You' ve heard it said that "everything is relative". Is it? Relatively speaking, it depends. Confused yet?
Relativity can be used in argument of many things, but I will say up front, without discussing them, that some truths are NOT relative but absolute.
In our effort to protect our citizens from harm at the hands of terrorists, we pound our chest and design powerful ways to detect and prevent terror attacks. We leave no opening for danger, we think. In reality, no one knows whether what we do accomplishes that mission because, as in treating disease, what is done in treatment prevents us from knowing what would have happened without the treatment.The question becomes, relative to the cost and effectiveness of what we do for "security", how many lives could we have saved with the same effort in other directions?
Think of the many ways people die or are killed every year by disease, for lack of prevention, care or mistakes; or by automobiles or criminals. An argument could be made, in relative terms, that we could save more lives by concentrating on these than terrorists because it would take hundreds of terrorist attacks to equal the deaths from these causes.
This is not an argument against having security measures in place but the costs, the loss of privacy and the potential for blackmail have to be justified in some way. To me, relatively speaking, if the goal is to save lives, the other measures I described would be a better way. What do you think?
Relativity can be used in argument of many things, but I will say up front, without discussing them, that some truths are NOT relative but absolute.
In our effort to protect our citizens from harm at the hands of terrorists, we pound our chest and design powerful ways to detect and prevent terror attacks. We leave no opening for danger, we think. In reality, no one knows whether what we do accomplishes that mission because, as in treating disease, what is done in treatment prevents us from knowing what would have happened without the treatment.The question becomes, relative to the cost and effectiveness of what we do for "security", how many lives could we have saved with the same effort in other directions?
Think of the many ways people die or are killed every year by disease, for lack of prevention, care or mistakes; or by automobiles or criminals. An argument could be made, in relative terms, that we could save more lives by concentrating on these than terrorists because it would take hundreds of terrorist attacks to equal the deaths from these causes.
This is not an argument against having security measures in place but the costs, the loss of privacy and the potential for blackmail have to be justified in some way. To me, relatively speaking, if the goal is to save lives, the other measures I described would be a better way. What do you think?
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