Dec 04 2008

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Yeah, like the sappy Sound of Music gem, courtesy of YouTube’s novafussion:

See, the newly elected Obama crew have to move damned fast.  They have to think and make good decisions using good judgment, but they have to move fast.  They’ve been handed power, if they can take it and hold it.

Now me, I’m not a politician.  I don’t think I have to move with the same speed.

Lot of talk about Obama’s foreign policy team, about threats to our safety from intelligence reports.  Tonight was tree-lighting time in Rockefeller Center, cops in my subway this morning, on the street all day, security vibes much evident.

Remember the term “civil defense?”

I wonder how must it have been back in the days of the American Revolution.  The wild revolutionaries had to come up with what they thought was sovereignty for a new kind of nation, and discuss how to defend it.

And of course, so many of the ideas they had were gained from reading writers who had written works decades and even centuries earlier.

I remember 9/11 and I remember the blackout in Manhattan in August a couple years later.  I saw how citizens were so truly cool in how they paid attention and stepped in to help each other.  It was not at all an oppressive feeling as it is when we think of “Homeland Security.”

But everything has been busted by these crooks.

Thus, an opportunity, imo.

For now all I have are questions.  How do we define safety in the 21st Century?  Sovereignty?  Nations?  What is it that would make us feel safe in our cities and towns as well as globally?

I know that many writers have written that the environment is a national security issue.  From a social justice viewpoint, what would be considered a security issue is, I think different than from a political or military viewpoint.

I think I’m going to start at the very beginning.  In public discourse, I guess that means defining our terms.

So I pose the question:  What would make you as a citizen feel safe?  And what would you be willing to do, have done to others and agree to accept for yourself, in order to maintain that safety and security?

I don’t have answers right now because just asking myself those questions made me start thinking.  It’s the 21st Century, after all.  I don’t believe nation-states can, in this age of interdependence, use the same outmoded apparatus with each other any more.

32 comments

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  1. … you begin with 1, 2, 3.

    Etc.

    • Edger on December 4, 2008 at 02:24
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    I find too much safety and security to be very smothering, and have been know to toss all security, financial, job and otherwise overboard to feel free.

    Personal security and safety was never high on my list of things to want for myself in contrast to freedom, though it is slightly more so the older I get.

  3. When I lived in Jerusalem the army kid with the pink floyd t-shirt, rainbow suspenders and uzi made me feel safer.  (That was awhile ago, btw, so no IP stuff intended or desired via the observation.)  When I am in Bellevue, WA, the cop slowing down to look at the person actually walking makes me feel utterly, completely, unsafe and vulnerable.  

    I am willing to accept a lot of strictures in a society which is otherwise fair and not bent on destroying people.  In a society which is all about control, and prima facie nuts — or a society where I’m an outsider by definition — I’m an outlaw, so it doesn’t matter a lot what I’ll accept — I’ll go along as well as I’m able until I get picked out to go away.

  4. is that I don’t think much about safety. I think its part of the privilege that I’ve learned to take for granted. I get very nervous when people spend alot of energy on evaluating risks and reacting to try to protect themselves. I suppose that’s because it just makes me more afraid and I want to avoid the feeling.

    Its the privilege part of not thinking about it that strikes me right now though. And I don’t have any answers other than that right now.

  5. Seems Kai over at Zuky is ahead of me on this:

    I’m increasingly convinced that one of the fundamental keys to national security and international stability in the 21st century – beyond the jaundiced jingoism and fearful futility of militaristic fortress-building – is the ongoing elevation of global consciousness and cross-cultural dialogue, especially in the US. The basic notion of interdependence has gained widespread acceptance in mainstream discourse, yet far too many US citizens remain stunningly ignorant, even stubbornly immature and self-absorbed, in their views of world geography, history, politics, and culture.

    I think that the “center-right” folks will want to define “security.”  I don’t think we ought to let them.

    • Alma on December 5, 2008 at 19:50
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    What doesn’t make me feel safe besides everything about Bush, is people that are set and intolerant.  So it may sound silly, but respect for and from all is what would make me feel safest.  Kind of dovetails with some of the other answers, especially jess’s and the comments right above this.  It’s the odd wacko who thinks he’s working for his God that scares me.  And to me when we let our brothers and sisters live in poverty its a show of disrespect.  I don’t know how we can cure it though.

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