- What's your greatest fear? -

A cursory glance at the people around reveals a rather disturbing and alarming truth: indecisiveness seems to be the trait du jour; has a paradigm shift in attitudes occured to render our lives fraught with increasing amounts of uncertainty?

We seem to seek the acquiescence of someone else, the countenance of a higher power, all the time. Or we contemplate all the possibilities and potential drawbacks rather more than the benefits. We think too much, when perhaps saving the time spent on contingency planning and applying it to active action would yield returns far superior to any plausible disadvantages.

Perhaps, as a race, we are becoming more and more paranoid. Perhaps previous attempts to approach with temerity have left us with burnt fingers. Or perhaps the insidious intellectual atrophy that typified the past decade (was there even one? I think not. The Segway. Financial innovations. The rise of microchip processors. The mushrooming of dotcom firms, the darlings of a seemingly alien civilisation centred at Silicon Valley. The swift and continuous supplantation of gadgets by newer, smaller, faster and ultimately better gizmos. But heck, it fits in well with this commentary. Sue me.) has left us in this state.

Then again, the don't-think-just-do attitude advocated by so many of my counterparts, with its plethora of repercussions, must portend a future bleak beyond imagination. Supercilious, hubristic behaviour would only lead to an abrupt and premature discontinuation of activity.