I went for a haircut today and had an interesting discussion with the person cutting my hair. She was unhappy and frightened. Why? It came down to the fact that she watched CNN. She had a perfectly good life, a good husband, a job, no financial real worries, but she was certain she was worse off than any previous generation of human with global warming, the economy, the war in Iraq, and a million other things that were not a part of her life, but on television. I explained to her that the news media makes their money by scaring people and that she had to factor that in.

Most people don't realize that when they are in the final, most desperate stage of a showdown, what Sun Tzu called "deadly" or what we call "do-or-die" situations, they have choices that are not normally available. In this situation, you can take positions that would be foolish in less challenging situations. Since the alternative is failure (or death), you get more freedom in terms of being creative. What would normally be risky isn't that risky any more.