This is life

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 Hello everyone, 

I am taking inspiration from the "This is Water" essay we read in class and also this.

We are all alive.

The possibility that each of us are alive is small. A quick google search reveals the chance to be 1 in 10^2685000. (Imagine having 2 million dice, each with a trillion sides, and having them all land on 439,505,270,846 on a single roll). Although I am skeptical of this number, the probability is tiny nonetheless. This is the result of thousands and thousands of years of survival of your ancestors. All the way down the family tree, until you are born, and the infinitesimal chance that the genes created you, and not someone else. 



Considering the low odds that we are alive, it is a good idea to try to live a good life. What people think a good life is will vary between success and happiness. For example, if you were rich and had accomplished many things despite being stressed and unhappy, is that a good life? Or on the other hand, if you were homeless but still content and happy with life, is that any better? 

This can be extrapolated to a larger scale. As a civilization, is it better being technologically advanced but society is stressed and overworked, or could it better if we were still cavemen hunting and gathering whilst living peacefully in solitude? 

Obviously we can't all just quit school (or work) and go live how we would like to live, but the idea is that happiness can still be found in bad conditions.

On an individual scale, I think Wallace's point of being aware is one of the greatest things that everyone can do. Simply changing the way you think about things might be the antidote to being swept away in the hardships of everyday life and becoming an NPC. Alongside, being aware that this is life, and we should all live it to the fullest extent; to what we think is a "good life". Because after all, the probability of death is 1 in 1.




Comments

  1. Michael SSeptember 17, 2023 at 6:50 AM

    I never realized what the chance of being born was so it was interesting to see the way you incorporated that to not being a npc.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jaesung KimSeptember 17, 2023 at 6:57 PM

    The stats you put out was very surprising. I had no clue the chances of being alive was so small.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yungeun (Daniel) LeeSeptember 17, 2023 at 10:24 PM

    I liked how you explored the complexity of life and how you added to your piece by utilizing rhetorical questions that prompted the reader to think. I also agree that viewing things from a different perspective can work wonders on the happiness individuals feel.

    ReplyDelete

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