Many in our sector are so preoccupied with the day-to-day element of their operations that they don't seem to notice that something is a threat until it gets so close that they can't avoid identifying it.
Of course, by this time it might well be too late to do anything.
Perhaps it is the smoothing effect of selective memory, but back in the old days before the global financial crisis we didn't used to talk about an existential threat from alternative capital and the ILS community - we used to discuss something rather grand called Convergence (with a capital C).
We also used to talk about collaboration, and the other C-word was complementary.
That was then and this is now. Among many other words beginning with the third letter of the alphabet, cheap, cheerful and potentially cataclysmic are the adjectives that now most readily come to mind when describing our alt capital brethren.
We have form. Ten years ago, long before the innumerable quantitative impact studies and wranglings over pillars 1-3, reinsurers used to talk with fondness of the lush green pastures on the sunny uplands where the gentle shepherds of Solvency II were going to lead us.
Reinsurers only thought of the extra demand from small capital-strapped cedants and the elimination of some of their less sophisticated competitors and forgot about the compliance headaches the measure was brewing.
Suddenly, the capital consequences relating to investment risk and the enormity of the cost and upheaval of the design and construction of internal models came into view and many began to panic.
A train snaking towards the viewer from a great distance can look beautiful and anything but threatening. But as the locomotive surges closer there comes a point when it ceases to be a delicate thing of majesty and becomes a vast and unstoppable hunk of steel, noisily hurtling right at us.
Fellow rail operators looking to avoid a painful collision should have the points primed and an escape route ready long before the moment of no return.
Back in the old days the convergence market was small.
We used to think of Nephila as a cute and impish macaque, run by some smart guys who had spun out of Willis. A few years down the track and the primate we perceive has evolved - the "Nephila Gorilla" is now a ravenous, rampaging silverback with $10bn under management.
It's not that we didn't see it coming, rather that some of us projected our own wishful thinking onto it when it was smaller and wasn't perceived to be a threat.
Some were way ahead of the other rolling stock and were busy constructing high-speed engines of their own. For other nimble and perceptive folk, it's still not too late to get hitched up to the capital bullet train and avoid a collision.
For others stuck on the rails none of the three available options are particularly palatable: it's either hook up with somebody else faster than you, shunt yourself into a sideline and let the world pass you by, or get left out on the main line to face a painful smash.
The new technology is not tried and tested. One day it may blow up, fly off the rails or simply break down, lose all power and slow to a grinding halt.
In this case, being left at the shunting yard may ultimately look like a smart move. But whatever the eventual outcome, simply hoping for the failure of a currently unstoppable adversary is not a credible strategy.
To read the first of our Baden-Baden newsletters, please click here.
Mark Geoghegan,
Editor,
The Insurance Insider