I used the word "dangerous" to describe secrecy yesterday, and the room's reaction made me wonder if I and the other people agreed on what dangerous is.
If I could teach my country one thing, I would be horribly under-qualified and wouldn't know what to pick. But supposing I had to pick something, I'd strongly consider the concept of acceptable risk. To me, danger is nearly synonymous with risk and while individuals are often encouraged to be bold and make risky decisions, as a nation I watch us recoil from accidents and disasters as if bad things shouldn't be allowed to happen.
I would try to convince people that bad things should be allowed to happen. It sounds awful at first, but we know on an intellectual level at least that we can't stop every bad thing from happening. We simply don't have that much control. I believe, too, that even if we did have that much control, we would be wrong to use it to prevent all bad things from happening. I don't want bad things to happen, but I think that the cost to liberty and meaningful existence would be so high as to outweigh the benefit of safety.
I say that danger isn't bad. It's just dangerous.
Danger is unavoidable. It's also strongly tied to utility, if not inherent in it. If somebody or something has the ability to do something, then he, she, or it probably has the ability to do something harmful. And if somebody or something is unable to do something harmful, he, she, or it probably isn't capable of doing much at all.
Blades separate material. With them you can cut food, carve wood, or slice your fingers off. Hammers deliver large impacts. You can drive nails, crack coconuts, or break bones. Nerf darts are unlikely to injure anybody (unless, maybe, you choke on it or catch it in the eye, but that's a rather extreme case and applies to most everything), and they are fun, but they're also rather useless. They're not even good as projectiles because they are so light, so soft, and carry so little energy. A car with 15 horsepower and a top speed of 20 miles per hour is less likely to run pedestrians over and destroy property, but it's a sucky car.
Where I've used the word "utility," "power" could be substituted.
With great power comes great responsibility.
I'm sorry. I know that's quoted too often, but it was too apt. When this line is attributed to Spiderman's Uncle Ben, he subtly tells Peter "You're dangerous. Don't be evil," and more importantly, "Be a force for good." The fact that Peter turns out to have freaky spider powers makes it even more true, but it applies no less to Peter as Peter. Inherently in our ability to Do Stuff™ is our ability to do bad stuff. Or good stuff. Ability is danger. Neither power nor danger are an evil. Use of power in evil ways is the evil.
From that perspective, it should be no surprise that bad things, even truly horrific things happen. It should also be clear that people are mostly doing good, or at least not doing bad.
That risk is the cost of being able to do things. That is the risk of liberty. We cannot create a situation of no danger. We can create situations of less danger, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we should. What we should do is carefully assess how much liberty is worth, realistically assess the danger, and find an amount of risk that is acceptable. We might disagree on where that line is, but I hope we can agree that that is where the debate is.
blakekathryn
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