perspective – Pursuit of Liberty

Restriction vs Empowerment

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Photo by Tony Young

My 6-year-old son frequently wants to use sharp knives and it is not uncommon for him to get them out of a drawer unsupervised when he has a task that he believes would be served by using a sharp knife. He likes to use then for reasonable things but as far as I can figure out I have only two options to solve this: I can make the knives less and less accessible or I can teach him how to use them safely. In order to make the best decision on how to handle this I should consider the real issues surrounding the situation rather than simply reacting to the immediate danger.

The whole conundrum reminds me of the issue of gun violence in our society. If we want to make a decision that will actually make a positive impact on the situation we have to understand what is really happening in context.

Put the Shoe on the Other Foot

photo credit: Doug20022

I’m beginning to conclude that we should never make a political decision without first reversing our perspective of the decision and seeing how it looks. For example, on health care there is a lot of focus on what this will look like for those who want insurance but can’t get it. Only now do any politicians seem to be considering what this legislation does to those who have insurance or don’t want it.

Rep. Ron Paul does this with Afghanistan and I’d like to have a hypothetical look at Iran right now to see what it looks like.