Our never-ending, horrifying dance with drowning
And while our love of H2O is deep, our respect for it is shallow which exerts a terrible cost – one of the highest drowning rates in the developed world. The good news is that it has halved from a peak in 1984 of 163 to a 10-year average of 82. The bad news? A spike in the last two years, that saw 94 deaths in 2022 and 90 last year.
You know why we don’t give a shit about water deaths in NZ?
Because driving those numbers is a “kick her in the guts Trev, she’ll be right” attitude, interwoven with vague and erratic policy from government. And when it comes to personal responsibility, it is all about Trev. Last year 83% of the drownings were men, with 58% over the age of 45. Of the seven people who drowned between December 22 and last Wednesday, all were men.
Because it’s men who drown and as a society, we don’t give a fuck about men.
If it was women drowning at this rate there would already be an annual $5million dollar social media campaign on The Spinoff in association with Stuff and RNZ fronted by Robyn Malcolm and a NZ on Air funded podcast hosted by Alice Soper, Emily Writes and Michelle A’Court called ‘Ladies Float’ which would last 5 episodes until someone complained about the lack of diversity and the whole thing got cancelled by the Woke.
We don’t give a shit about men killing themselves as long as they are only hurting themselves, murder-suicide and a manifesto is a step too far.
The lower social economic pressures that close the local school pool plus the mediocrity of most mens actual physical capabilities vs their own over valued and highly false impression of their own skill set all combine to help sink most men to the bottom of the ocean floor pretty quickly.
We need blokes other blokes listen to sort out our drowning stats, but because we don’t really care all that much if men drown, it is highly unlikely anything will get done.
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A fair description of things but can you imagine the outrage from loud mouth men if we set limits on boating, diving and other water activities? You also neglected the men who died trying to save others, while the situation may have been beyond their skill level I prefer to remember them for their willingness to risk themself for the good of others which is rare in our society where selfishness is the norm.
People don’t drown tor no reason. What’s the main reason men drown?
So many expensive boys’ toys require water, on which to be shown off.
Add to that, men reaching the age of feeling they haven’t achieved as well as they’d hoped in life and rather than accept that, they try to be compensate in other ways, by showing off their water prowess or driving skill.
We had Greg Murphy telling us how to drive, years ago. Did that work?
We have TV fishing programmes where they never go home with wet tails and no fish.
You can change peoples’ behavior temporarily with ‘education’ but eventually a person’s true nature reasserts itself.
We do care about drownings and those individual families which lose a loved one unnecessarily. But a sense of personal responsibility will always be more effective than any education or messages from well-known people, however much we might admire them.
I don’t think it’s fair to say we “don’t give a shit” about drownings, any more than we “don’t give a shit” about road deaths. Obviously people are affected by this on a personal level. I’m not into men claiming victim status, but maybe we should look at our education system and give boys some more positive role models. Cause the women are beating us in the education stakes.
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