Back in this post, I talked about the Citizen App I put on my iPhone a month or so ago. I described my mixed feelings about it and some of you sent links to articles about it and I read them and thought more about it…
…and now I've taken it off my phone and canceled my subscription. This post is about why. It has to do with my distaste for all the forces in our society today that seem to want us to live in a perpetual state of fear. You know what I'm talking about —
— politicians whose platforms pretty much come down to "If you vote for my opponent, he will take away your guns and your freedom and your religion and your free speech and your car and all your money and your Netflix® and your cocker spaniel and your flat-screen TV and your Chick-Fil-A and of course, you and your loved ones will be murdered in your beds in your home which he'll also take away."
— or people who want to sell you insurance or alarm systems and it's like "Buy my product or you and your family will die."
Once in a while, there's a smidgen of truth there but I hate that "I have to keep you scared for my purposes" attitude. You should not live your life in constant fear of what might happen. Planning for emergencies is fine. You should. But just because it's theoretically possible your home could be attacked by snakes doesn't mean you should keep a batch of live mongooses in your basement and worry you might not have enough of them.
The more I read about Citizen, the more I saw it as one of those "keep you terrified" campaigns. That's a shame because it did give me some useful information. I wish someone would invent the same thing but make it so you could adjust what it shows you and when and how it tells you that someone might have been held up at gunpoint X.X miles from you. But the Citizen app is just Every Possibly Bad Thing Near You and I decided I was better off without it. So my phone now is without it and I am more comfy without the distractions.