Hi, everyone.* In this post, I'll talk about something I've been thinking about recently. To dive into this topic, I'll start by introducing why I've been thinking about it.
The Art of Arguing
This year, I tried out parliamentary debate, a form of debate where each team of two debaters has about 20 minutes to prep one side of a topic, and delivers three 6-minute** speeches to argue for their side.
The conventional wisdom (which, in this case, is wise) is that arguments should contain three main parts: the claim, the warrant, and the impact. The claim is what the argument states. For example, "Meat leads to climate change." The warrant is why the argument is true; it often takes the form of statistics ("Look at this study by a prestigious university or article by a prestigious newspaper! Mwahaha, the Internet likes my side!") or logic. The impact is why the argument matters, and also what this post will focus on. An example of an impact is, "Meat-related climate change is putting our planet in danger, which will lead to people dying."
In fact, almost all impacts in debate rounds relate to death. Climate change? People die. Nuclear war? People die. Dehumanization? I'd argue this is close to death, and has similar impacts.
📷
Meta-Impacting Death
But what impact does death really have? If I asked this question in a debate round, I might come off as insensitive, but I wanted to think about this question. Let's continue asking what the impact is until we can't anymore.
What is the impact of death? The dying person loses their life.
What is the impact of not having a life? There are two directions I can think of here:
1. The person can no longer experience the good parts of life; i.e. they won't be happy.
2. The person can no longer contribute to the world.
I'm not trying to go all choose-your-own-adventure here, but in some ways I will be. I'll address Impact 1 first, followed by Impact 2.
Impact 1 (Happiness)
What is the impact of not being able to be happy? I feel like happiness is somewhat ethereal and intangible. It makes you happier. It can affect other people's happiness, but we're back at happiness again. I think that happiness is somewhat of a dead end, though: it can't go other places in this meta-impacting simulation.
Impact 2 (Contributions to World)
What is the impact of not being able to contribute to the world? As a human species, we will have fewer contributions.
What is the impact of having fewer contributions to the world? We won't make as much progress in the human pursuit of knowledge. I believe it's important to learn more about the world, to explore, to stop echoing. The pursuit of knowledge can have impacts in making progress towards other goals, but they mostly center around death, so we have a loop–but I think this is a good place to stop: we have that the pursuit of knowledge is honorable.
A Dream Job
📷
According to this chart, a dream job should be something you're good at, you enjoy, and you can make a living off of. But an argument can be made for a fourth spot: what the world needs.**** Part of me wants to be a pure mathematician–I'm good at math, I think people pay mathematicians, and math can be fun. But part of me suspected that it's not what the world needs. But now that I think about it, the pursuit of knowledge can be what the world needs besides just saving lives.
Thanks for reading what I wrote. Until next time, try not to die, and try to contribute to the world.
–beautifulthorns
Originally aired June 19, 2019
*Avid readers (of which there are approximately none) will note that I've abandoned the bold hook thing that I used to do at the top of pages. I've found that this is often a struggle to come up with and doesn't serve to really hook, or enhance the article. So I've gotten rid of it. If you have a strong opinion, contact me.
Also, I'm really happy I managed to get a legitimate, non-GMO footnote on the sentence "Hi, everyone."
**5 on the last speech.
***Sorry, affluent.
****You can make the argument that "what the world needs" can fall under "stuff you love to do" if you believe that helping other people's primary purpose is making yourself feel happier, which is somewhat true and somewhat untrue.