"Unmet Expectations Occur More Than We Want To Admit”
You may ask, how does something like this happen? How could a building with security cameras, metal detectors, and an armed contingent of highly trained protectors have fallen victim to such a predatory act? The honest answer, is that it happens all the time. Like most breaches of security, it happened, because it was allowed to happen. A false sense of security gave way to complacency. And when complacency sets in, bad things are allowed to happen. Not because we want them too, but because we become so accustomed to nothing ever happening, that we simply assume that nothing ever will. But then, when something does happen, we expect for the practice to exceed expectation, when in reality it falters to the lowest level of historic performance.
Up until yesterday morning, if you were to ask the average person on the street how likely it would be for a protest to successfully breach the Capitol Building, they would most certainly laugh at the absurdity of the question. The Capitol Building? In Washington, D.C.? In America? Don’t be ridiculous. Yet it happened. It happened easily. It happened with warning. And it happened with little to no opposition whatsoever.
And now the all-too-familiar question is being asked once more, “How did this happen?” But today we're going to answer that question differently. Today we’re going to address the underlying framework which allowed those failures to happen. For far too long we have accepted a false sense of security enforced by authorities who only alleviates fears without reducing risk -- and who have promoted a course of action which relies mostly on responding to crises, not actively prevent them.
And this is why these harmful actions are permitted to repeatedly happen. Because when you don’t expect danger, you simply fail to see the signs that something bad is about to happen. But the signs are always there, and staying safe is about training yourself to see them.
This is the paradox of “The Safety Trap.” Our fears have been abated but the risks remain. There are multiple factors of influence which can lead us down this perilous path, but for the purposes of this example, I would like to focus on only one: expectation.
The Safety Trap Of EXPECTATION
When it comes to staying safe, expectation is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the risk of something happening is so low that no one ever expects for it to happen. As a result of this expectation, the allocation of resources dedicated to security safeguards gets pushed lower and lower down on the order of priority. So long as nothing happens, no one ever complains. Everyone agrees that finite budgets are best spent where they will have the most effective impact. Of course, when something does happen, the expectation immediately reverts back to why didn’t we have the best safeguards in place that money could buy. Unfortunately, that’s not how the real world works. If you want to ensure you are protected in a car crash, you have to buckle-up your seat-belt and pay-up your insurance premium before the accident. Deciding you really should employ those precautions after the wreck, doesn’t really do anyone any good.
The Capitol Police never expected to be overrun. They expected their authority would be enough. They expected irrational actors to act in a rational fashion. They expected for the safeguards they had in place on a normal day to perform as prescribed when their need would really arise. But that’s not how the real world works. Their false sense of security gave way to complacency. And when complacency sets it, bad things are allowed to happen. Not because we want them too, but because we become so accustomed to nothing ever happening, that we simply assume that nothing ever will. But then, when something does happen, we expect for the practice to exceed expectation, when in reality it falters to the lowest level of historic performance.
You see, there was no real safety there. There was only an expectation of safety that never really existed. And what many members of Congress are now being forced to accept is how they believed they were being protected was not at all in-line with the protections being provided.
