So, Mistakes are the Key to Survival?
So, viruses can be so elusive coz they mutate (suck at copying themselves correctly). Now that I think about it, I am not sure who did a worse job with copying a successful model - the coronavirus itself, or America’s response to the coronavirus. Either way, most Americans are fucked.
But that aside, it turns out that we are just “machines” made by genes. Some molecules are just hacking at anything they can find while trying to replicate themselves (and they do a poor job at that replication). Funnily enough, those mistakes (aka mutations) actually help them out with surviving through changing environments. Since we resulted from such mutations, they helped us out too. Mutations are likely helping us out as we speak.
But it is crazy how we constantly try to harm the mutants among us. We even try to fight each other based on the mutations (skin color, etc) when in fact we should be embracing differences because that is what helped us come into existence (imagine if 4 billion years ago our ancestor was beaten to death by its neighbor because it looked different). Also, it turns out that there is no such thing as ‘normal-type’ for any human trait because:
- The ‘normal-type’ is basically ‘most commonly found type’ (wild-type)- nothing more. For example, if UV levels go off the charts suddenly after ozone layers gets eaten up, the ‘normal’ type of skin color of the local populations will begin to change by itself in the higher latitudes, as centuries pass (People with skins resistant to UV will increase in numbers, obviously).
- Even if there is such a normal type, the corresponding ‘abnormal-types’ are also normal types, but just for a different environments.
There is really only one way to get by, to probe the surroundings/environment and hack together whatever is found and hope that it takes us ahead — so there is no other recipe to success in life other than doing shit and hoping that it works (of course, ‘doing shit’ probably means literally taking a shit, if you are a dog, but definitely not so if you are president — more is expected, including having common sense).
In other words if we have to follow this rule, we would make so many mistakes in this process, but we have to learn from these mistakes (evolution doesn’t come and say — “oh you fucked up because your old diabetic-asthmatic ass decided to not wear a mask and attend large gatherings protesting lockdowns because you thought that you are making some sort of political statement, BUT that is cool, are excused from COVID 19”) — ultimately there are no second chances in the laws of nature.
So, lets make mistakes and learn from them. As my most memorable relevant quote goes from System of a Down’s Chop Suey goes: “I cry when angels deserve to die” — angels are anyone doing something good. Risk takers are doing us all a world of good. We all ride on the backs of such angels. So when they fail while taking a risk, lets not just say ‘what were they thinking? they got what they deserved. They deserved to die’.
