Why doesn't Superman drill wells?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Many people who have seen a film about Superman might ask a logical question: why not drill a well or drive iron piles, drag some heavy load, not fly after photographs and soil samples of distant planets, solve a lot of problems that millions of people will do millions of times longer? For example, an expedition to Antarctica goes on for several months, overcoming extremely low temperatures, then sets up a camp, which would later be called the Vostok station, then they drill a deep hole in the ice and discover a subglacial lake at a depth of 4000 m. All this took several decades: from 1957 to 2013. Superman would just take a long pipe, fly up there, stick it all the way into the ice - and that's it. If it was necessary, then the camp would be quickly built there, immediately with heating, with a bathhouse, everything is as it should be. I would have thrown people in there - and that's it. Things to do for him for a couple of hours. But why not? Why in films does he do all kinds of bullshit in his free time from fighting evil?

A mistake similar to the one contained in the paragraph above is quite widespread in society, only almost no one notices it. Now I'll quickly prove it to you. Let's start with a picture.

Conventionally, for simplicity of presentation, you can introduce an artificial hierarchy of human values. We will assume (and this assumption is quite consistent with observations) that as they develop, human values become more complex, become "higher" in this hierarchy. It can even be considered that the position of a person's values on the ladder of these values determines the level of development. It doesn't matter, in this model you can agree on whatever you like, the result will be the same. And so, in the picture we have two people. The first has a lower value, and, therefore, it is less developed: he still needs to understand, study, realize, check a lot, etc. in order to become closer to the second person, whose values are higher. The second has higher values, and therefore he is not very interested in what he has already gone through earlier, that is, the values of the first are of little interest. It is also important to note that the higher a person is developed, the MORE OPPORTUNITIES he has.

Our problem has two main manifestations: obvious and not obvious. Let's start with the first one.

Obvious manifestation

The error in the logic of reasoning of all people I know (with whom I have communicated quite a lot) seems to be extremely simple in appearance: a less developed person ALWAYS looks at the possibilities of a more developed one as if he had the SAME values. He says: “I wish I was so! I would then do this and that much faster / easier / better (underline the necessary)."

Here are some examples from my communication practice.

- “I wish I had such a cool video card, it would be cooler to play X, and you can probably afford it” (mentions any computer game that requires a video card). Such a desire arose in a person who first saw a computer, the power of which is dozens of times higher than his desktop "calculator". However, such a computer is used for highly complex scientific calculations; it does not even have an OS in the form familiar to the layman. Calculations are thrown both on the video card, which can also do simple arithmetic calculations, and on the processor itself, which performs more complex operations. Playing on such a computer is like flying around the house in a supersonic fighter. Actually, you just sit in the cockpit, but you will not fly in it, but you will play with the toggle switches of the off plane, imagining Star Wars.

“I wish I could run like that, then I would have won the competition at school.” It was about world-class athletes who, at such school competitions, can overtake any schoolchild with an ordinary slow warm-up run, even if they start much later than everyone else has already started running.

- "If only I could learn to solve computational problems so cool on a computer, then I would quickly rise at my work." It was about the ability to program, which people cultivate in themselves for many years, and use to solve very complex problems that NEVER arise in "industrial programming", even in a very simplified form. There, this skill is even harmful in a sense.

- “I wish I had such an ear, then I could record my favorite song from sheet music and play it on the guitar.” We are talking about musicians who graduated from a music school and are able to easily record any melody they hear with notes from memory, and then play it on whatever they can.

- "I wish I had a guy who knows how to fight, he will be able to protect me if something happens." It was about a man who regularly wins fighting competitions … the girl believes that such a husband will ensure the safety of the family.

As you can see, in these examples, a certain skill of a developed (in a sense) person is considered by another person (not developed in the same sense) as if both have the same or agreed values. In the first example, it seems to a computer game player that the owner of a cool computer is interested in games and will use the machine's power precisely for smoother graphics at maximum resolution. In fact, the owner of this technique has not played games for a long time, because he has outgrown them many times, although he used to be an amateur and often regretted that he constantly had a computer that was significantly lagging behind the "average" computers of friends, which is why he could not enjoy many games to the fullest … As a person grew older, he realized the uselessness of games for further development and was able to get a more powerful technique for more important tasks.

