The Less Interesting TimesTemper Your Enthusiasm

2006/03/08 Immunity vs. Protection

Where the hell do you think you’re going?! Yeah, you! Everybody else around you, too. In your building, in your block, in your neighborhood, your city, your country, this whole world, too. Have you noticed what’s going with the general health in the world today? People are sick, lame, malformed, handicapped, limited and more words I really don’t care to pull down a dictionary to find. What is causing that? There is no strange virus outbreak that is enfeebling humans, right? Is this the result of some sort of global inbreeding? I highly doubt it.

I think it’s about spoiling. Our parent’s spoiled us, their parents spoiled them, and their parents before them. It’s not on purpose, it’s because they could and they did what’s best for their children. And we’ll probably do the same. But is it for the best?

Are you following me so far? What I’m saying is that our current western way of living in secured homes, sanitized environments and, well, incredible medicine is what could be leading the human bio-system itself in a downward spiral towards quick degeneration.
I see people that are too timid to walk barefoot, can’t go a day without a pill or a cup of coffee. I see and read (In Elad’s Blog, mostly) about people who are simply afraid of going outdoors for a few days. When I was in the army, I saw people driving to the dining hall, a mere hundred meters away, and now we have more electrical or small gas-powered vehicles in our kibbutz then I can count with sane fingers. Some times I see people that are abhorred to the concept of ordering in a restaurant a dish they don’t know.

Where is our sense of intrepidness?
Douglas Adams wrote in his book “Last Chance to See” about his trip to see the Komodo Dragon. Now, you’d expect that when you go looking for one of the last living relics of the dinosaur age, it’ll be in wild jungles, barren desserts or deserted islands, right? Well, according to Adams, they had a 5 star treatment there and the managers tempted the Dragon out with a goat. How very Jurassic Park of them. Adams merely mentioned that his party lost their sense of intrepidness. I think it’ll be much worse.

So, what should we do? We should get out more, that’s for starters. School trips should not be to a hotel, they should be with a sleeping bag, maybe a tent and if you don’t mind carrying it, a thin polymer mattress. We should do things that are out of the ordinary, different, maybe even stupid, dangerous and insane. Some might die, the others will be stronger.

A few days ago I saw on TV someone who BASE jumped from the top of a hundred meter waterfall. The parachute deployment went fine but the water pressure pulled him in and down into the rocks. He spent six months in recovery. Six months after that he was already on top of a thousand meter waterfall (the tallest in the world), doing it again.
He said he did it because he likes it when people think he’s insane. I say, people like him should be our role models.

Posted in Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 3 comments.