The Myth of Absolute Safety
As I sat down to write this, I clicked on the calendar application on my computer to relearn what date last Sunday was. The black window showing all 12 months highlighted today’s date — 25th April, 2019. Sunday, 21st April, 2019. When clicked, a small pop up that read “Easter — All day”. It didn’t read “Over 200 killed and over 500 injured in 8 terrorist bombings in churches and hotels across Sri Lanka”.
My alarm rang at 5 AM as usual. It had rained through the night. As I pulled open the long curtains on my west facing balcony doors, the sky was thick with grey clouds and the sun rising from the east cast a rainbow over Colombo. I made myself a mug of green tea and sat down to read — Draft №4 On the Writing Process by John McFee . 30 to 40 minutes later, I finished, looked out into the dark sky and decided that getting soaked, while on a run, would be splendid. So I changed and headed down to my car. I was heading to the near by parliament grounds but decided on Galle Face green. A little salt air would be good for me. I drove off into the rainbow.
I parked in front of the Taj Samudra Hotel. It was quiet and less windy than I expected. The scene was a dreary Sunday morning along the coast of a sleepy city- very few people, the occasional jogger, a pleasing amount of traffic, and closed food stalls. I got out, donned my earphones and walked across the dirt field to the asphalt stretch that lined the beach. I took a right and started running. No rainbow. I ran past the Shangri-La hotel, towards the Kingsbury, took a right at the round-a-bout, towards the Hilton, another right, behind the Shangri-La , past Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel and towards the back of the Taj Hotel. It was a good run. I was a sweaty mess and so changed out of my shirt. It hadn’t rained and the rainbow was still missing — probably should have taken that as a sign. I got into my car, made a u-turn in front of Shangri-La and drove back home. I opened the windows in my car and hit random on my Soundcloud playlist — I felt fine. Easter — All day. Meanwhile, as I drove out of Colombo, inside of it, north of it in Negombo and East of it in Batticaloa, a handful of people were waking up to make sure as many Sri Lankans as possible would never see another rainbow again.
I arrived back at my apartment at around 7:30 to find that my parents had left to Pettah for groceries. According to my phone, I had called my mum at 7:35 am to ask where they were and to say that I just got back from a run around Galle Face. I said if I had known they were going to Pettah, the center for all things wholesale in Sri Lanka, a short drive from my jogging journey, I would have joined them. “Oh, damn yea that would have been fun, okay, well, we’ll see you soon.” An hour or so later she called me back. “We’re driving past Shangri-La, apparently there has been an explosion”. “Are you sure? Damn. Okay well It’s probably nothing, come home safe”. By the time they got home, I had learned about the explosions across town. Tragedy dawned. The magnitude of it doesn’t strike you with any immediacy but dawns on you like the sunrise — the temperature rises slowly with the body count as information starts trickling into your phone and tv and soon, the sun is right over your head, beating down on you mercilessly. Four days later as of this writing, the sun still hasn’t even begun to set on me. I hope it does. I can’t handle high noon forever.
How did we get here and what do we do now?
No one wants to believe, even remotely, that they might be responsible for the blood spilled on Easter Sunday — I can’t possibly be responsible, you may say, I’m not a monster! I could never do such a thing!
The most popular game now is pin the blame on the donkey. On the surface, this reaction makes sense. Year after year, for decades, as chaos climbed out of hell and into our lives, we handed over the responsibility of our safety to those that promised to keep us safe. Here in lies an assumption- someone else, and only someone else, can save us from evil. Embedded in the presupposition is the the notion that evil comes from without. We assumed that we were all “good people”. Abdication of the responsibility of fighting evil implies that evil can only manifest externally, to victimize you, and never in the opposite direction, through you to victimize others.
