“Lets keep everyone safe”, It’s a phrase I have heard in the media non stop since the end of 2019. I have heard governments constantly say it, advertise it and promote the idea, newspapers embellish it and the public repeat it like the obedient nodding dogs most seem to have become in recent times, the famous quote of Benjamin Franklin, Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. This quote has been widely used to illustrate the dangerous nature of blindly following those in power whose motives you have neither questioned nor investigated, but in this article I will delve deeper into the more fundamental dangers of risk aversion and how it is fundamentally damaging what it is to be alive. I might go as far as to paraphrase it….Maybe:
Those who would exchange risk and perhaps adventure for a life of safety and conformity will have neither a full life nor really ever be safe
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
In many ways the concept of staying safe would appear like a perfectly reasonable thing to promote, however in this article I will argue it is anything but the case.
The ever more prevalent risk aversion of modern western society has stripped away the soul from what it is to be alive, it is destroying the human experience and diluting the ability of people all over the world to be what they can be.
Every time you bother to look beneath the bonnet of our society you will see the cancerous growth of people’s general dissatisfaction with their lives.
Indicators of a Sick Society
The indicators of our ever more increasingly sick society are easy to find, every day we see them, hear of them, read about them and listen to one of the many podcasts telling us what is going down. We imprison journalists for telling the world what we don’t want to hear and then turn a blind eye to horrors we inflict on other nations whilst we choose the flavour of our ice cream and which car we will drive next year when the agreement is up on our latest one. But many of the real indicators are closer to home and more insidious than the filtered, controlled news you see on your favourite brand of corporate sponsored TV.
Relationships & Family Breakdown
The ever increasing divorce rate underlines perhaps the lack of real quality in many relationships or maybe too greater an expectation in the first place after years of seeking that perfect union, the very sad materialistic most important day of her life so heavily promoted in the media, the “Hello” style wedding or perhaps the lack of any need to maintain a relationship at all against the backdrop of government financial assistance once the gloss fell off the wedding day photos. It’s a story almost everyone has heard.
Materialism & Debt
Then look at the focus on materialism generally. The debt level of most households is stunning compared to 75 years ago. But so are the trappings of the 21st century. Even the most modest income working households appear to value the age of their vehicle above the quality of their food, consider mind numbing entertainment more important than essential education and if presented with even the most mild of crisis, panic in a way which would have seen them crumble in a situation such as endured by their grandparents.
Children are not trophies
The almost insane obsession people have with their children’s achievements and often the attempt to live their own lives through those of their kids, it was not long ago that boys would wish to be their fathers, who in turn would seek to be stand up and valued members of a community no matter how tough their lives were whilst girls would emulate the values of their maternal heritage and support the ecosystem that raised them.
In contrast, it now appears that many fathers live through the most minor achievements of their children or are chased from their households when things go wrong, whilst mothers dote on every insane nuance of their children’s government led school life, a schooling that seems ever more obsessed with eradicating free will and free thought, destroying creativity and inducing mindless obedience.
State Education
Once upon a time it was common for school teachers to be drawn from retiring professionals from industry, people with genuine life experience who wished to give back to the society they helped to build. Now we have an ever increasing generation of weak minded, never been out of school, so called education professionals whose capability of critical thinking, inspiring creativity or commanding any respect from their pupils is as close to zero as would be their ability to effectively work outside of the education system that nurtured them.
Where is philosophy, understanding and application in todays education system? Where is critical thinking? I spoke with my son and his friends recently who all report hating school. When I showed application to their subjects they all suddenly showed some level of interest in them. I wonder why this is such a difficult task for so many of todays school teachers? Perhaps because they have never applied their own knowledge or education?
You are not your hobby
One look at an average Facebook feed tells you one other notable trait of this 21st Century mess we are in is the tribal identification in peoples leisure activities.
My guess is when so many people’s professional life is so utterly meaningless, then it’s no small wonder that people need to build some form of meaning into their lives with their leisure activities. But is this healthy? Listen to a man whose professional life echoed through time.
“Genuine happiness comes form a life of purpose. emerging over time, working on ourselves and our aims”
Aristotle
Or perhaps you could try the words of a man who achieved rather a lot in his time, one who perhaps did achieve a level of infamy due to his leisure activity but in a way that helped guide one of the most successful Roman Emperors of all time.
“Do you love your work like a dancer loves dancing or a painter loves painting?”
Marcus Aurelius
So Let’s Keep Everyone Safe
Since World War II when our grandparents and great grandparents risked everything to ensure the freedom of future generations, We in the West have lived in an Era of unbridled safety and prosperity when compared to previous generations or the lives of people from the third world.
