“O ship in a bottle
with masts erect and spars all set and sails spread
how you remind me of my London friends,
O ship in bottles!
…

Safer than in the arms of Jesus!
Oh, safer than anything else is a well-corked, glassy ego,
and sounder than all insurance is a shiny mental conceit!”~D. H. Lawrence

    Many of us are becoming very much like that tiny ship in a bottle. We place so much value on safety and security, we will give up almost anything else to get it. We spend billions on airport security to the point where air travel has become a sometimes necessary nuisance rather than a pleasant experience. We spent billions more creating the Department of Homeland Security. We pay a locksmith to but extra strong locks on our doors to keep out crooks. We give up more and more of our rights and freedoms for the promise of greater security. Yet, like that ship in a bottle, that belief in our security is false. The wind may not be able to blow away that little ship, but a drunk could knock it off it's stand and break the bottle and the ship. There are no rogue waves to deal with in that bottle, but if the building becomes flooded, that bottle could float away. 
    And our belief that we are making ourselves safer and more secure by giving up many of our freedoms that our ancestors fought so hard to get is equally delusion and conceit. That lock on the door may keep crooks our of the house, but they just turn to the Internet and steal our credit card numbers. That gun we bought for protection isn't going to keep germs and viruses from killing us. That heightened airport security may keep the terrorists out of the airplanes, but the plane has to land eventually, then what? Do you think you are safe then? Of course not. And while you do everything you can to be safe, you miss many opportunities to live. So let's keep giving away our freedoms until we have none left and then the terrorists will leave us alone because we will be as miserable as they are, so they will have won.