Learn to use the tools
Tools and weapons are often the same. It is the application that determines the bucket into which they get put. Learn to use tools so that you are not fearful of the weapons wielded by sociopathy.
- Hammers are great tool for driving nails, and they can also put a hole in someone’s head with one swing.
- Thumbs are an evolutionary advantage that allow us to manipulate objects like few other mammals, and they also give us the capacity to strangle someone to death.
- Rope is one of the most useful devices ever devised, and we can hang people by their necks with special knot called a noose.
- Chains drive our machines, they are so integral you don’t even see them, and we use them to detain and limit the movement of other humans against their will.
- Knives may be the most ubiquitous tool of all, and they are also synonymous with stabbing.
- Guns help us hunt, they help us defend ourselves, they are used for sport, and they are used by criminals to kill other people.
- Electricity is arguably the most influential tool in human history, and we made a chair that uses electricity to kill people.
- Heat helps with everything from sore muscles, to seized bolts on old cars, and we burned witches at the stake for generations in colonial North America.
- Cold helps with muscle soreness too, keeps our food fresh, and every year untold numbers of unhoused are killed by cold exposure on the streets of our communities.
- Radiation is used extensively in the medical field, and it’s also used to make bombs that kill and mame people in unimaginable numbers.
- Explosives formed the roads you drive, moved the rocks for the foundation of your home, and they are made into bombs that kill every day.
- The internet has connected people around the globe in ways that were previously unthinkable, and we use it to spread lies and exploit people’s fears.
- Chat bots are awesome at summarizing and presenting large volumes of information, and they can also create less than healthy dependencies on technology that preys on our most basest fears.
Don’t let the criminals tell you that these tools are weapons only because they want to use them to kill, injure, and divide us. Learn to use the tools so you can manage the reality that living on planet earth with 7billion+ other people is inherently risky.