How considering memory as an analogy to preparedness reveals its weaknesses

Abstract

Abstract Threats that fully escape our attention pose a potential, but also a true and invisible, danger to us. They should stand out as the main concern for practitioners who are responsible for the state and level of preparedness. However, to address them, we should first grasp them as pure possibilities. Figuring them out requires tools. This article introduces analogies as a potential tool for this task and analyses the concept of preparedness itself with it. By using memory as a source analogy, the article enables us to consider preparedness as a potential source of vulnerability?it reveals how we can help ourselves in becoming better prepared by scrutinizing the current practices by systematically analyzing the presumptions underpinning them. The vulnerabilities that are most likely to escape our attention are the ones that have become a constitutive part of our very thinking of preparedness. Better preparedness without a systematically and thoroughly scrutinized concept of preparedness will never be able to fulfill the promise it signals to the public. This article outlines one way to pursue such an understanding and employs it as well.