Futility
I post too much but...
...I believe that one should work for one's treasured goals. So far, so good. Very few people would disagree with me.
I also believe that one should work for these treasured goals even if one believes that they are impossible to achieve. This is the part where people start to look at me weirdly and ask "Why would you do that? Dear God, why?" After all, why should one sink time and effort - perhaps a life's worth of time and effort - into an unreachable goal? Why should one try to do the impossible?
Well, pardon me for saying this, but that's based on fallacious reasoning: that either one accomplishes the goal or one does not accomplish the goal, with nothing in between. If that were true, there would indeed be no point in working towards it and we should all give up now.
But that's not the case. We don't live in an all-or-nothing world; we can still get partway to a goal, still do a good turn for a society desperately in need of one. As long as there's some hope we can do something, we should keep fighting - all of us - for a better life. Even if one can't finish something completely, one should at least start - the world's a bad enough place already. Almost anything - small, petty, trivial and unfinished as it might be - would help.
...I believe that one should work for one's treasured goals. So far, so good. Very few people would disagree with me.
I also believe that one should work for these treasured goals even if one believes that they are impossible to achieve. This is the part where people start to look at me weirdly and ask "Why would you do that? Dear God, why?" After all, why should one sink time and effort - perhaps a life's worth of time and effort - into an unreachable goal? Why should one try to do the impossible?
Well, pardon me for saying this, but that's based on fallacious reasoning: that either one accomplishes the goal or one does not accomplish the goal, with nothing in between. If that were true, there would indeed be no point in working towards it and we should all give up now.
But that's not the case. We don't live in an all-or-nothing world; we can still get partway to a goal, still do a good turn for a society desperately in need of one. As long as there's some hope we can do something, we should keep fighting - all of us - for a better life. Even if one can't finish something completely, one should at least start - the world's a bad enough place already. Almost anything - small, petty, trivial and unfinished as it might be - would help.
Comments
Post a Comment