Wednesday, September 15, 2010

What could possibly go wrong?


We all occasionally look at what other people do and think "why?" Take Frenchman Alain Robert for example, aka. the "human spider", he likes nothing better than to scale the outside of tall buildings with no safety rope or harness just his muscles to hold him up, completely free. A fairly unforgiving activity by any reckoning, but he must enjoy it and the sense of self motivated achievement and finely developed expertise is clearly intoxicating for him.

In the debate between religion and science you often hear the question "science can't tell us the purpose of life?" usually this is raised as a counter to the idea that science might one day "know" everything, this is probably unlikely in the lifetime of anyone reading this post but is it even a valid question? I think it is, but only in retrospect and Alain provides us with a clue to the real answer, we make our own purpose and sometimes people even make science itself the purpose of their lives.

Why spend your entire life following someone else's "purpose"? When it comes to living a life no one can meaningfully predict what will happen next so in my view we should all take a leaf from the human spider's book you never know what's around the corner!

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