WARFARE OR ROAD SAFETY

It is illuminating to compare terrorism with dangerous roads and when we say we cannot make that comparison we misunderstand what is a comparison, lump together cause and effect and forget false government policies. 

A comparison has similarities and differences, and in this case the similarities relate to effects and the differences to both causes and effects. 

SIMILARITIES

If it comes to a similarity, people killed by terrorists and people killed by cars are similar: they all died.

Next similarity is that people killed by terrorists and people killed by cars all deserve to be mourned, individually or collectively.

DIFFERENCES

If it comes to differences, terrorists and cars are obviously not the same kind of killers.

Another difference is that if we give widespread attention to terrorists they will like that, whereas killing car drivers usually do not.

If it comes to make the world a safer place, the difference is that cars are way more dangerous than terrorists. So, not the fight against terrorists but the fight against car accidents needs our first attention and for a long time.

But unfortunality, yet another difference is that killing by terrorists makes many of us more nervous and indignant than killing by cars.

Difference number four is that governments use terrorist attacks to further breach privacy, employ more secret service officers, wage wars and give the arms industry more profits, instead of using car accidents as reasons to improve road traffic and save more than a million lives each year.

FEAR AND EXCLUSIVITY

In the comparison between terrorist attacks and road accidents, the main difference is how you die and the main similarity is that you die.

The challenge is to not get absorbed by one or the other reality, but to acknowledge that two realities can exist next to each other. But as in more cases, emotions can make us fall in the trap of mutual exclusivity: either one reality is true or the other reality is true.

Perhaps this trap of mutual exclusivity has to do with the fear that creates the ‘us-them’ divide: "Them is what can turn dangerous any time, and us is what I can always trust."

Such fear can make us blind for the bad things of us and the good things of them.