Let’s be more robust in the face of threat - Learning to cope with threat

OUR world seems ever more defined by threat. 

Whether that threat is imagined, exaggerated, exploited or real seems almost irrelevant. The known knowns and the known unknowns create an atmosphere of something approaching dread, of something that drains optimism and curtails ambition. That of course is the primary objective of making a threat — cower an opponent so they might not reach their higher goals. Or, as the case may be, their baser goals.

Just yesterday Paris police — and who could blame them for being on edge? — shot dead a knife-wielding man who tried to enter a police station. The incident took place just minutes after president François Hollande gave a speech marking the first anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.