What do we value the most? In the last week and a half I have listened to many hours of commentary on the deaths of Steve Jobs and the race car driver and many hours of commentary about professional sports and what's happening in the entertainment industry.
I haven't heard more than a brief mention of the service men and women that are giving their lives, temporarily or permanently for the ideal of freedom and liberty. There are many other ways to be involved in good causes besides the military. Donating to or serving in aid activities that help people with basic needs are of great value in a "helping the needy" way.
I don't know much about Steve Jobs' life other than his work with computers. I think that if he wouldn't have done what he did, someone else would have done something kinda similar. In either case, I don't see where his work has been of great benefit to those in the world that don't have enough to eat or who live in oppressed societies. I do believe he has had a great impact on American and world society. I do think that his impact has been mostly economic, and mostly effects people that don't really have immediate needs like hunger, shelter and protection from war or evil government.
When looking at professional sports figures its hard for me to think that there is a great amount of good (idealistic good) that comes from sports. Many professional sports personalities give to many good causes. I think that the vast majority of the money earned in the sports world is earned, spent or used in a selfish way.
When looking at Hollywood and that part of the entertainment world, selfish pride or greed seems to be the overriding priority.
In 2011 there have been 49 US servicemen and women killed. They do what they do for many reasons and for much less money. I served because my father and grandfather did. I wanted to be as good a man as they were. There are a few other reasons also.
When I was growing up "men that fought for freedom" were honored as heroes. I wanted to be a hero to someone. I wanted to be tough. I wanted my life to have value to myself and others. I wonder what will be on my headstone in a few years. I hope someone puts something on there that is true and that has real meaning for people that had real needs. For those that read this, why do you do what you do? What are the motivations that you keep inside?
This boils down to "am I mostly selfish or selfless"?
I welcome all honest, heart felt comment.
2 comments:
I think professional sports are just an outgrowth of a (mostly) free economy. People are clearly willing to pay non-trivial amounts of money to watch people who are really good at a sport play it. At least on the professional level, people play sports because there is a profit-based market for it. Most of the people who are drawn to it appear to be drawn to it in a similar way to those who have a gambling problem, as a way to "make it big" (although sports requires much more personal dedication and effort than gambling), as evidenced by the large numbers of professional athletes who are broke within a few years of "retiring", whereas a pragmatic, educated person with that kind of money would never need to work again and could easily give lots to various charitable institutions.
As far as Steve Jobs is concerned, don't underestimate the disruption he caused in computing as it was when the Apple II and later the Mac came out. That was a time when the mainframe was king and "normal" people had no sense of need for a computer. It's relatively certain that the PC would have come along without him, Woz, or Bill Gates, but talking about "what would have happened" is in some sense pointless. The fact of the matter is that he very nearly single-handedly disrupted a major industry and pointed it in a whole new direction. The ideas he "stole" from Xerox PARC that became the computing desktop as we know it, which were in turn stolen from Apple by Microsoft, have changed the way the world interacts with information more than anything else since the telegraph or the printing press. And that is leaving aside the disruption he created with the iPhone and the iPad. Granted, much of what he "invented" was made possible by the work of others, such as Dennis Ritchie (one of the creators of Unix and the C programming language).
It's in large part due to the disruption he made in computing that the general public has so much more information about how much less justified we are in having soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan than we have been in previous conflicts. It's in very large part due to the disruption he made in computing that the work of genealogy has been able to explode like it has. His vision was to change people's lives through making computers accessible and personal, and it's clear that he accomplished that. So yeah, it may be hard to say how he made life any better for the unfortunate majority of the world's population who live in poverty or hunger, but it's equally as hard to say he didn't, since much of the work involved in trying to help those people involves personal computers in some way or another.
As far as why I do what I do, I joined the Army in large part for the same reasons you did. My dad did, my grandpa and great grandpa did, and I had always wanted to be like you three. I left when I did because it was becoming clear to me that I would be unable to make the kind of impact on the world that I want to by being a soldier. Which is why I hack so much. It's clear to me that computers have only begun to have the kind of impact on the world that they will some day have. Clearly this impact isn't all going to be entirely positive, but I want to be a part of taking what has already been done and making into something so much more. Think of the genealogy that could be done if someone old enough to be afraid of computers could just talk to a computer, tell it when and where they were born, information about their parents, family, etc. and the computer did the work. Think of the good work that can be done in the world if computers were smart enough to take the decision making load off of imperfect decision makers. Whether we like it or not, and whether it's all good or not, computers are going to be a major part of anything that happens in the future, and I want to be a part of that.
So anyways, this was a _really_ long comment, but there you go. :)
I still like President Hinckley's Father's advice; "Forget yourself and go to work." I think that works for pretty much any situation.
For every one person who dies, there is a family that is (crap--affected?? Effected?? I really used to know which one was which!) anyway, there is a family who has to figure out what is next for them. And those same families are waiting for them to come home, hopefully alive!
Life is sure interesting!! I do believe I'm glad to be here.
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