The sun also rises. The waves still beat on the shores of our island and the monsoon approaches. We gather around on our boat, pull arrows out of our quivers, set them alight and fire blame into the night, hoping to hit answers. Some arrows strike and a flame erupts in the darkness that is all that we don’t know — look! there! land! We row towards it frantically — we need answers! We arrive and breathe relief but out there, darkness still prevails and the light from the arrow disappears. There’s still plenty of blame to shoot around but no solid ground to stand on.
There must be someone to blame — someone, anyone but me.
Maybe it is time to realize that this approach is a waste of time. Maybe it is time to ask how we got in that boat in the first place. Maybe it is time to not ask who is responsible but how are we responsible? In the face of death and destruction, this is not the easiest question to ask. To ask this, we must be first willing to admit that each of us, in our limited 9-to-5, Netflix-and-chill capacity are in someway responsible.
“That which you most need will be found where you least want to look” — Carl Jung
We are angry at the realization that there had been intelligence reports of the coming attacks and we should be. In our anger we demand that the leaders of the organizations charged with protecting us be replaced without considering the possibility that this would have happened regardless of the leader. We don’t stop to consider that this is not a bug but a feature of the system.
I am inclined to believe that the leaders actually had no idea just like they claim. I am also inclined to believe that some people who knew this would happen, let it happen believing that a few lives lost would be worth it for the “greater good” they would accomplish once they were in power. Anyone who’s spent any time in a Sri Lankan organization will know full well that everyone is more concerned with keeping their jobs than doing what’s best for the company. Information and ideas rarely find their way up the food chain because that’s not what our system is designed to do. Our system is designed, by our own volition, to concentrate power and authority at the top. This means all the decisions must be made at the top and thus, this reality partially justifies the reaction to replace those in charge. However, to imagine that anyone else would have done anything different, while possible, is highly unlikely because Sri Lanka runs this model all the way from the top of government, to organizations to our families.
Take the example of trying to solve a math problem. You get taught a new method and you try your hand at it. You get the wrong answer. The correct reaction here is to assume, first, that you screwed up somehow. You go through your notes, practice and try again. Once again, you get the wrong answer. Okay, you still probably screwed up somewhere. Back to the drawing board. Practice, learn and try again. Once again, the wrong answer. Now you start trying to wonder about the method you’ve been applying. Is there something wrong with the process?
Might there be something wrong with the process of thinking, of not just of governing society, but ourselves and our minds? We have examples to prove that this might be the case as we seemed to have reached another strike in the long string of wrong answers achieved using the same process. In 70 years, we’ve had the JVP insurrections which resulted in the deaths of thousands, the LTTE and now this calamity. I don’t think it’s these occurrences that is holding us back but our reaction to these acts of destruction.
What is it about the way we are doing things that seems to be leading to one catastrophic failure after another?
That’s not to say there has not been any progress made.
How do I define progress? Progress towards what? Material wealth? Happiness? Love? Peace? Everyone has a different definition of progress. For me, an end of a conflict is progress. Stable currency is progress. Never having to feed me on rations is progress for my parents. The internet — access to the world, is progress. Sri Lankans have gotten richer, better educated and more free than my grandfather could have imagined — for him, it is progress. Not having to worry about being hauled off by the JVP and killed for speaking his mind is progress to my father. Something seems to be working but something seems to be holding us back. I do not pretend to know why these terrorists attacked and killed our people. We can’t change what happened no matter how much we all want to. I’ll leave the specifics of motivation to the rest of the world to argue over.
What I’m concerned about is how we keep ending up back in this place we are now and seemingly letting it get worse every time — this place of fear and helplessness.
Human beings bomb buildings and kill people. They don’t call themselves terrorists. The rest of us call them terrorists. Those who draw we call artists. Those who play the piano we call pianists. Those who produce terror we call terrorists. They produce death and destruction but do they produce terror? Or does it manifest within us? Where does the terror come from?
Why do terrorists prey on the defenseless — unarmed civilians? Why do School bullies, child molesters, rapists, mass shooters and the ideologically possessed murderer have this in common?
Is it possible that the manifestation of terror requires a suitably predisposed host?
