Friday is normally just another day, but I am glad it has rolled around now and I am looking forward to the weekend. My rhythm is out after the late-night training session on Wednesday, as I got home around 1 am and had to much energy to go straight to bed, so it ended up being nearly 4 and Smallsteps woke up just after 5. I do okay on little sleep for the most part, but I am feeling it - perhaps I am getting old.
Aging is something that scares me a little, as while I don't care much about my looks, I am not looking forward to the continued downgrading of physical and mental ability. While I am only a little over forty, I can already feel how much it has changed in the last handful of years, with a lot of it coming down to personal neglect, not making or taking the time to look after myself.
It is interesting that "health is wealth" yet we do such a piss poor job of looking after our own, even though we have more information and potential to than at any other time in history. I was discussing this with a friend a few days ago, where we can make it to Mars, we can create complex algorithms, we can build nuclear power plants, pretty much everyone knows the basics across a wide range of disciplines and we can imagine fantastical worlds and even start creating them - yet... we can't even find a way to consistently eat well or move enough.
So much potential to create, so little control over our core functions.
Now, this was a problem before the internet of course, but it hasn't helped matters much. If anything, it is highlighted exactly how weak we are as we no longer have the excuse that we "didn't know better" as all of the information is there - we just don't use it or, we don't use it well. Our weaknesses and lack of control are so ingrained into our hardwiring, that even when it is obvious what we need to do, we don't.
Another friend of mine was saying how they are concerned about the state of our media diets, as it is leading us to violent outcomes and I agree - as do many others, yet there most of us are, still consuming. I assume that those who know how bad it is believe that they are smart enough that they will be able to counteract the effects - yet they are probably the ones who are the most manipulated. Confidence can bring arrogance and arrogance tends to ignore personal weaknesses.
It is the weakness in us that is the biggest risk - not our strengths. From a manipulation perspective, it is the easiest target, things like our desire to be the first with information is hackable, even if that information is useless. I think we see this truth in many religions, where they stay away from temptation and blame a devil of some kind for the succumbing to weakness, a lack of faith. We might be able to create some terrible weapons, but it is our fears that make us use them.
All living things have their cycle of life and while I am not scared of death, knowingly wasting away is a different matter and even if I did all I could to slow the process, I am designed to fail. My body, heart and mind will all succumb to weakness, life giving in to the temptation of death. A lack of faith, or just the way it has to be for progress to be made, for evolution to play its part to increase our strengths, lower a weakness.
We are the most technologically advanced we have ever been as a species and we are the point where we can not only nudge, but drastically alter the conditions in which we live and the directions we collectively take - we can evolve ourselves in ways that none in the past could even comprehend - yet, will we look to strengthen - or will we keep undermining our weakness?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
