In my undergraduate economics class, my professor explained the relationship between speed and safety for consumers. Consumers, he said, didn’t want a completely safe driving, but a moderately safe driving experience. Which was why, as car manufacturers introduced safety innovations like seatbelts and antilock braking systems, people drove faster. My professor drew a graph to illustrate this, a supply/demand graph with the axes labeled safety and speed, and there was the answer in mathematic black-and-white.

People don’t want to be too safe. They relish the feeling of speed, and will drive faster if their cars are safer. Think about that.

Conversely, when safety decreases, we take fewer risks. Perhaps this is easier to imagine. People who grow up with abuse live in a miasma of implicit danger and don’t take the risk of reaching out for relationships. Authoritarian states silence the huge majority of dissenters because the stakes are too high to dissent. 

We need to take risks to love, to create, to move forward. To become more human. Ironically, to do so, we need more safety. Those of us who feel safe must take the risk to address the unsafe conditions for others — the LGBT community, people of color, people of different religions. We need to stand up for others’ safety not just so they feel safe, but so they can move forward.mj