Accepting the risk. Bomb threats and the self-protective attitude that has made us more vulnerable

We need to secure everything. It’s true, it’s obvious. Our systems seem like sieves, but in reality it’s not quite like that either. It’s happening across much of Europe. Fridges, freezers, defrosted food. Blood bags becoming unusable. Danger. Alarm. Flights on which there might be a bomb. Hundreds of flights, hundreds of bombs. Planes grounded. Chaos. Paralysis. Threatening emails—perhaps bomb threats—sent to a hundred, a thousand, five thousand schools. Children evacuated, out in the cold and rain. Sent home amidst urban chaos. Parents in chaos at work. A cyber storm sweeping across Europe. Russians. North Koreans. Perhaps even Iranians. And then who knows who else.

Everything is plugged into the mains; our lives are entirely electrified. After all, just as for Lenin communism is Soviet power plus electrification, so capitalism is free enterprise plus electrification. Now both these pillars of capitalism appear to be under threat. Neo-socialism, which sees the horror of free-market ideology in every instance of free enterprise, is gaining support and enjoying favourable press coverage and a positive social media presence. Electrification does not seem to be faring much better either; it has become the battleground for the new global war aimed at subverting the certainties of everyday life. Where will we end up if we can no longer even trust our fridge? Or, more dramatically, if we cannot even go to work without worrying that our children might be evacuated from school every day because of a bomb scare?

Our dependence on electricity is extraordinary. This was evident years ago during the unusually rare power cuts that forced us to light the proverbial candle. For a single evening, the experience was adventurous, charming, and even enjoyable—inconvenient yet romantic. Today, we are simply unable to function without electricity. It is a fact, neither good nor bad. But that is not the point.

The crux of the matter lies in our inability to withstand danger or, rather, in our intolerance of risk. This relationship with risk and danger is what, more than anything else, forms the fabric of the attacks that have struck us in recent weeks. Our societies are incapable not only of tolerating danger, but even of tolerating the threat of danger. Those who carry out these attacks know this; they are our enemies and know us well. They know where to strike; they know the very fabric of which our nightmares are made. And perhaps they despise us for this very reason.

Our nightmares are fuelled by an intolerance of risk. The threat, the shadow of what might befall us, becomes the very substance of our weakness. The level of risk we are prepared to accept in order to live has gradually diminished as risk itself has decreased. The more we have sought safety, the more our lives have been fenced in by the (illusory) certainty that black swans – absolute unforeseen events – must not exist. We have rejected the possibility that the unpredictable might be part of our lives. But this attitude has not come ‘free of charge’ in any respect.

It has not come without a financial cost, because we have channelled an ever-increasing colossal flow of money into prevention – into ensuring that every danger must be avoided at all costs: and this is the name we can give to our inefficiencies, to our hyper-regulation which stifles free enterprise (needless to say to fools, this does not mean there should be no rules). Moreover, this hyper-self-protective attitude comes at a cost, because it has made us fragile. Nassim Taleb, still on the subject of black swans, has clearly explained that whatever survives, endures and improves must be ‘anti-fragile’ – that is, capable of becoming stronger precisely because of the shocks, blows and unforeseen events it endures. It must accept danger and it must accept risk. It must also accept that some threats may materialize. Otherwise, we risk sacrificing the whole of reality on the altar of absolute safety.

The fact is, we have completely lost this ability to be anti-fragile. This is what the attacks of recent days highlight most clearly. And an increase in defence spending will not be enough to remedy the situation.