Safety Third

We live in a culture where "Safety First" is increasingly taken for granted, and has been since roughly the mid-1980s following a series of moral panics and zealotry in general.  While it is generally a good thing that safety has largely improved since then (prior to that, Americans were really quite cavalier overall, and it really showed in the statistics across multiple domains), there can also be too much of a good thing as well.  

Most people at least intuitively know this on some level, and that's why even the most die-hard safety zealots seldom (if ever) practice what they preach in all areas of life all of the time, at least not for very long.  Even they still conveniently carve out selective and arbitrary exceptions for themselves and their own chosen "guilty" pleasures and activites.  

From the abomination that is the 21 drinking age to the War on (people who use a few particular) Drugs to increasingly stringent rules and heavy monitoring of youth to lack of free play among children to prison-like schools to actual mass incarceration to the sexual counterrevolution dressed up as "culture wars" to the ever-encroaching nanny state to finally the ultimate culmination of safety zealotry, the pandemic lockdowns and related restrictions, we have clearly been sold a bill of goods in that regard.  And yet paradoxically, actual health safety statistics from life expectancy to violent deaths to traffic casualties have in the USA actually lagged behind peer nations, often well behind.  Thus, it's long past time to take a fresh approach.

We call that approach "Safety Third".  And it's really not an entirely novel idea, having been promoted in some form by diverse folks from "Dirty Jobs" pundit Mike Rowe (largely right-wing) all the way to contemporary philosopher Charles Eisenstein (largely left-wing).  That does NOT at all mean that safety is trivial or should be disregarded as such, far from it.  We do value safety as important, of course, but not THE most important thing, let alone the ultimate end-all-be-all of human flourishing.  

So if safety is third on the list of priorities, what are first and second then?  For example, Charles Eisenstein says "giving and receiving", not necessarily in that order.  That makes sense, if a bit vague perhaps, but we at the TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked would alternatively answer, "liberty and justice for all", not necessarily in that order.  Anything short of that is un-American.

It was indeed one of our Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, who said, "Whoever gives up essential liberty for a little temporary safety, deserves neither and loses both."  After all, safety is a great servant, but a terrible master.  We would be wise to recognize that, in all areas of life.