Is it possible that death and destruction is necessary but not sufficient to create terror? In the same way flour is necessary but not sufficient to not complete a cake.
If it is true for beauty, that it is in the eye of the beholder, is it not possible the same can be said of terror?
The people responsible for taking those lives on Sunday had the “power” to do just that — to kill. All the rest of it was provided by us. When they woke that morning, they didn’t have the power to shut down our schools and empty our streets — silence us when we needed to talk to each other the most. They didn’t have the power to make us fear our neighbors, friends and families. In the final analysis, they had no power at all. Had they any power, they would not have to go after the lives of unarmed civilians.
When something unexpected appears in our path, the first thing we do is stop. We freeze and try to figure out where we are and what is happening. This is the current state of emergency in which we are. We are a “State of Emergency”. We have encountered an anomaly that we didn’t expect and like prey animals, we are frozen.
The first thing to do is figure out where we are psychologically. What is Sri Lanka ? Who can we trust? Is it safe? The country , it seems, isn’t what we thought it was. Most of us went to bed Saturday night and woke up in a different country. Who are we? Sri Lanka is still trying to solve the problem of ‘How do we govern ourselves?’ Ourselves here defined from the individual outwards — family, friends and society at large. The analysis should begin at the level of the individual because that is the smallest unit in this complex project. The word builds the phrase, which builds the sentence, which builds the paragraph builds the story. Unlike lines of code or words in a story, human beings are, however, not infinitely malleable. We don’t function in precisely predictable ways and any vision of Being that doesn’t take that into account fails. The human being, from the very DNA that codes it, is to me, the universe’s most beautiful paradox. We are similar enough to never be lonely but different enough to make it interesting.
The magnitude of the catastrophe should determine the extent to which we must analyze the path we used to reach it and there in lies the danger. In our hunt for what we did wrong, we are just as likely to discard what we did right. How do we distinguish between the two? No country is safe from tragedy but some countries continue to forge ahead in the face of it. Every time Sri Lanka faces a tragedy, we take a step backwards in relation to the rest of the world. In the face of catastrophe we increase the restrictions we allow on ourselves and this happens all on it’s own. As the time elapses between events, the world moves on. New information is mined from the unknown. Some of this information trickles into Sri Lanka in spite of the restrictions placed to keep them out — progress has limped on. The next time a catastrophe strikes, as it inevitably does, there is now more that needs to be restricted to take the country back to the baseline of “safety” depending on where that is. A hundred years ago, that baseline might have been a curfew on the streets that disables all means of communication since no one would allowed to go outside or deliver mail. Now to achieve the same result tv, radio, telephone and internet have to be controlled — all of which are far more complex, require far greater resources and demand a staggering amount of control over our lives. Alas, progress waits for no man and so the world moves on with Sri Lanka once again playing catch up.
We can’t continue this way. Eventually what will happen is that we will be so far behind the rest of the world that we simply won’t be able participate in the global game. We will have nothing to contribute. Like the unsocialized child that doesn’t learn to play with other kids before the age of 4, we will be stuck — alone.
A state of emergency prevails. We have forfeited maximum authority over speech, action and right to property in our fear — not to terrorists, but to the government. By doing so, we have said to the government that what we care about more than anything else is catching the people who did this by any means necessary. Even if that means that we have to give up dominion over our lives and homes.
Is that all we should care about? The defeat of those who seek to destroy even at the cost of our own destruction? Is it worth dismantling our ideals of who we are as a nation, as people, to bring them down?
Our soldiers and police officers risk their lives to find these people. They should be found and brought to justice. I empathize with the idea of terminating, if we have to, the people directly responsible for the tragedy but we have to watch ourselves. We cannot let ourselves go off on a witch hunt, turning over our own people, our way of life and our values for the hypothetical idea of absolute safety. There is no such thing as absolute safety and anyone who says they can deliver it to you is lying. The promise of absolute safety is absolute tyranny in sheep’s clothing.
