The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself

Given all of my critiques of the Bush Administration (and there is very little they have done that hasn't been disastrous), I'm not one who believes that they could have stopped 9-11. 9-11 was simply a Black Swan event, which most likely could have been carried out in many other ways. Applying security to the latest-discovered-hole will only cause those who wish to do us harm to find a new one. Anyone with reasonable thinking skills could design an attack on an unsecured place that would inflict far more terror than 9-11.

Remember, the goal of terrorism is to cause terror. The amount of lives lost is somewhat correlated but not entirely significant to that goal. Since humans process risk probability in the same region of the brain that we process emotions, it is no wonder that terrorists can exploit this bug that our brains carry. So, it should go without saying to any reasonable person that we can't guard against everything, or rather, guarding everything would be an economic burden that would bankrupt the country. We can and should invest in guarding high-risk areas like nuclear plants, but the solution is not to add security everywhere.

Many have argued that, because of the above, we need to practice a foreign policy that stresses humanity and charity, and that propping up the enemies-of-our-enemies is a bad idea. I totally agree, however, I don't agree that it's enough to stop the terrorists. Consequentialism as practiced by the NeoCons, is easily disproved in a complex world, because it is theoretically impossible to calculate the effects of blowback. One action might spawn any of 20 consequences, which would also spawn any of 20 consequences. Going 10 steps forward, there is a 1 in 10,240,000,000,000 (yes, 10 trillion) chance that you picked the right outcome.

So, our foreign policy needs to be based on a Deontological philosophy, or, we need to judge our actions based on their own merits, not some guessed future outcome. Which is all to say that we can't predict the actions of others. Who knows, our kind actions could have some very negative, random, unforeseen blowback.

So, what's left. We can't fully secure everything, we can't stop them with foreign policy. Are we doomed?

Of course not. Let's go back to the word "terrorism" as defined in Wikipedia:

Terrorism, in the modern sense, is violence, the threat of violence, or other harmful acts committed for political or ideological goals. Most definitions of terrorism include only those acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians).

So the only true way to stop terrorists is to not be terrorized. It's much more difficult than throwing money at the problem, as this requires us to look into ourselves and conquer our fears. Here's some ways that help me:

• September 11 was a horrible day. It still upsets me, but it doesn't make me scared. In fact, about 150,000 people die each day in the world. So, the tragic deaths of those 2,974 people on 9-11 only represented an increase of 2% increase for that day. Then, on 9-12, another 150,000 people in this world died. I know, I know, "tell that to someone who lost someone in the attacks." But the same applies for someone who lost someone for any reason on that day.
• Your risk of dying in a terrorist incident is still miniscule. According to this article by Michael L. Rothschild, even if terrorists blew up one shopping mall per week, and your shopping habits weren't affected, your odds of dying by the terrorists would be 1 in 1.5 million:
  

  The odds of dying in an automobile accident each year are about one in 7,000, yet we continue to drive. The odds of dying from heart disease in any given year are one in 400 and of dying from cancer one in 600, yet many of us fail to exercise or maintain a healthy diet. We have learned to live with these common threats to our health. Yet we have been afraid to return to the malls and the skies.

  What are the odds of dying on our next flight or next trip to a shopping mall? There are more than 40,000 malls in this country, and each is open about 75 hours per week. If a person shopped for two hours each week and terrorists were able to destroy one mall per week, the odds of being at the wrong place at the wrong time would be approximately 1.5 million to 1. If terrorists destroyed one mall each month, the odds would climb to one in 6 million. This assumes the total destruction of the entire mall; if that unlikely event didn't occur, the odds would become even more favorable.

  In another hypothetical but horrible scenario, let us assume that each week one commercial aircraft were hijacked and crashed. What are the odds that a person who goes on one trip per month would be in that plane? There are currently about 18,000 commercial flights a day, and if that person's trip has four flights associated with it, the odds against that person's being on a crashed plane are about 135,000 to 1. If there were only one hijacked plane per month, the odds would be about 540,000 to 1.

We need to look to leaders to educate us on our own natural biases towards thinking that the risks of sensational acts are greater than they actually are. We need to scorn those who sell us fear and gloom, for we've already shown that predicitons in any complex environment are worthless. We need to suck it up and not be afraid. We need to drop the Terrorism Threat Level, which should be looked at only as a measure of our fear, and a metric of effectiveness by those who wish to control us with it.

Then we should ask ourselves, who gains when we are afraid, and why would they want us to be afraid? We know why Al-Qaeda benefits, but we should ask anyone else with a stake in our terror what they have to gain. Control? Power? Money? Votes? Viewers? Ad Revenues? And then we should ask ourselves, if the goal of terrorism is to create irrational fear in the civilian population, why do we regard those who are selling us that fear from inside our government and media any differently?

I refuse to be terrorized.