Safety

From metawiki
It's not much fun, but it's very safe.

In a society where outrage drives media engagement and profits, there is an outsized incentive for pundits and politicians to make you feel unsafe. Recognizing and resisting this tendency is a necessary skill for maintaining your psychological freedom.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin

Maslow's Need for Safety

Safety is a primal emotional concern, just above food and shelter on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If you don't feel safe and secure in your environment, it is very difficult to focus on finding love, educational advancement, or artistic pursuits. Creating a society where crime and grift are minimized, and there is the perception of equal justice, is a necessary prerequisite for a culture that allows most people to experience the more sublime layers of Maslow.

The Safety Cage

Negativity bias in the media and our brains has caused many people to perceive our society as becoming less safe, even as every meterstick shows it becoming more safe. Crime is at historically low levels, but fear and anxiety are at an all-time high. This has led to a feedback loop where people retreat into the safety of their homes and familiar places, spend less time venturing out into the world, so that even more of their information comes from outrage-fueled media. This causes the world to close in on them, trapping them in a mental cage of their own fear and anxiety.

How many people do you know that fit this description? Why do we have an Anxious Generation? It is possible to break out of the safety cage and replenish our lost free will?

Optimism and the intentional cultivation of positivity bias is the best way to fight negativity bias and avoid the traps of negative thinking. Steven Pinker is renowned for being an intellectual optimist, and reading his books will help anyone overcome their negativity bias.

Negativity Bias Explained by Steven Pinker


Understand Negativity Bias

Free-Range Parenting

The movement to prevent the perpetuation of the safety cage to the next generation is called Free-Range Parenting. Those who grew up Gen-X or older just knew this as parenting.

See the Family page for more on this topic.

“Free-Range” Parents Are Fighting For Their Kids To Walk Home From School Alone


Is Free-Range Parenting a Good Idea?

The Safety Dance

There's one song that is perfect for this page and here it is!

Men Without Hats - The Safety Dance