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Writer's pictureAdolfo Ruiz

Halloween Thoughts

"Monsters are real and ghost are real too. They live inside us and sometimes, they win"

Stephen King.


There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. Fear, we all know what it is. We all have had bad dreams. We’re all familiar with it, from the ghosts and gremlins of Halloween to the snakes and spiders and dark enclosed spaces. We all understand that, as negative as the word fear seems, a little fear is good for you.


Fear is good. It helps protect us. But getting risk wrong, worrying more than we need to, or not as much as we should produces stress and leads to unhealthy choices for ourselves and for society. We do have to fear fear too much, or too little.


We may be able to name many things that scare us, . It has never appeared in a nightmare. You won’t see it as a Halloween costume, or in a haunted house. But this faceless, nameless danger may be one of the biggest threats we face, as individuals and together as a society. It’s the danger that arises when we get risk wrong, when we’re more afraid than we need to be, or not as afraid as we should be. And the bogeyman that creates this danger is hidden deep inside you and me.


Perhaps we can start protecting ourselves from this monster in the closet by pulling it out into the light, and giving it a name. The danger that arises when we’re too afraid or not afraid enough, and the choices we make, make things worse.

Many people is afraid of flying after the 9/11 terrorist attacks chose to drive, a far more dangerous way to travel, and the death toll on America’s roads soared in the first three months after those attacks.


I woke up this morning and my hair looked insane for some reason.

When I finally got home from work about 7:00 pm my front door open and close by itself just for me.

I have felt cold spots in my bedroom and shortly after that my heater start working, I heard someone talking in my room, my living room, my kitchen, my bath room pretty much everywhere even in my back yard. My sprinklers start working sometimes for no reason. Every time I'm on front of my house working fixing my yard I feel like I been watch.

When I come in a room or somewhere in my house my lights turn on, sometimes those lights change its intensity and when I leave that room it shut by itself. My blinds open during the day and shut at night or when it's particularly hot. My garage door open, close by itself and I don't understand why my phone is talking to me.


Self driving cars, Automatic sprinklers systems, Talking phones, smart thermostats, automatic door locks, surveillance systems, lighting controls, energy efficient bulbs, small appliances controls. I don't know what kinda Evil mind could come up with such an idea perhaps one of the Aliens of Area 51?


And for the tenth time in a row, I listen to Steve Gibson talk about Internet Security and how hackers can get to your personal information and let your bank account empty. Yesterday Home Depot 60 millions and today the largest data breach is for JPMorgan 83 millions of accounts hacked now that's scary.


A society freaked out about nuclear power drives energy policy that results in more reliance on coal, which may be less scary but is far far dirtier and deadlier.

Texting while driving. Spending more than half an hour in the sun without protection. Weighing too much. Too little concern about climate change. Too much about terrorism. Talk about a bogeyman! It’s stunning how the danger of the Perception really is, how many choices we make that fly in the face of the facts, and raise our risk. With our superior mental abilities, shouldn’t we be able to do better than this?


This Halloween is as good time as any to start recognizing the monster behind the mask you see in the mirror, the hidden hazard that is the way you and I and all of us perceive risk.


"The sing of an intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason"

Marya Mannes.


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