguity, less able to manage fears, less able to march forward towards the Sun. I picture them huddled down, near the ground, unable to stand up for want of a skeleton.
Historically, this is the role war played: it energized people, mobilized their spirits, demanded and received great and heroic efforts. Yet, war is stupid. It is the last recourse of exhausted minds, who have for long period of time failed to see far enough ahead to make intelligent countermoves.
Doris Lessing wrote an interesting book called, if memory serves, “The marriages between Zones 3, 4, and 5”, in which the protagonist, a queen in an utterly feminine realm (think Sweden) has to marry a soldier from an eminently manly realm. [I will note in passing that one can perceive, I think, echoes of her Communist past in her positing the Canopeans as benevolent rulers whose dictates were always correct, even when incomprehensible; she mentions organizing an society as an army again in Mara and Dann. I think for the more sensitive it is hard not to see the suffering of the world, and not want to find and elevate an enlightened ruler to make things calm and rational. I may of course be completely off the mark here.]
At first, she is disgusted with how course and unrefined they are. Over time, she comes to respect their discipline and comraderie. Then, the order comes for the king to marry a princess from another zone, one completely wild, and apparently modeled on Afghanistan. The queen realizes you need wildness, you need chaos, you need the unpredictable, in order to grow.
Upon realizing this, she decides to visit Zone 2, which is a rarified realm (note: I read this twenty years ago, so I may be a little fuzzy on the details). She cannot quite breathe the air, but she realizes it is better than her own Zone. It took the events of her marriage and contact with Zone 5 to make this connection.
Metaphorically, I think this symbolizes how life should be lived. I don’t think a perfect society will be free of random death, or even disease. We may conquer all these things, then decide to reintroduce them, particularly once it is generally realized that death is not final at all, that we are spirits who come here to grow.
And I think we can see shades of this in some utopian scenarios. Take the Hunger Games. A people achieves complete material abundance, but still feels the need to participate–albeit vicariously–in the chaos of violence and death. The shades of death and despair, pain and fear and hunger and desire–and love, a chaotic force that both creates and destroys in its emotional form–will always haunt us.
For my own purposes, I have found the work of the Tibetans the most practical. And it is interesting that as wonderful as some of their practices are, they find the need to incorporate death, in the form of bone flutes, and terrifying masks, and even drinking from skulls, if I have understood correctly.
As long as we are on earth, Halloween will always be with us. The task is to integrate these energies usefully. There are many ways to do this. I have suggested a few.