Hope is not a Strategy.
“All neighborhoods have crime.”[5]
“Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings.” [1] “A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment [2]. Individuals create their own "subjective reality" from their perception of the input. An individual's construction of reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.”[3][4][5]
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[1] Drabek, Thomas E. (1986). Human system responses to disaster: an inventory of sociological findings. New York: Springer Verlag. p. 72. ISBN 978-1-4612-4960-3. OCLC 852789578
[2] Kahneman D, Tversky A (1972). "Subjective probability: A judgment of representativeness" (PDF). Cognitive Psychology. 3 (3): 430–454. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(72)90016-3.
[3] Baron J (2007). Thinking and Deciding (4th ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
[4] Ariely D (2008). Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. New York, NY: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-135323-9.
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[5] Saddle Club Board Director, Feb 2020
Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs
On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs (an excerpt)
(From the book, On Combat, by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman)
The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, cannot and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheepdog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.
Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn’t tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, “Baa.”
Until the wolf shows up.
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