Quote · Added 14 February 2026

I have heard over and over again that the drilling business is a dangerous business, and death is an expected part of the game, but I've also heard of the way that safety violations, human and environmental laws, and a concern for the local culture are flaunted in pursuit of money.

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The gap between danger and choice

There's a peculiar kind of resignation that happens when we accept danger as "just part of the job." It lets us stop asking harder questions. But Fuller's real concern isn't about inherent risk—it's about the gap between what we claim to tolerate and what we actually choose to ignore. When a company cuts corners on safety or tramples on local communities, that's not an unavoidable cost of doing business. It's a choice made because someone calculated that the fine or the lawsuit would be cheaper than doing it right.

This matters now because we do this constantly across industries. We've normalized environmental shortcuts as "realistic business practice," shrugged at labor violations as "how the market works," and treated cultural displacement as collateral damage. The trick is that once you've labeled something dangerous or inevitable, you can stop feeling responsible for making it better. Fuller pushes back against that numbness. She's saying: yes, some jobs are risky, but that doesn't mean we should accept recklessness dressed up as necessity. The choice to prioritize profit over people isn't a natural law—it's a decision someone made.

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Alexandra Fuller

b. 1969

Alexandra Fuller is a British-American author known for her memoirs and novels that often draw on her experiences growing up in Zambia and Zimbabwe. She gained recognition with her debut book, "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight," which recounts her childhood in Africa during the tumultuous political changes of the 1990s. Fuller's work explores themes of family, loss, and the complexities of identity in a post-colonial context.

I have heard over and over again that the drilling business is a dangerous business, and death is an expected part of the game, but I've also heard of the way that safety violations, human and environmental laws, and a concern for the local culture are flaunted in pursuit of money.

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The gap between danger and choice

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