This is going to be a very different blog. I am going to challenge the whole concept of "comfort". I don't care if it involves "comfortable" shoes or a nice "comfortable" home or the "comfort" of political correctness. The reason that this is a "paradox" is that most of us have worked very hard to become more "comfortable", but that just may not be a good thing. Check this out.
How did Darwin get the human race to this very high point? Did you ever think about that? It is my position that the fact that life was difficult for us humans through out history made us change and get stronger in order to deal with those difficulties. Doesn't that sound logical? It does and I think that is the way it worked. If a human could not throw a spear hard enough to kill game, they were taken out of the gene pool. They died. What Darwin did was to allow the stronger to live on and breed more like themselves. Darwin did not reward "comfort". Darwin rewarded the ability to deal with and over come difficult situations, not the soft life. Combine this with the principle of "tendency to the mean" which tries to cancel out Darwin's efforts and you can start to see how this is a fundamental battle. How about some simple examples?
How about comfortable shoes? We all like comfortable shoes don't we? Exactly what is a comfortable shoe? It is one that puts the least demand on our feet and legs. They allow our muscles to relax and not have to do any work. That is what we think of as comfortable. How can Darwin reward people who discourage stronger foot and leg muscles in this environment? He can't. The result is that the feet and legs of us humans tend, over time, to get weaker and weaker. Starting to get the message?
As a kid, all the people I knew worked hard with their hands, arms and backs. Until I was over 40, I never heard of a person having carpal tunnel. Seems that all the people who suffer carpal tunnel never did any real physical work. They mostly worked in an office. Do you think this has something to do with the concept of "comfort". I do. The people who I knew worked in the farm fields and did what is called "stoop" labor like picking corps off the ground. I did not know anyone who had a serious back problem, but I do know a lot of people now who work in offices and sit in very comfortable chairs who do have back problems.
Look at kids in school where it is "fun" and takes very little effort on the part of the student. They are rewarded for good performance, but not punished for bad performance. Darwin worked on the basis of punishment and discomfort, not on rewards for avoidance.
I saw a short presentation on this Mexican long distance runner who ran bare footed and he was much better than the ones who wore the fancy comfortable shoes. His feet and ankles were exercised and were much stronger than those of runners who wore fancy shoes. When I was in college and on the track team, we had to work out on grass without shoes for a month before we were allowed to put on track shoes so that the small muscles in our feet and ankles could develop. The result was that we had very few injuries during competition when we wore special shoes.
I have used a lot of examples about our bodies, but the same applies to mental factors. The whole business of political correctness kills real debate and thus prevents us humans from coming to the right decision on many subjects. You see it every day. Political correctness prevents a lot of arguments and disagreements from being expressed. Is that good or bad? Does it make life more comfortable? I think is does. It is like us humans going around half asleep not using or developing our brains. The net affect is to cancel out Darwin's efforts that have worked so well and have advanced us humans to where we are now.
How many of you have children? Are you their "friend" or their parent? Do you think that making them more "comfortable" is best for them? Giving them what they want or taking them here and there? We need to make the life of our kids a lot more difficult rather than more comfortable. Life is a process of dealing with difficulties and that is what Darwin has been trying to prepare us for. If you think about it, isn't that how we need to prepare our kids? Don't you want your kids to have the ability to handle any difficulty that they encounter in life? Or do you want to make sure that they never encounter any difficulties. Come on, you know the answer, that is the paradox.
PS----There is a new book out about this same subject called "Mismatch". The message is that you don't help someone when you cheat to get them into college by affirmative action or quotas.
