Dancing with Knives
True safety emerges from dancing with danger, not hiding from it. We prepare people for a world of sharp edges not by dulling every blade, but by teaching them to handle knives. The greatest cruelty is raising someone in a world of cotton wool, then releasing them into a universe of glass. Protection that prevents all small harms guarantees one large catastrophe.
What we call safety is often just postponed vulnerability. The choice is not between harm and no harm, but between chosen difficulty and imposed catastrophe.