[Vulnerability & Power - XVIII]
I can't blame people for wanting to be safe. It’s innate.
Historically, safety was an issue of life or death.
Safety from the elements meant not dying from exposure to the cold in winter and the heat in summer. Safety from a lack of basic nutrition meant not dying of starvation. Safety in numbers meant not dying at the violent hands of another tribe, village, nation, etc., or not dying by violent attack of a carnivorous predator.
For many of us, these don’t apply. And yet we still give into the innate impulse. Safety from the elements, threats on our lives, and violence attack have been transferred to threats on our presuppositions, beliefs, and everyday comforts.
Instead of shelter, we need ideological bunkers.
Instead of basic nutrition, we need a steady diet of self-affirming soundbites, memes, and thin journalism.
Instead of a diverse tribe, we need a homogenous village of online voices that reaffirm our biases and protect us from outsiders.
I can’t blame people for wanting to be safe, but what many deem safety is really ideological and intellectual isolation. Instead of finding security, we’re finding heavily fortified loneliness. And we feel more insecure than ever.
