Guest Post by Eric Peters
Garret Langley, the CEO and co-founder of Flock Safety (the name alone causes my fist to clench) is 38-years-old. This explains a lot about Flock Safety – the name and the man.
Langley almost certainly grew up strapped into a “safety” seat. This probably instilled in him an unhealthy fixation on “safety.” Said another way, he – like most of his age cohorts – learned to be afraid from birth. Of cars. Of driving. Of everything. Langley was 13 when Nahhhhhhnnnnlevven happened.
He has at best dim memories of the world that existed before See Something Say Something and With Us Or Against Us. He probably never got to ride a bike alone and unsupervised, miles away from his parents’ house and sans a helmet. He probably considers it abusive to allow a thirteen-year-old to ride a bike alone and unsupervised, miles away from his parent’s house and – call CPS! – sans a helmet.
People his age went to Trunk-or-Treats in the school gymnasium. They didn’t walk down the street to the end of the road, to wait by themselves for the school bus to pick them up. They either waited in the car with mom or dad for the school bus to come or they got dropped off (and picked up) at the school by mom or dad. You have surely seen (and had to wait on) the conga lines of cars waiting to drop off/pick-up kids at schools. They extend for an eighth to a quarter of a mile. What you never see are kids – elementary and middle-school-aged kids – just leaving school, on their own. Jumping on bikes and heading to wherever. This was the norm before the Safety Cult became a mainstream religion, which happened sometime in the mid-late 1980s or just after GenX reached young adulthood.
Since I am a member of that generational cohort, I can remember when the Safety Cult began to become a mainstream religion. We snickered at it, at first – as people do when they see the Moonies or the Hare Krishnas. The first clear sign the cult was gaining traction among the general population was literally a sign. The Baby on Board sign. If you are a GenX (or older) person you will remember these signs as well. They came seemingly out of nowhere. Just like that, every third car had one, calling attention to the presence of a baby – as if having a baby on board were a novelty that people had to be made aware of. What it really amounted to was a declaration that a Safetyite was on board. It was a declaration that you had better be extra-very careful about your driving. In other words, it was proselytizing about Saaaaaaaaaaafety.
The first mass instance of it.
It was around the same time that safety seats for kids became a thing. The freedom luvin’ state of Tennessee was the first to require that kids be strapped into safety seats, in ’79. By 1985, it was The Law in every state. Garret Langley was born in 1988, just in time to be strapped in. Imagine the psychological effect this has had on that entire generation and all born since this began. Since I was born before that time, I can only imagine – but I do not have to imagine what it was like growing up before that time.
Is it just a coincidence that Safetyism was a kind of niche neurosis until safety seats came along? I can tell you that almost no one back in the ’70s thought it was “unsafe” for kids to to get into (and out of) a car as soon as they were old enough to be able to reach the door pulls on their own. To sit wherever they wanted to and to change seats, if they wanted to – even while the car was (gasp!) moving. Station wagons were common in those days and it was common for kids to roll around in the cargo area. When the windows were down, they stuck their hands out and felt the wind. Before they were anywhere close to being old enough to drive, it was common for mom or dad (it was usually dad) to let a kid sit on their lap while they drove and steer the car.
Kids were often left inside the parked car while mom or dad went inside a store to get something or other. Almost no one wore seat belts.
Garret Langley – if he is reading this – has probably just called CPS (again). Actually, he did something worse. He co-founded Flock Safety, to assure that the free-ranging of the past remains a part of the past. He perhaps does not see it that way consciously because in order for him to be conscious of that, he’d have to have some awareness of that and he is too young to have that. He is aware of nothing that isn’t Safetyism. His mindset was formed within its nimbus. The Jesuit Ignatius Loyola is said to have said something about how if you gave him a kid for the first ten years, he would own that kid – psychologically/emotionally – for the remainder of his life. The evil genius of the thing is that the kid isn’t conscious of this conditioning. It is not just the way things are, it is the way things ought to be. Mark the tincture of righteousness that attends religious immersion, especially when it is a secular religion.
Langley may not, in other words, be consciously evil.
From his perspective, he is only trying to keep us safe. It is in fact just what he says and he just might actually believe it and (if so) that is why he and those who believe similarly are so dangerous, because they will stop at nothing to keep us safe.
How could you do anything less?