Whilst our recent ancestors sat in trenches with bullets flying over their heads, bomb shelters as cities fell around them and held strong through rationing, power shortages and the constant threat of the invasion of a foreign army, we terrify ourselves with the idea of being blown out of the sky in a billion to one act of terrorism or perhaps catching an illness with odds of survival so high that most people if offered the chance, would bet their house on it if given suitable incentive to do so.
It’s not just Covid 19, but what must be the lamest pandemic ever to hit mankind should perfectly illustrate what is wrong with our society as a whole.
If you still think you need to be saved from Covid, you should wear a mask in public spaces to avoid infecting the elderly and are allowing the government to stick as many needles into your arm as the gang from Train spotting did, then it’s truly hard to say whether this article is for you or not.
I would argue that if you feel you need big brother to look after you at all, regardless of the situation then you have some way to go before you are awake enough to realise no ones coming to save you ever and that you need to do some serious growing up, you may not, you’ll probably die being rather pissed off you did nothing much but live a pointless life and accrued some nice stuff that your kids will find someone to dispose of a day or so after you entered the incinerator.
You might be 30,40,50 or 80….the age is irrelevant, until you stand on your own two feet you are a child, isn’t that the case?
The best thing anyone can do when looking at the motivations of governments to “keep people safe” is become a student of history and realise that governments have historically been willing on almost every occasion to risk the live of many to protect the interests of the few.
WWII is possibly a notable exception but working class people have always been expendable to the elites of society.
Safety of the masses has never been the major concern of those sat in the with camp.
So Why has Safety become the goal?
Everything in the 21st Western World has for the majority become just too easy, there is definitely not the same sense of achievement or purpose as you might have had as you carried the deer back to the tribe after a successful hunt with your peers as when you call the wife and tell her you will pick up a takeaway on the way home from the office, it’s just not the same thing.
It used to be the case that to achieve almost anything in life, even basic survival fundamentally required a level of risk. Obtaining food, travel, gaining any level of wealth or hanging on to it. The very rich did not escape this, the long history of kings and nobles shows how risky their power and wealth often was.
People were not born to be sheep protected by fences and a shepherd, they are born to explore their terrain and conquer their surroundings. Freedom is inherent in our souls and like animals who are caged in zoo’z we will never be happy in captivity, however the captivity we feel is one of our minds. Because we are taught endlessly to value life length over life experiences.
What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.
Morpheus. The Matrix.
Everywhere you look people have replaced what could be meaningful risks with security and conformity. Worse, the risks people are now avoiding are actually more like levels of comfort as opposed to levels of risk.
Examples might be avoiding the risk of going self employed in case you have less income for a while, have to drive an older car or cut back on essentials like Domino’s pizza & foreign holidays, avoiding the risk of a minor injury by taking part in a sporting event in order to ensure your meaningless work life continues or avoiding the risk of being singled out for speaking your truth and avoiding the risk of losing your job for standing up for what you believe in.
How about the risk of losing your job because you don’t wish to take a medical procedure? I had to do it for work….How many times have you heard this over the last year?
If this is you, then you are no longer a man, you are a shell and you can feel it. It’s eroding you already, you have lost your way and you do need to re find it because if you do not then you wasted the opportunity to be who you are.
Don’t be angry with me for saying it, it’s a simple case of it the cap fits then you must decide on whether or not you are going to continue to wear it. If it does not fit, then there is no problem right?
The truth is your mind has been infected with a 21st Century psychological cancer that is killing you slowly from the inside, that is the mental health crisis of our time and it will continue to get worse until you are willing to return to being a what you were born to be. A soul with the opportunity to experience what it is to be human. But like all opportunities you must be willing to take them.
However, whilst I sound merciless in my attack on those who are too blind to see the prison they have placed themselves in, I do concede they have been under attack from one of the most sustained psychological attacks in the history of mankind. So, you could be forgiven for succumbing, at least for a while.
Like the many control mechanisms of an abusive parent, governments around the Western world appear to have cast a psychological spell over progressive generations of people, especially over men.
This spell leaves its victims devoid of the real joy of living replacing it with a sterile existence based on materialism and fake achievements, often centred around further material goals such as meaningless career progression and the trappings that may accrue from it. The antidote is to listen to the great philosophers and find a path with real meaning for you, everyone is different and you may need to find your tribe to truly realise you destiny but when you do then life will be what it was meant to and death will lose its sting.
UNBX 