“Safety” as a Performative Construct
Society has often been trained to conflate safety with control, isolation, loneliness, and an increased risk of depression. By restricting human behaviors, moral panics become excessively amplified, and unfortunately, corporate liability is a massive issue in numerous types of events. While all corporate entities are unethical, as evidenced by the corporate destruction of the planet claimed by society and capitalists, liability has marketed a modern form of safety by discouraging spontaneity and chance encounters that have previously served human nature more properly.
By restraining social lives to a minimal set of people, consolation is certainly bound to occur. Society has often taught people to fear the unknown, though the unknown has often also been conflated with non-normative lives and lifestyles. The modern concept of “stranger danger,” as amplified by the crisis of car dependency, has resulted in performative behaviors being encouraged by mass media and the more efficient conduction of mass marketing that has since resulted in the rewriting of the history books.
Safety as a Real Construct
In many, though not necessarily all, cases, true safety conflicts with the societal expectation of safety. While events and festivals are often identified with chaos, the chaotic outcomes at festivals and outcomes are often associated with the most visible of the events. While mainstream society often expects “safety” to be socially and professionally limiting, LGBTQIA+ and polymathic communities in particular actually depend on playing by a different set of rules for true safety.
