Why Nothing Works Anymore

And an observably unsustainable philosophy

There are two lessons to be learned from this eminently avoidable tragedy in Brazil:

A female bungee jumper plunged more than 130ft to her death after staff forgot to attach her rope before throwing her from a bridge. Footage captured from various angles shows the 21-year-old being calmly carried by two workers before being hurled over the edge of Skeleton Bridge, in Limeira, in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo.

But none seemed to be aware the safety rope was not actually attached to her body.

Tragically the victim, who has been named locally as Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas, had posted photographs of her jump wristbands and the bridge just moments before the incident. Underneath one poignant photograph, she wrote on her Instagram: ‘Who was the crazy person who let me come jump off a bridge?’

Video taken at the scene shows the young woman being taken to the edge by the staff before being thrown into the ravine. Bystanders can then be heard frantically shouting in the background, ‘the rope, people, the rope’, in the seconds after she was released.

First, this is why nothing works anymore. Low-IQ, low-trust people cannot be trusted to do the necessary thing, let alone the reasonable thing, and you can completely forget about any possibility that they will somehow stumble upon the smart thing.

Second, far too many women are little more than passive bystanders in their own lives. Or in this case, their own deaths. I recognize the female distaste for personal responsibility and I understand women’s determination to avoid all personal accountability from anyone and anything, including God and gravity, for their own actions. But even the most avowedly feminist young woman must be able to grasp that disavowing personal accountability to the point that you’re not even going to notice or comment upon the fact that you don’t have a rope, or a bungie cord, or anything at all attaching you to the bridge you’re planning to jump off is simply not a sustainable philosophy.

I mean, it’s bad enough to assert that you have the right to wear anything, no matter how provocative, anywhere without expecting any negative consequences. But this is definitely an expansion of the concept.

If it is going to survive, I think society needs to require at least a modicum of self-awareness and self-preservation on the part of its young women.