Art

[Sumpter250]

That first one reminds me of some of the building attempts by the rich folks out here in Cali building on cliffs too close to the beach! Seeing our annual fire, flood, and mudslide disasters and the attempts to rebuild in unbuildable locations has convinced me that common sense seems to exist in inverse proportion to one's financial position-i.e.

My folks owned a summer cottage on Noyac Bay, eastern Long Island. Every year, the bay, with help from the weather, would cause some kind of damage that we would then have to repair.
The benefit of having the cottage was the relaxation we had being there (after the work to repair it was done), the fun, swimming and fishing in the bay, and the good memories of those things.
The weather damage was the consequence of owning that cottage.
For as long as the benefit was worth suffering the consequence, we stayed, and kept up the good fight with the bay. We did, finally, reach the point where the benefit no longer was enough to make bearing the consequence worth the effort, and we sold the cottage.
Common sense? If we had exercised common sense, I wouldn't have all the great memories I still have, and there was a really good lesson there in having to fully understand consequence, before choosing the benefit. There's something deeper, that keeps people in the flood planes of great rivers, or returning to New Orleans, after Katrina, a connection to "place", that overrides common sense. It may simply be that we can put aside "instinct", for personal satisfaction......that we can make that choice.