Welcome back. Been quite a while hasn't it? No need to worry, the NSA hasn't taken me down yet loyal readers.
Speaking of the NSA, that's something I wanted to talk about. It should come as no surprise to you all that I'm rather supportive of Edward Snowden and his efforts for a more transparent (and therefore hopefully much less powerful) government. After all, this is guns,beer, and FREEDOM. But instead of looking at the NSA or the government surveillance programs themselves, I think it's more important to look deeper. To look at our nature as human beings. I think this would give a far greater insight into why, especially as of late, we are having all these conflicts of interests between freedom and so called 'security'.
Now I say so called 'security' instead of regular security (thought there is a great overlap here) because in these instances the primary goal isn't actually being safe, but FEELING safe. That's one reason why the TSA spends so much time dealing with airports, but sea ports receive almost no attention. Not many people deal with commerce shipping, so they don't notice the gaping holes in our security there. But people fly thousands of miles every day, and so very overt changes are made.
So we can gather that REAL security isn't the issue. So what is then? The concept of STABILITY. The FEELING of being more secure makes you more likely to go about your daily business. And we know this is true. Humans are creatures of habit aren't we? We love to fall into patterns of predictability and normalcy. We want, generally speaking, to tend towards order. But the problem is is that freedom isn't orderly. It is inherently chaotic and destabilizing.
While I was between writing this, I saw a George Carlin about this very subject. And in it he points out exactly what I'm stating now; that most of these 'security measures' are designed to make people FEEL safe. And I can understand why. People are creatures of habit, and we form these habits because we feel secure in doing so. I mean, if we actively thought that there was a chance we'd die in some way going to get milk and cheese, we'd be a lot more reluctant to do so. It's self preservation. But it's all an illusion. We face death no matter where we are, or what we do. We can NEVER eliminate the risk.
Now if we really think about it, we know this. So we try to mitigate risk. But at a societal level this is much much harder, because it involves an incalculable number of variables because it deals with people. And people are, sadly, often irrational and unpredictable. So ultimately risk mitigation becomes a very personal factor. It's not something that can be done well at a national level.
So where am I going with this? Well the point I'm trying to get to is that because we cannot eliminate risk and because it's so difficult to mitigate at a national/societal level, we should therefore push on the side of freedom. Yes, it comes with more risk and potential for instability, but it allows people to better face their own personal risks in a way that suits them best. It allows them to succeed (or fail) as individuals, rather than as mass segments. ESPECIALLY when we see that the 'threats' we're all told to be so afraid of are unlikely at best.
