http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/24/moscow-airport-explosion-_n_812981.html
Most of you have already heard about this, there was a blast at Russia's largest airport on the afternoon of January 24th (Russian local time). The blast killed (at last count) 35 people, and while that utterly stinks it reminded me of a thought process I'd had long ago.
I'm going to speak in generalities here, partially because obviously I don't have all the facts and partially because, for the sake of my argument, the specifics are irrelevant. Danger seems to be a necessary component of our lives, in the absence of danger is complacency, and when we're complacent, we stop advancing, we stop creating. When we look around us and we say, "we are safe, all is well, and I don't have to do anything to maintain this status of safety" I think the creative portions of our minds slow down or stop altogether. Looking back at the millenia of human history, some of our greatest advances have been made in times of extreme distress as a species. Some of our greatest tragedies and travesties have occured under these same conditions, depending on which way the prevailing human psyche was leaning at the time, but I think they both stem from the same basic creative force. Some of our greatest technological and social achievements have come from truely unpleasant times. We defeated smallpox at a time when the world was ready to go to war with itself and risk the complete obliteration of all life on earth. Minorities achieved total legal equality in America at a time and in a part of the country that was taught to hate them simply because of what they were. In the Middle Ages in Europe, also known as the dark ages, knights created a code of chivalry to try to protect the weak and the poor, instead of just taking over the world as they were clearly capable of doing at the time. Many of them were not good men, but the simple fact that the idea was there indicates that in that time of utter chaos and near anarchy, someone was concerned about their fellows, instead of just themselves. We've done horrible things too in the same conditions, but it takes at least as much creativity to do evil as it takes to do good. And why were these things done? Because we looked out of our homes, and our caves, and our castles, and saw the world wasn't safe, and were driven to do something because of that, for good or ill.
So when a politician or a law enforcement officer or somebody comes on telivision or radio and says "don't worry, you shall be kept completely safe from the forces of x by the resources and efforts of y", a small part of me doesn't want them to. I want to feel the world as it really is, because it's NOT safe, it's a big, dirty, disease ridden, anarchal, beautiful place and without feeling it as it is I could not be driven to interact with it as I otherwise would. I'm ok with a bit of danger, and I'm ok with being asked to help counter the danger directly, because to truely comprehend the task at hand or the foe who threatens one must come face to face with it.
We're not safe, and that's ok, because when we're not safe, we do something about it.
