I’m talking firstly physical “safety”, as exemplified by (in the city I’m currently visiting) the removal of iconic local statues that have been in place for years, because “inclusive” idiots very suddenly decided they were a “trip hazard”… Because everyone is on their phones now, and therefore don’t look where they are going. 😑
Of course, this is just a symptom of a much, much wider problem, and only “works” because we’ve spent three years being terrified of a fucking virus, and all the tribalism that brought…
But this goes much further - you have “cultural safety”, you have “safe communications”, you have “safety on campus”, you have “LGBTQ+ safe spaces” - all of which comes back to our most bizarre obsession with the primacy of feelings and feeling safe, even if, in reality, you are probably less “safe” than ever…
Some of this is worse in Australia than elsewhere (the physical “safety” stuff here is probably the worst in the world), but a lot of the other ideological stuff originated in North America…
All in all, it comes back to that saying about “freedom vs temporary safety”, I suppose, but geese, what a bleak, sanitized, generic and utterly boring society we are building, FML… 😒
The obsession with safety is incredibly ironic since in a stagnant society the average person's value drops to zero. If a large number of people were to disappear, would we lose out on any major technological advances, innovative new products, great works of art, wonders of construction, or anything else that would improve your life? In a healthy society that is making real progress the answer is yes, so you have reason to personally care about the well-being of strangers. In a stagnant society you wouldn't miss out on any advancements by them disappearing, and would likely be better off as limited resources are split between fewer people. As society stagnates most people should have no reason to care for the safety of strangers, and they have little reason to care for their own safety as they wouldn't miss out on a great future advancements. Why is it then that the opposite happens, where safety is being pushed to an absurd degree when most people have no reason to care about it?