The title is a little redundant, but that was also the point.
First of all, a lot of small mistakes on their own won't kill you. Indeed regularly making mistakes that are minor and survivable are a good way to learn and become more resilient.
But then the higher the stakes involved, or perhaps generally the more energy involved, then the more it can be the case that a mistake has more serious consequences.
Hubris is a special kind of mistake or error with its own set of underlying conditions, which are significant conditions, achieving a category of their own. We can clarify these conditions by way of contrast.
One can slip while hand-sawing a log and get a pretty nasty cut, a cut that may even go to the bone, or sever a major artery, spelling trouble, but which is probably manageable if managed skillfully. But then if one slips with a chainsaw, that tool with its gas powered blades whirling at high velocity, and exposed on all sides of the instrument, one is more likely to incur a very serious injury, such as loss of limb or worse.
Instruments like chainsaws and power saws hold a special kind of respect, and a special kind of fear, and wariness, for those who use them to work with wood and similar materials.
Similarly, the act of felling a small tree, while still dangerous, is not nearly as dangerous as felling a very large tree. Many people don't think about it, but what kills so many loggers are not necessarily failed retreats from falling trees, or the notorious "widow maker" branches which fall off from above - which are all plenty dangerous scenarios too - but the explosive force of the full weight of the tree kicking back at the bottom when the tree falls. They call this a "barber chair," in which the tree kicks backward, or splits and rolls to the side, or even shoots spears out from the cracking stump, all of which can be quite fatal. And this can happen to the skilled and experienced just the same.
Similarly, logging large trees holds its own special kind of respect, and fear, and wariness.
If we take these illustrations and really scale them out, and apply their inner principles to something like wealth accumulation, we see something far more explosive than whirling blades or a loaded tree.
The hubris of the rich is a special problem of its own, which unfortunately and unsurprisingly has not been solved for thousands of years. Wealth accumulation is a special sort of process that requires a very adept and aggressive body of knowledge and impulse to action on the part of those seeking the wealth.
It generally requires intensifying levels of force and violence, and tightening controls in order to continuously direct that wealth to a central location (at least in general) especially when up against competition in accumulation.
It also takes centuries of accumulated knowledge and power in order to suppress that force and violence in the other, who is being controlled and done violence to, as these things desire reciprocity.
That knowledge and power that we loosely refer to as noblesse oblige also has a tendency to evaporate off over the course of generations, as each successive generation, finding itself greater ensconced in aristocracy and inherited wealth - thanks in large part to accumulated knowledge, experience, and power - tends to insulate itself and ultimately sever itself from the body it governs, and thus lose touch with it and its maintenance.
And of course all of this happens concurrently with the perpetual building up of resent and murderous rage on the part of those being intensively exploited by this system of wealth accumulation.
If you're very wealthy, really the last thing you want to do is pursue that wealth to excess, as it is the legitimacy of the system itself which secures your place. The legitimacy of that system may as well be the food and drink that nourishes you, and the clothing and shelter that protect you. Part of being wealthy is being good at manipulating that system - or at least inheriting the proceeds from that manipulation - so you're probably not going to be as good at lots of other things, like feeding, clothing, sheltering, and protecting yourself.
But to watch many of the rich today in action, and to survey the results of their reign: boy, it is like watching some jackass hack away willy nilly at the bottom of a massive tree. The hubris!
