Securing the Future (Editorial‪)‬

In the main, we do not think about security in everyday life. It is simply taken for granted--until it comes under threat. When security is lacking, it is as though the world has come apart: trust, truth and integrity between people suffers. Indeed, serious insecurity can lead to desperation and opportunism, placing empathy and compassion, not to mention any more general desire to live ethically, under strain. While calls for security can be rhetorical and ideological, it is significant that they are usually made in the name of children. After all, security is a precondition for the flourishing of social relations between the generations, which is one of the conditions of the possibility of meaning. The significance of a secure life-world can hardly be underestimated. Of course, the world today is far from secure. Security is the catch-cry of government, and governments everywhere seek it while watching it dissolve in reality. The Middle East provides graphic examples. In Iraq the shameful onslaught of the West upon the Islamic world has metamorphosed into a hell on earth. No one is safe, and the prospect of security has never been more distant. And this localized hell now shows signs of generalizing itself through terror in the western heartlands, as recent events in Europe indicate. At the same time, in the West preoccupations with security have allowed the narrowest of minds and the glib specialists of media spin to gravitate towards and occupy the political stage.