The paradox of overprotection: In the name of safety

Or “liability,” “risk,” “exclusion,” or even “mental health.” These words have often become buzzwords to halt discussion or discord. If perfect safety were the goal, we would never leave the house, drive a car, keep ourselves in bubble wrap, never raise our hand, and just stay low. And it gets worse: with or without bubble wrap, no one makes it out of here alive. (COVID pointed out that this isn’t how we can sustainably live.)

The question shouldn’t be, does this purpose risk, uncertainty, or danger? Because the answer by default is always Yes. We have now created a place to hide when this tension arises. A better question, or at least a more productive one, is to ask: What kind of risks are we willing to take? We have swung the pendulum so far that, like much of our culture, we have turned the decision-making over to someone else. We don’t want to be risk assessors or takers, so we can stay, no, play it safe, and we won’t get in trouble, we won’t get sued, if we exclude everyone, there can’t be a problem for someone to complain. By avoiding problems, we inherit new ones. The answer can’t always be, “What’s safer?” Instead, we can adopt this posture (and perhaps have the bravery) to ask, “What’s better?”

Recently, I talked to a 3rd grader who was disappointed they couldn’t even put a book club together in their school. The principal said there were problems in the past; someone could be excluded, so it wasn’t an option. Of course, you don’t need a school to start a book club, but we wonder why the culture feels off when we are too afraid that someone might be offended. Multiply this a million times across the culture, and we are faced with a mental health crisis in our hands. In the short run, staying home and putting kids in front of a screen feels safer, but that doesn’t mean it is actually safer in the long run. In the words of Hunter S. Thompson, “All the hallmarks of a dangerously innocent culture.”

Ultimately, no parks would ever be built if everyone had to agree beforehand what they should look like or how much they should cost. But we don’t want to live in a world without parks either.