Musk, Hawking, Gates — the tech giants have redoubled their warnings about how we could destroy ourselves with technology. But they’re not talking about deliberately pushing buttons to trigger disaster. They mean accidentally killing ourselves with something that we invent for our benefit.

It’s a little embarrassing to have to admit that accidental deaths are increasing in a world that our ancestors made safer for hundreds of years. Our grandparents saw the invention of the automobile, the bulldozer (推土机) and so on, and they made them all safer. However, nowadays, we put a smartphone on every hand, and now more than 1000 distraction-related crashes happen on our roads every day. Kids and pets die of heatstroke (中暑) inside cars — we are on track to set a new record for hot car deaths in 2021. We may not have to worry about AI, but our innovations are quietly outpacing our ability.

We place blind trust in complex systems that reveal little about how they work. It seems that we have superhuman abilities, and consumers seem willing to play along. They drive at a speed of 80 mph with a phone and a cup of coffee, and they are proud of their multitasks. Sure, other people on phones are dangerous, but you can smoothly switch your attention and notice when any emergency occurs, right?

When we misjudged a situation in the past, we got immediate feedback. But technology can place the consequences of our missteps at a distance. Delayed reactions, complex chain reactions —these are all part of how technology works. But having adapted to a world of new inventions, we are crazy about driverless cars, seldom stopping to consider what could go wrong later down the road. Worse still, technology is even hacking our feedback system. We get excited when we check our phone while driving. Edith Harbaugh, whose company, Launch Darkly, specializes in the controlled release of new technology into the wild, pointed out that we’re creating a dangerously unbalanced system of actions and rewards: “We are not given ice creams every time we do something safe.”

So it is too late to worry about threatening technology, which is upon us. The modern world is breaking everything we know about staying safe. If we have any hope of staying alive with the rise of the machines, we are going to need to learn to survive the things we have today.

The French are getting fatter, but a campaign against fat-shaming is under way. France has only a few fat heroes, real or imagined. There was King Louis the Fat, who ruled from 1108 to 1137, and won several wars. And Gargantua, a big guy created by Francois Rabelais, drank the milk of 17,913 cows each day.

In fact the French are thinner than people in most other rich countries: only 15.3% of them are very fat, compared with an OECD average of 19.5%. But nowadays the number of Frenchmen who are overweight has risen from 30% to over 46%. A growing desire for processed food and more sedentary (久坐不动的) lives are leading to overweight.

For officials, this is a problem. Being overweight leads to sickness. The state says that the overweight population already needs extra health and other spending of $20 billion a year. And weight is closely related to poverty: a French study suggested that children whose parents are “non-professional” are four times likelier to be fat than those of professionals. To reduce overeating, France taxes sugary drinks, bans junk food in schools.

At the same time, officials want people to be kinder to their plus- sized people. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, hosted a conference on fat-shaming, including a fashion show with larger models. The event was partly inspired by the success of a book written by a trainee teacher, Gabrielle Deydier, a fat person in France.

However, it is difficult for officials to go on the campaign. Although fashion industry promises not to use slim models when selling their goods, billboards and magazines remain using skinny figures. And that may cause both dieting problems among the thin and pain among the fat.

I am a big laugher. I’ve been told that even in a room of a thousand people, you can always hear me laughing over the crowd. For me, laughter is the ultimate form of embodied joy. And by “embodied”, I mean that my whole body is involved when I laugh. On the inside, it’s like a bubbling fountain of joy spilling out all over the place.

But what is joy, anyway?

Life can be terrible, but if you decide to follow the sound of the joy-fountain, you will find joy showing up in all kinds of places: pets playfully bouncing around, kindness, or even in nothingness.

How can joy be found? A friend moved into a new apartment and needed some help, so I helped him. Afterwards, he was obviously so much happier and at ease. I noticed that playing even a small part in his happiness brought me great joy, and I took a moment to let this feeling of embodied joy in. We can practice letting joy in by noticing how it feels to smile. Where does your body light up when you smile? When I smile, it makes me want to take a deep breath, and I notice my shoulders and belly relaxing. When I embody caring and loving, it feels great!

Sadly, many of us are unaware of joy, or suspicious of it. Maybe you are afraid to open up to joy, or maybe you are so unfamiliar with what joy feels like that you ignore or resist it when it comes knocking. No one, other than you, owns your happiness, but you might unknowingly block feelings or experiences that help you embody joy. The fact is that when you can’t embody joy, you miss out on one of life’s essential vitamins.

Want more joy? Don’t be afraid to look silly. Silliness helps us take things less personally. It helps us see the world the way a kid does. When we can find more joy in the smalls of everyday life, we can embody happiness, rather than just pursuing it.