Being born in the 21st century is a decidedly mixed bag. I fantasize about my son’s future as he grows up, surrounded by the advantages of the high-tech revolution and the opening of global borders. But I fear in equal measure. The flip side in this age of bounty — despite the doom and gloom scenarios of Y2K falling short of the apocalypse — is the current obsession with safety and security that the War on Terror has created. The collective anxiety is acute, and is further exploited by media scare tactics and government fear-mongering.
Terror-proofing adults and child-proofing kids has become the new normal. Today, there is hyper civic and state vigilance in the face of terrorism, child abductions, natural disasters, and chemical warfare. Today, citizens live in neighbourhoods where children stay indoors, as growing unease andFederal Em watchfulness affect how parents parent and how people live and work. These dynamics inevitably morph into the cultural zeitgeist by way of art, publishing, and political discourse.
Since September, 2001, a genre of literature that could only be called ‘terror crit’ has sprung up. A spate of books — mostly in the terror-shocked U.S., and U.K. but in Canada too — line store shelves, critiquing society’s disaster readiness and people’s ability to protect themselves and their children.
I go into deep denial about the need to shield my six-month-old from threats that seem unreal when measured against diaper changes and nap strategies. But my rational self knows what may be in store as this child becomes less mine and more the world’s.
He already belongs to a global community where neighbourhood watches have been replaced by what Gregory Thomas calls “community terrorism response plans” in his book Freedom from Fear: A guide to safety, preparedness, and the threat of terrorism (Random House).
Thomas talks bluntly about the need to prepare for emergencies, and suggests approaches for talking to kids about terrorism. He argues that there’s a critical balance between being ready for anything and being paralyzed by fear of the unknown. Know the risks, prepare, move on, is the message. Don’t be handicapped by feeling at-risk or vulnerable. The conversation may have turned from taming a tantrum-prone two-year-old to talking to your kids about the threat of bio-terror and dirty bombs, but that’s no reason not to go outside and play anymore.
Except that going outside and playing have become virtually forbidden pastimes in many quarters. As Vancouver author Matt Hern notes in his book Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isnt Always Better (New Star Books), fear has become a ubiquitous part of everyday life. How do you argue with someone who says “it’s for your safety”? Worse still, “it’s for your child’s safety.” But the culture of fear reaches its nadir when activities like climbing trees, a game of tag, and playing dodgeball are banned in many schoolyards, as they have been in Vancouver. Preparing for natural disasters and terrorist plots is one thing; guarding against skinned knees and bruised shins smacks of heavy-handedness.
Carl Honoré speaks eloquently about the tendency to take the child out of childhood in his widely talked about book, Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting (Knopf Canada). Though his thesis deals with over-achieving parents over-managing their children’s time, the endgame is the same. Unleash your children, stop the insanity of over-parenting, and let them get back to the business of being children, with all the wonder, innocence, and potential pitfalls that childhood entails.
The website of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) invites children to become “Disaster Action Kids.” Herman, the site’s “spokescrab,” teaches them what to pack in a disaster emergency kit, and encourages them to act out worst-case scenarios with figurines, miniature ambulances, police cars, and helicopters. This may pass for conventional wisdom, but I’d give anything if my son could live his life free from fear and worry that the end may be nigh.
Elana Rabinovitch runs Propaganda Ink and is the administrator of the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
WARNING: CHILDREN PLAYING
Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isnt Always Better
By Matt Hern
New Star Books
182 pages, $19
by Jennifer LoveGrove
Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better looks at how safety and security influence our decisions, how we interact with others, and how government and private interests have gradually restricted and eroded our freedoms in order to keep us “safe.” Each chapter examines these ideas within a different framework, from schools to policing to technology, challenging the reader’s assumptions and causing us to consider the long-term impact of safety policies on both individuals and communities.
Matt Hern uses the term “safeness” to encapsulate both safety and security, and clearly defines this early in the book. His thesis is that probability theory and risk avoidance have eclipsed spontaneity and possibility, making our lives safe but predictable. Our experiences are legislated and mediated by what works for the majority, as determined by governments and corporations.
Hern’s writing style is a readable combination of academic theory (Foucault and Jane Jacobs) and informal “folksiness,” and his footnotes even include the odd snarky remark. His tone is accessible and friendly, and he illustrates ideas with his own experiences, encouraging us to consider how safety policies affect our lives. This is not an objective book; Hern doesn’t always explore opposition, but Watch Yourself takes a clear stance backed by cogent proof. More than once, I read shocking passages aloud to anyone within hearing distance, such as: “The volume of data Wal-Mart keeps on its customers is equivalent to twice the total Internet” (emphasis the author’s).
In one chapter, Hern looks at rules and policies that control children’s behaviours, like no tree climbing, walking to school without an adult, or ball playing on the beach, and how we shield them from any and all potential risks. He suggests that this hinders the development of their self-reliance and confidence, eroding their ability to deal with danger when they encounter it. While many of our impulses may be to protect kids at all turns, his suggestion that we may do more harm than good was both refreshingly incisive and spot-on.
Hern is an educator with children of his own, and runs the Purple Thistle Centre in Vancouver, an artist-run studio and community resource centre primarily for people aged 15 to 30. He’s written fiction and non-fiction, and edited the anthology reader Deschooling our lives, about alternatives to conventional schooling systems. He holds a PhD in urban studies and founded Car-Free Vancouver Day. His assertions in Watch Yourself are well-researched, and the inclusion of stories from his own related and enriching experiences make the ideas much more tangible.
Hern definitely prioritizes grass-roots community living and is sceptical of large-scale, anonymous consumer interests, saying of gentrification, “Areas that are developed as free-market zones for the buying and selling of consumer goods are not communities because the commitment is to profit and enterprise, not place or neighbours.” His friendly parenthetical comments make the reader feel included, giving the book itself a “community” feel.
You may not always agree with the ideas in Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better, but this timely and convincing book will encourage you to rethink how your public and private spaces, personal information, and everyday decisions and actions are affected by notions of safety. Then ask yourself: Whose interests, in this litigious society, are being served, and who is watching whom? Act accordingly.
Jennifer LoveGrove is a writer, editor, and small press publisher. Visit her at jenniferlovegrove.com.
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