[garretraziel]

I've read about this psychological theory somewhere - that there is so much danger around human that human brain has to ignore everything that doesn't impact him directly, othervise everyone would be paralized by fear all the time. Without this mechanism, one would be unable to leave his apartment - there are hundreds of potentialy dangerous individuals you'll meet every day, moving in things that would kill you instantly if someone just made a small mistake. And if you decide to use this thing, you depend on tens of people you've never met that they did their job correctly, othervise you may be killed even though you haven't made any mistake. Public transportation is even worse in this regard.

It would also explain how anyone is able to do things that are unhealthy - smoke, drink alcohol, eat sugar. Even though we all know that it's really unhealthy, it doesn't affect us directly, so it's hard to take it as serious threat.

I'm not sure if this theory is true, but it keeps explaining a lot of human behaviour to me.