Absolute safety is the attainment of complete dominion of the unknown — complete knowledge of everything and every being. Those who claim to be able to deliver on this promise ask only one thing in return — absolute power. To buy this trade, you must first believe that you can be protected from everything that could potentially harm you — anything dangerous. Even if this utopian state could be achieved, it’s not clear that you should want it. Often times, it is a very fine line , a matter of mastery and control, that separates the useful from the dangerous. Explosions are dangerous but when controlled, timed and contained within a steel enclosure, you get the internal combustion engine that has propelled humanity to a level of dominance and safety that was unimaginable a few hundred years ago. Vaccines, the skillful tackling of life threatening diseases, have saved millions of lives. The history of humanity is the story of our encounter with the dangerous, the unknown, and the skillful mastery of it.
We must come to terms with the fact that we will never be completely safe. We cannot move ahead with that as the goal of our lives, the highest value to which we aspire. The universe is a dangerous place because there is more to it than there is to us. There is more in existence that does not care about the things you care about than there of you. The sun also rises.
Once we accept this, the reality of this transcendent danger inherent in meaningful existence, we can think of ways to confront it and it is in the confrontation that safety is to be found. After accepting this, and only then, can we think about what we should value. Should we take every possible step that can be taken to make sure that this doesn’t happen again? Absolutely. However, those steps cannot be taken in isolation from other considerations that will enable us to keep moving forward. Economic stability is still important. The freedom to create art is still important. The ability to know that no one can, without cause or evidence, take your property is still important.
In the face of anomaly, we have to figure out how to make sense of it but we have to do so in a way that also leaves us better off to confront anomaly again in the future, we have to learn something. We have to take out of the anomaly things that we can salvage into armor for the next one. We have to grow. It is in the face of challenge that you make a decision on what truly matters. If we throw away what we have been working on for decades, we prove our enemy’s point for him. We are saying that who we are, defined by what we were engaged in before they attacked, does not matter. Killing unarmed, defenseless civilians does not destroy a society. Our reactions however, will. The attacks were the cowardly actions of a sore loser. Grown up children that threw a devastating tantrum. I know that sounds heartless to say in the wake of the lives lost but if you step back and look at it, that is what happened. Destroying a handful of buildings does not destroy a country. It is the ultimate test of our constitution and we cannot flinch. The attacks were an invitation for fear. It is the vampire that is standing at our front door waiting to be summoned in.
The challenge is to handle this situation in a way that doesn’t destroy us in the long run. As tragic as this event is, there is still a future to think about. Making decisions founded in fear will destroy us. I wish I could say that it’s safe out there but it’s never perfectly safe. That is the nature of the world. That, however, is not to say that it is not safer than it’s ever been. The only way to truly feel that it is safe is to take responsibility for our safety into our own hands while following our hopes and dreams. I am not saying put on a cape and start fighting criminals. I am saying that handing over all authority and responsibility for our safety to one large organization is a failing strategy. There are too many variables. Too many cracks to fall through.
We cannot keep sliding backwards in fear hoping that if we stick our heads in the sand and hand over our house keys to the government that things will get better. They are humans too after all.
Now is the time for us to build an image of Sri Lanka that we can be proud of. To come together, individually, and realize that if we degenerate into a country run on decisions made in fear, we will eventually end up in a place closely resembling hell. Terror is what they want. It is up to us not to deliver. It is the best thing we can do to honor the lives of every single person that we lost on Easter Sunday. We must pick up our cross and stumble forward, bravely, against the forces of evil that reside outside and inside of us.
They attacked not each of us individually but things we all value individually — freedom to practice our religions, enjoy a meal with our family and do business. They hate people that have managed to find meaning in life through the freedom to meet the unknown, master the danger and be who they were meant to be. Meanwhile, those who want power will gravitate towards positions of government authority and will use any means, especially that of fear, and the promise of absolute safety, to attain it. The best way to honor those we lost is to build bigger, be braver and embrace freedom more vehemently than ever before.
