By Cecilio Andrade

The white alert level is common for 99% of our fellow citizens and more since the Smartphones have hogged all the intelligence in their chips. Relaxed, abstracted, completely isolated from the environment, focused on a little screen, asleep, even in the middle of the street. This situation should be avoided whenever we are away from our castle, our safe area, our home. Even at home we must discard this situation in jobs that require our attention, not only for tactical situations.

We enter into a yellow condition when we are attentive to our environment, when we observe everything and only stop a little more in what stands out or does not have coherence. It is a relaxed alert situation. Nothing remarkable happens but we remain attentive.

We enter into an orange condition when something, a potential problem, arises from what we observe, a longer and attentive look of someone, a movement that does not correspond to what appears, some inappropriate gestures, etc. We detect something and that something puts us on alert. We begin to think of how to move on or overcome this problem if it turns out to be real, as we continue to observe and accumulate “evidences.” If the discordant goal disappears or turns out to be something innocent we can return to our comfortable and attentive yellow state. If it is not so and we become objective of that something or someone anomalous for sure we will jump to a red level.

Red implies to be already in “work,” either defending us as positioning and preparing ourselves to act. It does not mean to attack; it just means to be already in position to walk the last millimeter of our mental trigger. The problem is already evident and we can only act upon it. The way of response will be demanded by the moment and the situation, never by the color. Being in red does not require the use of lethal force, only acting, with the force and capacity that the situation, law and personal ethics require us to do.

Moving from one color to another, ascending or descending, is relatively easy and normal, we do it continuously without realizing it in our everyday life. The problem arises when we ascend from white to orange, or red directly, that implies that we have been surprised, to react correctly under these conditions will be very difficult if not impossible.

Descending of color is innate; unconsciously we descend step by step, going through each color without even thinking about it, it is the natural way in which our brain manages stress.