Playing it Safe

Have you ever thought about the insane amount of time, money, and effort spent on security?  While admittedly a hopelessly naive vision, imagine if one day the human species managed to eliminate scarcity, managed to care for the mentally ill, and everyone acted with honesty.  Just think about how much of our world is full of keys, passwords, locks, police, surveillance cameras, spy agencies, PIN codes, guns/knives/tasers, jails, courts, auditors, lawyers and safes.  And this is just a partial list.    Between September 11, 2001 and 2013, the US spent over $500 billion on intelligence!¹

Imagine if all of this could be dispensed with because everyone is honest.  Noone cheats.  Noone steals.  Imagine the money that could be redirected towards evolving society.  Yes, very naive, I know.  Even with thousands more years of evolution this may never happen, perhaps our DNA dooms us to selfish behaviour, but shouldn’t we invest a little of our time to try to create the conditions that lead us in a better direction?  Wouldn’t it be better than gating a community and running political campaigns on safety and national security?  Such approaches only devolve society, for implicit is that you are being made safe from something, and that something is another human being.