[2024-09-29 note: This was previously posted on Cohost, on 2022-11-07 at https://cohost.org/ireneista/post/218422-vulnerability but the irenes.space URL is the permanent one.]
when we think about cybersecurity, and how it gets used to justify endlessly spiraling expenditures on building an ever-more-powerful police state...
we think about how one of the most important moments in our life was when we realized it's important to be vulnerable.
yes, we're conflating psychology with technology. but like... the rhetoric *feeds* on the psychology.
this false idea that we can ever be perfectly safe, it drives us all, as a society, to do more and more extreme things to bring it about.
we have to start from the assumption that we *are* vulnerable, sometimes. emotionally or technologically. and then we need to figure out what types of things we are willing to be hurt by, what pain we can accept.
it's only by starting from that end that we can properly prioritize the things we should defend against. if we don't convince ourselves that there are things it's okay to be hurt by - a best friend; a lover; a threat actor with more money than we can ever hope to have -
if we don't convince ourselves that there are situations where being hurt is acceptable, then *everything* that has a chance to make us safe seems like the top priority, and it's impossible to choose which ones to actually do.
and the end result of that is a heart entirely walled off from the world, or a police state in which even the people in charge are constantly terrified.
this thought brought to you by it's 3 in the morning and our sleep meds haven't kicked in yet. thank you for reading.
[this was a thread on Twitter back in May 2021; we've rescued it here because, more than a year later, we're still really pleased with it and keep linking people to it]