In the second example, a person believes that if he had the ability to run well, he would have achieved his highest value: he would have become the winner of school competitions, while in fact a runner of this level does not dream of being a world champion, and some athletes have grown even more. and in general they just run for themselves, they don’t care about competitions, although they will give odds, though not to everyone, but to many of those who participate in them with interest.

The third example shows how the ability of some programmers to solve rather complex problems is underestimated and does not represent the range of scientific problems where these problems arise. It may seem to the head of some programming or IT company that if he gets such a person into his team, the company will take off immediately, because many tasks will be solved much better than it is available to simple programmers. In reality, a programmer of this level will sit down for such office-industrial tasks only out of despair, and most likely will simply master another profession and develop in it. Because the slave who saw the world is bad. In other words, knowing some cool things, you can no longer get what you want through things that are more primitive for yourself.

In the fourth example, it seems to a person that a cool musician will engage in such garbage: write down the songs he likes with notes. Of all the people I know with good musical talent, no one does this. Moreover, if one of them needed to play a song, he took notes from the Internet, and did not write them himself, because such people are simply not interested in doing any kind of bullshit. These people did much more interesting work for themselves. Although some complex works in the days when there was no Internet, the guys "removed" from the audio cassette to paper themselves … yes, it was.

In the fifth example, the girl thinks that the guy's fascination with martial arts (in their practical aspect) is consistent with the function of protecting her from bandits on the street and, in general, with the function of ensuring safety in the family. In reality, the guy is not interested in wasting his potential to walk his girlfriend, play the alpha male in the area of the city in which they live (girls often use such guys to achieve their goals, including through threats). In addition, the guy will get into more dangerous games, he will be beaten in the ring, spoiling his health, and in life he will get into various adventures that are unpleasant for a girl who was initially expecting a quiet and calm life. In the event of a possible reason, he will ask for trouble (there will always be a reason to beat a neighbor or an objectionable driver on the road), and then have problems with breaking the law (arbitrariness, harm to health, etc.), as a result of which the family will not be left without a husband for long or forever.

Regarding the protection on the street: this happens only in fairy tales and in cases when the "bandits" are morons or too self-confident, and climb in a crowd on a guy and a girl who somehow suspiciously helplessly walk around dangerous areas at night. The street is not a ring, it is a different element, and the rules of the game are different.

In addition, such a guy will not protect a girl in any of the following cases:

- when she is "divorced" by money swindlers;

- when she is "shoddy" by some swindler lawyers, forcing her to do what she, in general, should not, if she understood the intricacies of the laws;

- when they took a home on a mortgage, which she begged from him contrary to common sense, when there are three thousand ways not to take it and not to feed the banking parasites. As a result, their life will be like in the picture:

- when she enters the store and can not resist buying unnecessary junk;

- when she has a desire to carry out some manipulations, squeezing out of him the forces to solve her primitive tasks (and they WILL BE primitive if the girl proceeded from such a primitive factor in choosing a man). Among the manipulations, there will be one like this: she will threaten to call her husband in some of her women’s showdowns with enemies. The husband will have to come and … get "Lyuli". Do you know why? Because for every cunning ass there is scrap iron, you know, rusty and jagged. I have seen more than once how dead sickly people, using their minds, deal with a mountain of even fast and dexterous muscles. For example, by hiding a camera in the bushes and then providing "where necessary" the procedure for his beating. Naturally, the camera does not see that it was a pre-planned setup. Then it is not difficult to go to the hospital and get a certificate of the injuries received (or it is better to defiantly call an ambulance and lie there screaming in pain until they arrive). However, there are more sophisticated ways when it is not necessary to substitute. But I will not teach you this.

- when a peasant is allowed to spend, acting not by physical force, but by a much stronger force. For example, by substituting values, you can make a person work for the mafia, the exit from which will be very difficult;

- etc.

Let us now conclude the examples in a general sense.

You can get Superman to drive piles. Or you can force a weightlifter to hammer nails into the ground with a hammer … No difference. In both cases, the poor do not get the opportunity to develop their creativity.

