Song of the Day: "Citizens"

"Citizens"

Wilco

from Ode to Joy

2019

One of our flaws as humans is that we falsely perceive certain risks to be more threatening than others. The chances of any one of us having a stroke at some point is about 1 in 6, and the chances of being hit by lightning at some point in our lives is like 1 in 15,000. No one is walking around afraid of strokes, but once you hear even distant thunder, it's like, holy shit I better get out of the pool.

So that tells us two things. One, that we worry about shit that probably isn't going to happen, and conversely never give a single thought to stuff that is a lot more likely than you think. This isn't a political post, but think about this in the context of the current culture wars, and how many of the inbred morons who are preaching anti-drag queen rhetoric because it's "unsafe" are the same people who go to church every Sunday, even though the actual, documented risk of being harmed by a drag queen is basically zero, and hundreds of thousands of children have been sexually abused and tortured by Catholic priests.

The other thing the stroke/thunder example tells us is that there are nevertheless ways to mitigate risk if it indeed needs mitigating. Yes, it's a 1 in 15,000 chance that over your lifetime you'll be struck by lightning. But that second number goes way down and approaches 1-in-1-chance if you spent every thunderstorm standing in a field holding a steel pole. Opposite that, if you are extremely careful during thunderstorms to seek appropriate cover, and you're consistent with that, then you'll be chasing that 0-in-x number, i.e. you're creating circumstances that eliminate the very real but already somewhat unlikely risk.

(To combine the two points, the problem with saying that anti-drag legislation is "keeping children safe" is that the risk of harm for children at Drag Queen Story Time was already 0%, and if there is no legislation addressing the 1-in-x chance of being molested by a Catholic priest, then you have to wonder what the legislation is all about in the first place. But like I said—not a political post. I don't know what my point is in this blog post just yet, but I don't think it's to espouse my culture war beliefs.)

I ultimately think this is why we talk about risk in the first place. We acknowledge appropriately how risky a certain behavior or environment is, and we either avoid it to avoid the consequences, or we work to change the risk so that we remain safe. An activity like skydiving is going to be 1-in-1 chance of fatality without the proper precautions. Obviously a myriad of precautions are taken, but mathematically, you can look at it like a consciously effort to move from a 1-in-1 risk to a 0-in-1 risk. It doesn't quite get there—it's like 1-in-167,000 chance of dying, if you skydive—but it's close enough that you can feel relatively safe if you skydive.

To each their own, though. The risk of getting injured during ziplining is small too, about 1 in 86,000. Still, if my friends were to plan a ziplining trip at this point, I'd probably bow out. I don't know if you could describe it as "afraid of ziplining." It's more that I am afraid of getting hurt while ziplining, and so I decline to participate because I want the risk to be 0-in-1. And it would be! If I don't zipline, then the risk of dying while ziplining is literally zero.

It's all about choice, and it's all about making choices that help you have a fulfilling and long and relatively harm-free life. It's a balancing act. I can choose to not zipline because ziplining is not essential in terms of me living the life I want to live. This also means that it's easy to ignore the risk when it's something you want to do, even if the risk of harmful consequences is great. When I drank enough to be considered an alcoholic, I knew in the back of my mind that drinking as much as I did would result in a 1-in-5 risk of getting a liver disease. But that didn't stop me from drinking, because fuck it, I wanted to drink.

That's a problem, but I also think the opposite is a problem too. I'm talking about when you perceive the risk of being harmed during a normal task is higher than it actually is, thus allowing it to have negative consequences, both emotionally and in your day-to-day decisions.

Let's use carjackings as an example. I couldn't find any specific odds at being carjacked, but we can work the numbers. There are approximately 1,237,000 adults residing in Philadelphia currently, and so let's say that 85% of those adults are drivers (no idea how accurate that 85% is, but let's just ballpark this shit). That's 1,051,450 drivers. There were 1,300 carjackings in 2022. Yes, that is a lot of carjackings, and yes, that number has risen significantly over the past few years. However, do some division and that's an approximately 1-in-800 chance of being carjacked in Philadelphia, currently.

What I have a problem with is people seeing the headline "carjackings on the rise" and take on these wildly inaccurate perceptions of the actual risk. Yes, crime exists, and so you should do some simple things like be aware of your surroundings, to push that risk number a little bit toward 0-in-x. But at the same time, 1 in 800 is not a cause to be, like, scared when you leave the house or whatever. It shouldn't mean that you, the frightened conservative male who moved his family to the suburbs, should be afraid of Philadelphia, or assume that it is the cesspool that Fox News propagandized you to think it is. We use The Club on our Kia because it lessens the risk, but living my life in fear of getting carjacked, at 1-in-800 odds, seems insane, and honestly really harmful to my mental health.

This is the problem I have with the Citizen app, which I've never used but am close to plenty of people who do. It's a phone app in which community members input observations from around your surrounding area, and those often become notifications that warn other community members that that thing is happening. For instance, if there is a robbery in Lawncrest, for instance, then everyone with the Citizen app within a ~1.0 mile radius is going to get a notification that there was a robbery on that specific city block.

Crime is happening constantly in Philadelphia but only because Philadelphia is a huge fucking city. Yes, there is violence perpetuated on unsuspecting passersby every single day, but the chances of you in particular being that victim are incredibly low. Yet something like the Citizen warps your brain into thinking that a near-0-in-1 risk is actually a lot closer to 1-in-1. If you're bombarded with Man with a Gun notifications on your phone, then eventually, you're going to start feeling like there are Men with Guns everywhere.

 

That's just how our minds work. You can't help it. So I don't blame those who get Citizen notifications on their phone, I blame the Citizen app itself. It—along with the aforementioned conservative media outlets, local news that focuses on crime stories, etc.—goes a long way in fucking up the way we think about risk, and does a lot of work in separating real and perceived risk in our brains.

As Jeff Tweedy sings in "Citizens" (on Wilco's possibly-underrated-but-more-likely-just-average 2019 album Ode to Joy), we're all "wound tight" and a "nervous fright," but it doesn't have to be this way. There are appropriate ways to address the real concerns that face our society, but scapegoating and unfounded cowardice are not the solutions. Let's be reasonable here. Let's find good solutions for the crime that is currently happening, but let's not let our lives fall to ruins just because there is a close-to-zero chance that it will happen to you.