this after skool presentation was written and narrated by academy of ideas. Check out their YouTube channel for more of their videos. Our age has been called many things, but an age of cowards may best describe it, given the immense fear, anxiety, and helplessness that most people display in the face of even trivial threats. We are not a generation that moves forward into the uncertain future in a bold and heroic manner. Instead, most people fear the future and prefer safety, comfort, and ease of life to risk-taking, experimentation, and freedom. Or as the 21st-century sociologist Frank Furedi writes, young people are socialized to feel fragile and overawed by uncertainty, and as a result, the defining feature of the current Western 21st-century version of personhood is its vulnerability. Although society still upholds the ideal of self-determination and autonomy, the values associated with them are increasingly overridden by a message that stresses the quality of human

weakness, and if vulnerability is indeed the defining feature of the human condition, it follows that being fearful is the normal state, overawed by uncertainty, fearing the future, conceptualizing oneself as vulnerable, weak, and fragile is not a recipe for individual or social flourishing. Rather, this way of life promotes mental illness and paves the way for authoritarian rule. And so, as we will explore in this video, the world would benefit if more people were willing to live just a little more dangerously, for danger when a byproduct of pursuing worthwhile goals or in defense of values like freedom, justice, or peace is life-promoting. And as the Roman historian Tacitus put it, The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise. Not all societies, however, have ranked safety as high on the scale of values as does the modern West. Many flourishing societies of the past considered safety to be a secondary value and showed a remarkable capacity to take risks in the face of an uncertain future and to display

courage and bravery in the presence of danger. Historically, some of the most prosperous societies - ancient Athens, Renaissance Italy, 19th-century Britain - were among those that were most oriented towards experimentation and the taking of risks. In taking the opposite approach and in showing a strong preference for safety over risk-taking, the unfolding of the human potential is not actualized but stunted. For to develop on an individual level and to advance as a species, exploration of the unknown and experimentation with novel ways of interacting with the world is a necessity. In this, entails taking risks and confronting danger, but such is a price that must be paid, as the alternative is to stagnate in the confines of an ever-shrinking comfort zone, to regress in body and mind, and to fall victim to anxiety disorders, depression, or other diseases of despair. A further flaw with an approach to the future that strongly favors the safe road is that it creates

fertile ground for tyrannical or even totalitarian 
rule. For as Alexander Hamilton famously stated, 
to be more safe, they at length become 
willing to run the risk of being less free. When a society elevates safety to 
the position of a first-order value, freedom is by necessity demoted to the position 
of a second-order value, which can be trampled 
on by those in power who, throughout history, 
have disguised tyrannical intentions with 
claims of wanting to make a society safer. What 
makes matters worse is if a society socializes 
people to be fearful of the future and overawed 
by uncertainty, the masses will welcome or openly 
call for authority figures to protect them. Or 
as Furedi notes, relieving people of the burden 
of freedom in order to make them feel safe is a 
recurring theme in the history of authoritarianism. 
Given that a society which deifies 
safety is also a society ripe for tyranny, 
it is up to those who favor freedom to take a 
more heroic approach to life. For when the menacing

clouds of authoritarian rule darken the horizon unless more people are willing to take risks and face danger in the service of values such as freedom, justice, peace, and social cooperation. The grip of tyrants will only solidify, or as John Stewart Mill put it, A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As role models for the task of living more heroically, we can look to the ancient Greeks, a civilization that rightly held safety to be a secondary, not primary value, and which saw risk-taking and facing danger as morally commendable. Danger road, Albert Camus makes men classical, and all greatness, after all, is rooted in risk. Friedrich Nietzsche was also a proponent of this classical approach to life, and he

praised Pericles, the Athenian leader who, in his 
famous funeral speech, celebrated the Athenians' indifference and contempt for safety, body, and 
life. Contrast this to the modern world where, to paraphrase the author Christopher Cocker, 
we tend to deprive the bold risk-takers who spur safety of the fullness of their lives. 
In order to support the smallness of our own, fortunately, we don't need to wait around for 
politicians to pass legislation to approve of a bolder approach to life. We just need to live 
in this manner. We need to look at the uncertain 
future not merely as a source of threats but also 
of hope and opportunity, and we need to see risk 
taking as justified when in defense of cherished 
values or in the pursuit of worthwhile goals. 
By demoting safety to its rightful place as 
a secondary value, we will cease living as a 
helpless pawn who must be coddled from youth 
to old age by an authority figure, and we will

regain the ability to shape the course of our 
life, we will mature psychologically and become   better equipped to cope with whatever the future 
brings, for as Nietzsche explains, danger alone   acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, 
our armor, and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to   be strong. First principle: one must need to be 
strong; otherwise, one will never become strong.   While taking greater risks and flirting 
with danger can shorten one's life,   it is helpful to remember that a long 
life is not necessarily a good life.   A safe life, lacking real challenges and absent 
in adventure, is inert and leads to a withering   away of body and mind into staleness, repetition, 
boredom, and stagnation. Such is not living; it is   mere existing, or as the Roman stoic Seneca put 
it, There is no reason for you to think that any   man has lived long because he has gray hairs or 
wrinkles. He has not lived long; he has existed long.

in addition to helping one live more fully, a courageous willingness to take risks and to flirt with danger can turn us into a great benefactor of mankind. For so long as the values that guide us and the goals we pursue are noble and life-promoting, courage reveals a caring attitude for the well-being of others. For unlike the coward who is concerned primarily for his or her own safety and who demands everyone else conform to his or her neurotic ways, the hero is willing to risk life and limb in the service of values that move society forward. Or as Aleister McIntyre wrote in After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, if someone says that he cares for some individual, community, or cause but is unwilling to risk harm or danger on his, her, or its behalf, he puts into question the genuineness of his care and concern. Courage, the capacity to risk harm or danger to oneself, has its role in human life because

of this connection with care and concern. If therefore, we desire a fulfilling life, care for our mental health, and care for the future of our society, we need to act with courage and not worship at the altar of safety. We need to take risks in the service of life, promoting values, and not adhere to the view that a good life is a safe life. For believe me, wrote Nietzsche, the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is to live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius, send your ships into uncharted seas. Soon the age will be passed when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer. For more content like this, visit the YouTube channel Academy of Ideas or the website academyofideas.com.

How an Obsession with SAFETY Leads to Mental Illness & Tyranny - Academy of Ideas

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