You can burn an oak chest of drawers instead of firewood, it will burn well and give warmth, but this is not its purpose. Yes, yes, I remember how the heroes of the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" burned books and furniture in the library, but it was hopelessness, a special critical situation. In the case when, for example, dad plays with his one-year-old son, he could well hammer (press) a couple of nails into the ground, and the son might think “I wish I could become so strong too!” If he knew how to think in such categories. In general, you understand me …

The main conclusion … An incompletely developed person mistakenly thinks that the goal of development is to meet the values and needs of his level of development faster and better, while internal growth can occur only simultaneously with the development of his values and a change in higher needs. Reaching the next "level", the values of the previous level of a person are no longer particularly interested. This is not visible “from below”, and therefore people often choose the wrong motivation for their development. Values-based motivation is false.

An attentive reader will think: “But what about the eternal values - family, love, development? Is it really a false motivation if I am guided by them? Yes, naturally false, because “from below” all these values are profaned, they turn into a projection onto their narrow understanding, as a result of which they usually come down to one form or another of pleasure from satisfying needs. So, love is reduced to copulation and to the satisfaction of some mental needs (to be near, to talk, to feel mutual help and usefulness of oneself for another), development is reduced to the consumption of cognitive information, as a result of which consumers of information are obtained, the sense from which is exactly the same as from degrading people, although it seems to them that it is more. The family also turns into working out the social rules of the game (“the clock is ticking …”, “all your girlfriends have already made their third child,” “it's time to grow up and settle down,” “they give almost half a million rubles for the second child,” etc.). The real “height” of these eternal values “from below” is not visible, and therefore there is no sense in the fact that they are eternal, because they are still replaced by a profane analogue, understandable to an undeveloped person.

Does this mean that everything is bad and that you need to go to a monastery?

Of course not, because in a monastery a person will likewise profane the values accepted there to his own level. The answer to the problem is terribly simple: each person has many mechanisms that allow him to grow above himself easily and simply. You just need to live under a tough dictatorship of conscience, sincerely trying to understand and fulfill your life mission, and God will correct the direction through the language of life's circumstances. That is, you need to believe Him.

Not an obvious manifestation

I will not be mistaken if I say that many people, when doing some work, expect to be rewarded in the form of satisfying their values. When they look at the work ahead of them or a certain goal, they evaluate it from the position of how, after completing it, their present values will be satisfied. Here are a couple of examples to illustrate.

- A person wants to master magic, which he is working on. He wants to seduce girls with her.

- A person wants to be beautiful, and he achieves this. He works on himself in this direction to impress other people with his body / face / manner.

- A person wants to become smart by training to solve intellectual problems. He wants to win some kind of intellectual show like “What? Where? When?.

The trouble is that while a person is moving towards his goal, he develops, gets some skills, opens up some new tasks, realizes something that he could not have imagined before. As a result, when the goal is achieved, the value that motivated him HAS ALREADY CHANGED.

- The man has mastered magic, but he is no longer interested in girls in the sense in which they were. With her help, he already does much more exciting things, solves the problems that opened up to him at Hogwarts, and while he was improving, he realized that seducing girls is not what he should do, this approach to pleasure leads to a waste of energy, but it brings much less than the waste of the same energy on business. Then he found the one and only, the union with which greatly increases the self-realization of both. Thoughts about some other girls (in the degradation-utilitarian sense) do not even creep into his head.

- The man became beautiful, but he no longer wants to make an impression, he realized that external beauty (in his case) was the result of internal growth, and while he was growing internally, he got rid of narcissism and realized that he was already beautiful in that sense, that it is harmoniously complex not only in the bodily, but also in the spiritual sense, if we consider ourselves in integrity with the Universe and Humanity in particular. Having found his place in life, as a result of which he got rid of fake values like the desire to be beautiful, he found his life mission in a completely different matter, requiring just this high awareness.

- When a person really became smart, he laughed at his past desire and went to use his mind in a really useful business, for example, took up super-complex scientific projects. And what? Where? When? no longer even looks, because it is now primitive for him, regardless of whether he knows the answer to the next question of the presenter or not.

It may seem that I am repeating the obvious manifestation of the problem, but no. The situation here is completely different. The fact is that a significant part of the people I know in their work are motivated by the RESULT of their work. They work ONLY because they expect some direct result of this work. The result will ALWAYS be a "drain" of the project in one form or another, which I wrote about in a series of articles "About one percent". But why?

