Never Safety First

Here’s a headline, drawn from what you will recognize is a large fund: “Safety first when viewing the partial solar eclipse in April“.

Here is another: “Safety first: Kern County Public Health hosting car seat check Friday“.

Another? Why not: “University Police: Think Safety First During Homecoming.”

These were all recent news articles (I searched “safety first” with the quotes). Now “safety first” is a known popular slogan, one which drives the behavior of many Experts and bureaucrats.

Let’s think this slogan through. People, especially female people, are fond of saying it. Let’s apply it to the headlines above, as if we really meant it. That we were putting safety as a primary consideration. Not our only consideration, but the first and key one. What follows?

Nothing.

I mean that if you put safety first, nothing can happen. And not only nothing, but less than nothing. Safety First! is a death cult. It is a willing embrace of entropy and stagnation. As I shall now prove to you.

Let’s walk through the headlines.

“Safety first when viewing the partial solar eclipse in April.”

If you truly believe “safety first” then you will not look anywhere near the sun during the eclipse. Whatever device you look through might malfunction, or it might be based on a faulty design. The device could “leak” dangerous ultraviolet radiation, and cause eye damage, to include blindness.

People might be tempted to peek before even a fully functional device is put on, or they might slip it off before they have looked away from the sun. You know how people are and how this is not unlikely.

If you believed in safety first you must acknowledge Murphy’s Law. Safety first dictates that the safest thing to do is not to look at the eclipse in any way.

“Safety first: Kern County Public Health hosting car seat check Friday”

During the covid panic, I pointed out (again and again and again) the true statistic that many times more kids died in car crashes than they did of the coronadoom. This is still true, and will always be true.

It’s true that wearing a seat belt makes it on average less likely you will die or be injured in a car crash, but there are exceptions. You might be one of them. And “less likely” is not “unlikely” or “impossible.” Every time you get behind the wheel, you risk death. Not just your death, but those of your passengers and those people along the route you take.

If you believed in safety first you must not drive or be driven. You must not let anybody in any vehicle. The safest thing you can do is never drive or be where cars are.

“University Police: Think Safety First During Homecoming”

Would you dare venture into a seething mass of young scholars? Especially given student constituencies these days? Anything can happen. And you know it. Rape, molestation, drunken fights, the overwhelming temptation of illicit drug use, even shootings. All that and much more.

If you believed in safety first you must not attend any Homecoming. And if you’re in charge, you must not allow such events to be held. The safest thing you can do is to stay away.

You have the point. These sort of analyses and breakdowns can be done for any activity. Every activity. Therefore, it follows that if safety first is your philosophy then you must not engage in any activity.

But even that’s not quite right. Because opting out of everything means at least opting in to something like sitting absolutely still in what you think is the safest place you can reach. And at the point a rock from space might hit you on the head. Or a driver might stray off course and find you. Or you might die from misadventure trying to reach your safe haven.

Or the water you brought with you may be tainted. Or the food. Or the ground upon which you sit could be toxic, or contain fireants, or some new heretofore undiscovered deadly bacteria.

Or anything.

The Cult of Safety First! is based on a logically impossible philosophy. Safety first is always and in every way strictly impossible. It is not possible. Safety first as practice cannot exist, no matter how much awareness is raised or how earnest the faces of the effeminates and women in charge.

Yet the Cult always says “Here is what we mean by safety first.”

The dicta of the Cult thus always mask a risk preference, and risk preferences are not science. They are not universal. They may or may not apply to you, and those from Experts likely will not apply to you. The example again is the covid panic and vaccinating the young. There was no reason for this for almost all kids (exceptions being the congenitally ill). But the Cult chanted Safety First! and parents fell in line.

Never safety first.

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