While I don't get to watch much, I saw a highlight from of a Bulls - Lakers game, where in the last 12 or so seconds, the Bulls came from 5 down with a three, and then a steal and a three to be up 1, only to have a quick layup from the Lakers take them 1 ahead again, with three seconds on the clock. And then, Josh Giddey inbounded, got the ball back and then from half court, shot over a block attempt by Lebron James, to have it sink. It was a pretty incredible passage of play, but it is the kind of thing that most kids would have fantasised about - hitting the winning shot in the last second.
I think I had those dreams too?
There is a gap in my memory.
There are many gaps.
Memories are imperfect. And even when we remember correctly, we are only remembering what we got from our field of view, from our perspective, and the feelings created. And then, even those feelings change over time, don't they? A bad childhood wasn't that bad - or perhaps like in my case, in hindsight it was actually much worse. And of course, it is not that it was all bad either, and it isn't like those experiences didn't also bring lessons of value that I have carried with me. But, in a counterfactual world,
would it have been better to have a good childhood?
I was thinking about this a little tonight, as I was reading a story from Australia about a drug injecting room in Melbourne that was made permanent because it was saving people's lives. That is good of course, I guess, but the question I have is, are all lives worth saving?
That seems pretty harsh.
But I am sure we can all come up with a few examples from history where many would say "maybe it would have been better if that person got cancer and died." Or hit by a bus. But then, if all the crappy people were somehow excluded from the world, would we actually be better off, or would we be weaker for not having them in it?
I suspect weaker.
I think our general resilience would be lower, because we would have less challenging experiences, and would therefore become more sensitive to lower level discomfort - like a Scotsman I knew who piled some hot mango pickle onto his plate, only to spend the next hour sweating like he was in the closing stages of a marathon in a tropical climate.
I could eat that pickle by the spoonful.
If we are inexperienced with anything, it then becomes a challenge. But we are also human, so we seek out challenges to overcome, even if we have to make unnecessary problems to do so. The human mind can imagine almost anything - the problem is humans can also usually create what they have imagined. Every tool is a blessing and a curse, including our hands. We can create the most wonderous things, and turn them into the most devastating.
And it might be the outliers who turn them toward devastation, but the problems those outliers create, require solutions to overcome, and that leads to more advancements. And then more devastation. Then more advancements. It is like our evolution depends on us creating new problems to solve, even if we needn't have created the problem in the first place.
Atomic energy for electricity production didn't require an atomic weapon to be created and used, but would it have been created if it hadn't been a weapon first? The first electricity from nuclear power was generated six years after the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Couldn't we as a society skip the destruction part?
Apparently not.
Maybe it is because we remember pain more than pleasure? Or at least, we learn from pain more than pleasure. Punishment is a behavioural tool for a reason, because the carrot doesn't always lead the donkey. It seems as a species, we need to punish ourselves in some way so we can then do something about the pain. If we felt good all the time, perhaps we wouldn't do anything at all - like a heroin addict wasting away in a stupor.
A life worth saving?
Maybe. Maybe those lives are worth saving, not because of the life of the saved individual, but because the act of trying to save them exposes experience to a problem requiring a solution. And that solution might lead onto other developments in the future - even if those saved don't add anything useful to society directly.
But if life is too easy, we end up spending our resources creating and solving problems of no consequence, things that are trivial, or unnecessary to begin with. There are over 300,000 breast implant surgeries in the US alone each year - that is about 1.5B spent on boob jobs. Resources well spent? But, it is a good thing that a woman who has had a mastectomy due to something like cancer can have her breasts rebuilt if she chooses, right?
Trivial and unnecessary?
That depends on your experience and how you feel about it.
Humans can be pretty awesome. Yet, humans can also be pretty bloody depraved. Maybe it takes a certain amount of depravity to evoke the awesome. But I guess my fear for humanity is, we are all becoming more homogenous in what we consume, what we think, and what skills we hold. But the average might be leaning more toward the negative, the depraved, but we don't have enough people on the other side, counterbalancing with their awesome. It is a race to the bottom.
And when we get there, we are all losers.
To hit the game winning shot, it isn't good enough to fantasise about it, to have a dream, it requires hard work, and the persistence to face challenge after challenge, always looking for a solution to the problems faced. Giddey might have missed the shot, and there would be no hero celebration in front of an ecstatic crowd - but he put himself in the position to take the shot in the first place, and that takes more work than the average person is willing to apply to anything.
All that training and effort, just to solve the problem of throwing a ball through a metal ring.
What a species.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
