We need to talk about the method in which our government communicates threat, and if that method is a threat in itself.
It is clear that the summer wildfires which affect various parts of the country caused shocking distruction, leaving the fire service critically stretched. The potential for danger to life rose incredibly high and it was undisputable that the country faced an unfamiliar and unpredictable national emergency. We stand on the brink of massive loss of life should a wildfire close to a densly populated area become untameable, and those risking their lives battling the blase were informing those comfortable in their backgardens that this reality was closer than they realised, and to try and understand how critical it was not to fire up that bbq, as we were infact, all sitting on a giant tinderbox. I don’t dispute the information that was shared recently via our alert system, I think it was sound and nessesary, and I am glad we have that capacity within our country. My dispute however is in how it was shared, and aside from this immidiate national emergency, it feels like there is an equally urgent topic in need of discussion.
This government triggered alarm, I thought, was designed for ‘take cover’ ‘run away’ ‘say your prayers’ ‘catastophe IS happening right now, or within the next few minutes and this is a head start to save your life’, not, ’emergency could happen’, ‘get ready to run in a minute, maybe, its not clear yet’. To use the nationwide emergency alarm without a specific emergency occuring in a precise location which the alarm is detailing, is that not like setting off a fire alarm when theres no actual fire to run from?
I see government communication as like giving permission to the village good guy to come to my house if he has important information or village news to share, and to have a spare key, just incase. There are various ways I could be contacted. They could post a letter, knock politely at my door, give me a text, invite me to the park or a walk round the village to talk, but only in the very worst circumstance of true emergency would I expect them to jump my fence or brake down the gate, crash through my front door without any regard for my spare key and run upstairs to my bedroom whilst I read to my children in our pajamas, wild eyed and shouting at the top of their lungs in our faces ‘it’s an emergency you’re about to die listen to me!!’ Then when I say, ‘God, whats happening??’ They reply ‘Don’t have any open flames or BBQ’s it’s really dry out there.’ You can see why I might feel a sense of anger at the violation of my privacy and subsequent trust. How I might feel upset for the intimate nature of this intrusion, for panicing me, and making my children cry in fear when there was no actual emergency coming round the bend. But after that initial knee jerk reaction of anger leaves me, and I see their burnt hair, scortched clothing, soot covered skin, can hear the exhaustion in their gasping breaths and witness once more a wild fear in their eyes, I begin to realise the vast difference in where we both have come from. Me from the quiet comfort of my home, them from the front line of disaster. They’re just trying to prevent further suffering, to protect me, and asking for my help to prevent catastrophie from unfolding further. Perhaps I couldn’t see the approaching danger, but they could, even if it had not quite materialised. So I forgive the intrusion, they leave as fast as they came, and I wonder, was that really nessesary? Would I rather they had not come? I feel glad they care for me. Would I rather not know that danger is so close, even though its not happening right this instant? I’m still left with a deep unease. Was it nessesary they came into my bedroom without so much as a knock? If I now asked for my spare key back, would they give it me? If I changed all the locks would they just knock the door down? What if they’re not the village good guy? What if they’re an absolute madman? A madman with my spare key. I wonder how many more times they will jump the fence and break down my door and shout in my face whilst I read to my children with information that could have been pushed through the letterbox. Now they have broken down my door once, will they continue to do so? With each time having less and less respect for the fences and gates and windows and doors I have put in place to preserve my privacy. Perhaps in time they will learn how to walk through all my defenses even if I change the locks, and float up the stairs where I read to my children in our pajamas, simply to look at us. With no particular information to share, just to watch. To check. To intimidate. To remind me of their power, and that theres no door thick enough to keep them out. Perhaps in time they will remove my defenses from me entirely ‘for the safety of myself and others’. My children wont remember a time before their presence and will look at them with relief, love and respect. Perhaps once theyve taken my privacy, they will take my children from me too, and my children, blinded by fear, will go with them willingly, trully beliving it is ‘for their own safety’.
Perhaps that’s too deep, too distopian, too distant.
Perhaps not.
Our lives feel so full of tradgedy or imminent danger. The wildfires is an example of many harrowing scenarios unfolding around us, but isn’t the slow and gentle removal of our privacy, our ability to live undistrurbed from the outside world and its relentless stream of violent information, to create our own sanctuarys of peace and happiness and safety and love, a sheild under which we can laugh and eat and cry and pray undistrurbed unseen uncaptured and unheard by anyone else but us, a far larger and greater threat?
So lets pause. I read my writing back and hear my counter debate in my mind.
Classic millenial, self serving snowflake sent into a tail spin of extenstential doom all from a message alert that was trying to save lives. Entitled. Under educated. Unable to see the bigger picture. Wake up – look at the flames. It’s not all about you. It’s about saving lives, protecting the fire service, livelihoods, land, the vaulnerable who cant leave a house on fire, it’s about stopping a fire too big to control from sweeping through a city. The decision to alert everyone was based on a very real, tanglible risk. Your insinuation we should not alert everyone because of a abstract fear of a Big Brother-esque manifestation of total oppressive control by government, corporate, psycopath, or combination of all three, is not a present tangible risk. Thats in your head. Thats the anxiety talking. It’s not real. The fire is real. WAKE UP. You’re so woke, you’ve gone to sleep.
The counter argument has weight.
I have to ask myself, what would I do in the face of catasrophie? Far from the comfort of books at bedtime, out where the fires have been raging, if I had seen the damage and the potential for a lot more than a hamlet of houses to be engulfed in less time than my kettle takes to boil, if I had fought the flames and seen the pain, stood within the destruction, would I not have told as many people as I could to please not make it worse? To explain what might happen? To help me hold the door against the monster, rather than inviting it in?
The truth is I am that terrified millenial. I do not like how that alert crashed through my doors and found me in the peace of my childrens bedtime, and upon reading the world ‘wildfires’ expected it to detail how the dry dying trees which circle our villages were up in flames and coming towards us, found the goverment just wants to remind me not to have a BBQ. After I put the phone away and the adrenaline subsided, a new fear set in. What will that kind of instrusion from the government mean for us moving forward, for my children and the world theyre growing into? What anxiety are they being raised with? To be asked to deal with that apocolyptic sound as a normal part of life, never knowing if it means a bomb is falling over our city, or to remind us of basic safety? They will grow up believing that the village good guy, or someone we hope is a good guy, is allowed into our home and up the stairs to our most vaulnerable place to scream whatever they want whenever they think we ought to hear it, and we are to let them? Unchallenged? And theres nothing we can do about it?
There is lots we can do about it. We can all try and distinguish between information and influence about what is happening in our world and disern facts from opinion. To not batton down the hatches so hard we hear only our own opinions and become unable to listen to anothers. Try not to forget we share our world with other people, people who might need to come before us from time to time at the cost of minor inconvience, but thats ok. And, to vote, so that to the absolute best of our knowledge we hand over our spare keys, our privacy, our freedom, our very lives to the village good guy – to someone who is however bashfully, acting out of love for their neighbors, and trying to do the right thing. Who isn’t trying to scare us, and control us through that fear, but is dealing with a lot of threats to life. Who would be happy to give our keys back if we asked for it. Who wont be offended if you don’t want him calling anymore.
Lets not give our keys to a madman. Once we do, it will be them who end up changing the locks. There wont be much to stop them from moving into our sanctuarys, until one day when the alarm sounds, we find it will be us being forced out to fight the threat, whilst they choose books with our children.
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