The reports coming out of Crans-Montana are devastating.
A New Year’s Eve celebration in a Swiss ski resort basement bar ended in a rapid, deadly fire that killed dozens and injured many more—many of them young. Survivors describe panic, smoke, screams, bodies crushed near a single narrow staircase. Investigators now say the space may have been “a disaster waiting to happen.”
A basement venue.
One exit.
Highly flammable materials.
Crowds.
Alcohol.
Fire used as spectacle.
These are not unknown risks.
According to witnesses, sparklers placed in champagne bottles ignited ceiling material, triggering a flashover—one of the most dangerous fire phenomena in enclosed spaces, where flames spread explosively across all flammable surfaces almost at once. In such conditions, escape windows collapse within seconds. What follows is not choice, but instinct, fear, and deadly crowd dynamics.
This was not an unforeseeable tragedy.
It was a preventable one.
Holding Grief Without Turning Away
First and foremost, my thoughts are with the victims and their families.
Nothing written here can soften their loss.
Nothing can justify what happened.
This is not the moment for outrage-as-entertainment or moral posturing.
People went out to celebrate the New Year.
They trusted a space to be safe.
Many never made it home.
That deserves silence, respect, and restraint.
Responsibility Is Not the Same as Blame
Authorities will investigate whether safety regulations were violated, whether permits allowed the use of sparklers, whether materials met fire standards, whether the space should ever have been used as a crowded nightclub.
That process matters.
But something deeper also deserves reflection—without accusation, without hatred.
We live in a world that normalizes danger when it is wrapped in spectacle.
Fire is one of humanity’s oldest symbols of celebration.
It is also one of the most lethal forces when mixed with crowds, alcohol, and enclosed spaces.
Theatrical effects sell experiences.
Experiences sell tickets.
And risk quietly gets reframed as “atmosphere.”
Until it isn’t.
What These Tragedies Strip Away
Events like this tear through our comfortable narratives.
That life is mostly safe.
That systems will protect us.
That joy is harmless.
That nothing truly terrible will happen here.
But reality does not negotiate with illusion.
What happened in Crans-Montana is part of a long, grim list: clubs, factories, theaters, boats, religious gatherings—spaces where known risks were tolerated until they converged catastrophically.
It forces a painful but necessary question:
What does it mean to create environments, lives, and celebrations without fully reckoning with vulnerability?
Why I Chose Not to Have Children
I did not choose to be born.
Like all of us, I was brought into a world filled with beauty and brutality, care and cruelty, tenderness and terrifying indifference. I spent much of my life disentangling myself from illusions—about family, safety, authority, and meaning.
I chose not to bring children into this world.
Not out of bitterness.
Not out of despair.
But out of realism and responsibility.
I believe that creating life without a clear-eyed awareness of suffering is not automatically virtuous. I believe that consciousness is a responsibility, not a slogan. And I believe that once alive, what matters most is how honestly we live, not how loudly we celebrate existence.
Living Consciously in an Unstable World
I am here now.
And because I am here, I choose to live consciously:
to see reality as it is, not as I wish it were
to speak truth without cruelty
to refuse romanticized suffering
to value responsibility over fantasy
That is how I try to make my life count.
Tragedies like this reinforce why consciousness matters—not just psychologically, but materially. Because denial does not only damages inner lives. It kills bodies.
Let This Not Be Reduced to Spectacle
The people who died and the injured whose lives are changed forever in Crans-Montana are not symbols.
They are not statistics.
They are not fodder for outrage cycles.
They were human beings who trusted a space, a moment, a celebration.
If anything meaningful is to come from this, it should be a renewed respect for limits, safety, responsibility, and humility in the face of forces we do not control.
Joy should never require blindness.
Celebration should never require denial.
And life, when taken seriously, deserves far more care than we usually give it.
This essay was written in collaboration with artificial intelligence (ChatGPT) as a tool for reflection, synthesis, and articulation. The responsibility for the ideas and interpretations expressed here remains my own.
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