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[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
Garret Langley, the CEO and co-founder of Flock Safety (the name alone causes my fist to clench) is 38-years-old. This explains a lot about Flock Safety – the name and the man.
Langley almost certainly grew up strapped into a “safety” seat. This probably instilled in him an unhealthy fixation on “safety.” Said another way, he – like most of his age cohorts – learned to be afraid from birth. Of cars. Of driving. Of everything. Langley was 13 when Nahhhhhhnnnnlevven happened.
He has at best dim memories of the world that existed before See Something Say Something and With Us Or Against Us. He probably never got to ride a bike alone and unsupervised, miles away from his parents’ house and sans a helmet. He probably considers it abusive to allow a thirteen-year-old to ride a bike alone and unsupervised, miles away from his parent’s house and – call CPS! – sans a helmet.
People his age went to Trunk-or-Treats in the school gymnasium. They didn’t walk down the street to the end of the road, to wait by themselves for the school bus to pick them up. They either waited in the car with mom or dad for the school bus to come or they got dropped off (and picked up) at the school by mom or dad. You have surely seen (and had to wait on) the conga lines of cars waiting to drop off/pick-up kids at schools. They extend for an eighth to a quarter of a mile. What you never see are kids – elementary and middle-school-aged kids – just leaving school, on their own. Jumping on bikes and heading to wherever. This was the norm before the Safety Cult became a mainstream religion, which happened sometime in the mid-late 1980s or just after GenX reached young adulthood.
Since I am a member of that generational cohort, I can remember when the Safety Cult began to become a mainstream religion. We snickered at it, at first – as people do when they see the Moonies or the Hare Krishnas. The first clear sign the cult was gaining traction among the general population was literally a sign. The Baby on Board sign. If you are a GenX (or older) person you will remember these signs as well. They came seemingly out of nowhere. Just like that, every third car had one, calling attention to the presence of a baby – as if having a baby on board were a novelty that people had to be made aware of. What it really amounted to was a declaration that a Safetyite was on board. It was a declaration that you had better be extra-very careful about your driving. In other words, it was proselytizing about Saaaaaaaaaaafety.
The first mass instance of it.
It was around the same time that safety seats for kids became a thing. The freedom luvin’ state of Tennessee was the first to require that kids be strapped into safety seats, in ’79. By 1985, it was The Law in every state. Garret Langley was born in 1988, just in time to be strapped in. Imagine the psychological effect this has had on that entire generation and all born since this began. Since I was born before that time, I can only imagine – but I do not have to imagine what it was like growing up before that time.
Is it just a coincidence that Safetyism was a kind of niche neurosis until safety seats came along? I can tell you that almost no one back in the ’70s thought it was “unsafe” for kids to to get into (and out of) a car as soon as they were old enough to be able to reach the door pulls on their own. To sit wherever they wanted to and to change seats, if they wanted to – even while the car was (gasp!) moving. Station wagons were common in those days and it was common for kids to roll around in the cargo area. When the windows were down, they stuck their hands out and felt the wind. Before they were anywhere close to being old enough to drive, it was common for mom or dad (it was usually dad) to let a kid sit on their lap while they drove and steer the car.
Kids were often left inside the parked car while mom or dad went inside a store to get something or other. Almost no one wore seat belts.
Garret Langley – if he is reading this – has probably just called CPS (again). Actually, he did something worse. He co-founded Flock Safety, to assure that the free-ranging of the past remains a part of the past. He perhaps does not see it that way consciously because in order for him to be conscious of that, he’d have to have some awareness of that and he is too young to have that. He is aware of nothing that isn’t Safetyism. His mindset was formed within its nimbus. The Jesuit Ignatius Loyola is said to have said something about how if you gave him a kid for the first ten years, he would own that kid – psychologically/emotionally – for the remainder of his life. The evil genius of the thing is that the kid isn’t conscious of this conditioning. It is not just the way things are, it is the way things ought to be. Mark the tincture of righteousness that attends religious immersion, especially when it is a secular religion.
Langley may not, in other words, be consciously evil.
From his perspective, he is only trying to keep us safe. It is in fact just what he says and he just might actually believe it and (if so) that is why he and those who believe similarly are so dangerous, because they will stop at nothing to keep us safe.
How could you do anything less?
Tweet
Continue reading...
[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
