Eliminate Denial, Ignorance and Negligence for Your Safety

If you want to know how to ensure you don’t become a victim, it is
important to understand why people become victims in the first place.
Because most of us grew up in societies that have a respect for the
law and other people’s existence and human rights, we have pretty
clear convictions of what is right and wrong. And we then often assume
that everyone else should have these same convictions, and if they
don’t, they are wrong.

This assumption is where people go wrong, because the truth is, there
are many people out there who don’t have the same moral and judicial
convictions. There are people out there who will kill you for your
money or possessions. Remember James Anthony Smith who was killed over
his pair of red-and-white Nike Air Jordans in Washington DC a few
years back? There are people out there who will kill you because they
believe their religion is right and yours is wrong. There are people
out there who will hurt or kill you for fun or “kicks.”

Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and the criminals out
there are looking for good people to do bad things to. And in a small
percentage of incidents, people are just at the wrong place during the
wrong time, and regardless how well prepared or aware, they get caught
in something out of their control. However, in the majority of
situations, in fact in most cases, a proactive approach that includes
planning ahead, as well as taking steps to be a hard and unattractive
target, will allow a person to avoid negative things happening to
them.

Three Reasons People Get Caught In Negative Situations

If most cases can be prevented through a proactive approach, why do so
many people become victims? Here are three reasons:

Ignorance

Ignorance: People don’t like to think or talk about safety and
security because it’s scary. We don’t want to think about being
robbed, raped, hurt or killed. We don’t want to accept that there are
people out there that would do these things to us, and we certainly
don’t want to think about them. We don’t want to consider the worst
parts of human behavior and psychology.

So we avoid thinking about safety and security and remain uninformed
and uneducated on the topic, and therefore lack the knowledge of how
we can be proactive to prevent the negative for occurring.

Negligence

Negligence: The next reason people become victims is negligence. This
is when we know better, and we know what to do, but we don’t out of
laziness or the belief that “it won’t happen to me.” Negligence is
being careless and not giving safety and security the appropriate or
sufficient attention it deserves. A very common example of this is the
failure to lock doors and windows. Many criminals enter residences to
rob through unlocked doors and windows. And you can’t count the number
of times law enforcement officers have heard, “I knew better than…”
or “I knew I shouldn’t have…” or “I knew I should have…”

Denial

Denial: Ignorance, negligence, and denial combined make people
attractive targets for criminals out there. Denial is a defense
mechanism where we refuse to accept the truth about something. It
often comes from a combination of ignorance and negligence. People
think bad things won’t happen to them, they only happen to others. Or
that bad things won’t happen here.

Bottom Line: We must strive to eliminate denial, ignorance, and
negligence. We must be proactive and aware, and modify the behaviors
that make us vulnerable. We must educate ourselves in how to become
hard targets. We must then put that education into practice so that we
can enjoy life safely.

Thanks to Gavriel Schneider’s book Can I See your Hands: A Guide To Situational Awareness, Personal Risk Management, Resilience and Security for the inspiration and model for this post. Please see his book for a more thorough look at this topic. Check out the book on amazon: