By Erich Vieth on April 24th, 2009
Eve Ensler asks “What is security?”
In this TED talk, Eve Ensler (who wrote “The Vagina Monologues“) addresses the question, “What is security?”
According to Ensler, security is elusive and impossible, and that’s the good news, “unless your whole life is about being secure.” If you’re one of those people who obsess about security, you will become a cultural and intellectual recluse. You will become a frozen and numbed to the possibility of change/growth and you will perceive enemies to be everywhere. All you’ll have time for is to worry about protecting yourself.
The talk then moves to engaging stories about women who have created real versions of security. Real security is “hungering for connection rather than power.”
Security is a concept that is both subjective and relative. It’s subjective in that each of us has our own fears and concerns. These fears and concerns are part of what forms our definitions of threats. And as security is a sense of being safe from threats, the parameters for security differ between individuals.
Security is also relative. The importance of some threats are ever changing and when a different threat moves of to first place. It becomes more important to address that threat by risking you security in repect to other threats. Think of the stories of parents who place them selves in danger to rescue one of their children.
I think this is why so many people are drawn to conservative politics. They fear the responsibility of making their own descisions and the politician say, “Let us decide for you. Let us make the laws to protect you from yourself and each other.” It’s a very false sense of security when ou are being protected from contrived or imaginary threats.