Yes, all for the same reason: firstly, a person does not take into account that the correct work will change him, as a result of which the expected result may no longer bring the desired effect. Secondly, an error of one percent comes out, expressed in the fact that getting to the goal will be a hundred times more difficult than I initially thought, because I did not take into account all the environmental factors (including my slovenliness). Thirdly, the result may turn out to be incompatible with the Providence of God … and then the result will be complete garbage, the disappointment from which will be very painful. Fourth, wherever you run, you will take yourself with you, and therefore even if the goal is noble, it WILL be "lowered" to the level of the performer's development. For this reason, any such Anastasiev's projects like “let's move to the village and live happily ever after” turn into “the old maid bought a hectare and is waiting for at least some man to come to her to plow her land”, or in “a bunch of animals gathered in an open field and are waiting for the most even of them to do everything and it will be possible to just live. But since no one else knows how to hold a shovel, everyone quarreled from scratch and left for Moscow to sit in offices."

So, the essence of this monstrous mistake once again: a person is motivated by the RESULT of his work, while the motives should lie in the area of his ideals and life mission.

Ideals are what constitutes the highest reference point for a person. Often a person is not aware of it, he feels only individual manifestations of his ideals and considers these manifestations to be self-sufficient and integral, while in fact they are part of something larger. For example, a person is drawn to be a "survivalist", he loves extreme conditions and situations in which you need to show maximum will, self-control and resourcefulness, as well as other related skills. In fact, this value, expressed in the development of survival skills, is not independent, but, probably (judging by itself), is a faint echo of such an ideal that involves solving complex problems. A person came to this world in order to oppose himself to some VERY complex problems, which often need to be solved autonomously, as if NOT relying on the values of civilization or not relying on any established methods of solution (but invent fundamentally new ones). This person should, for example, create some kind of philosophy that will help many people "get out of the matrix."Survival in the forest is just one small step towards this goal. The next may be the concept of survival in civilization without loans and parasitism, without disposable things, then without other fake values. Then the scientific substantiation of a different way of life, and such a substantiation should be created in moderate isolation from civilization with its factors pressing on the psyche. All this requires the SAME survival skills, only extended to the non-material part of life.

Many people who see their talent in some business make the mistake considered here (see picture): they begin to bring talent to perfection, not paying attention to those moments when the way opens up for using this talent in a more useful way. So, a survivalist can generally become a hermit and thereby send a civilization in three letters, refusing to fulfill a life mission. A climber can start crawling mountains without belay, or, say, climb Mount Everest with a barbell. The consumer of information is a fine fellow, that he has moved from the sphere of consumption of degrading content to the sphere of consumption of cognitive-degradative content, but if at some point he does not change the logic of his development, he will turn into a useless bag with a bunch of knowledge or even become an "intellectual" whose highest value becomes some kind of crystal owl (cool prize in one of the intellectual games). But usually it all ends with firewood. Such people become wood or food for those who know and understand more. Educational content for information consumers is formed in the SAME way as degrading for degrading people, and often for the same purpose. The sense from these people (as it seems to me) is much less than if they from some point in their life began to develop their skills in a different direction.

Now do you understand why many video bloggers create educational content with a significant amount of entertainment?

Well, after all, why doesn't Superman hammer piles and drill the ground? Maybe he once drilled and hammered in, but later he realized that wells are not the limit of development, and not the goal of life; he discovered other elements of his ideal that had not been seen before and realized that if you continue to help people realize THEIR values by YOUR power, they will never grow out of the age at which one wants to make useless raw materials from the oil produced, which, on average, after one an hour of work ends up in a trash heap or in the ocean, or even in the air. They will clump together in tight cities for the sake of making it more convenient to parasitize on each other. Superman scratched his head and, realizing that he had already helped people enough that the further depends only on them, dumped nafig on another planet, in which the creatures had already passed this childhood age of deposits, loans, rent, speculation on the exchange rates and other methods of parasitizing each other a friend in which, even if you have to make wells, it is not at all in order to then make petrol from oil for cool sports cars, which the majors flaunt in front of each other, honestly stealing money from the other part of the population. He found a planet whose development projects are much more satisfying to his new understanding of his ideal.

He understood a simple thing: if you use your abilities to satisfy the values of less developed creatures, then these creatures will not grow to understand his values, but they will die because they did not have time to grow up.