At Any Cost

We got there a little early, so took the table reserved and grabbed a pre-drink (only drink) before our friends arrived. We were there to celebrate a birthday and were glad we were invited to what would have been just the three of their family. Smallsteps was meant to be there too, but she is still a little flu-y so stayed with her grandparents.

After spendibg the week inside with a sick child while still working, it was nice to be out for a bit and eat some decent grub (food).

The Asian fusion restaurant was surprisingly full and felt almost like normal, which felt weird. Normal is no longer normal though and it is unlikely to ever go back to what it was. Once control mechanisms are in place, they rarely get rolled back.

It was a fun few hours talking about all kinds of things, but it was interesting to me to note that there now seems to be a more negative undertone when talking about the world in general. People seem far less optimistic about the future and even people who are normally quite compliant, are reaching the end of their tether and pointing out that things are going overboard.

My wife and I were talking a little after and she was saying that we should buy a place in the middle of nowhere and live there instead, just to get away from all of this nonsense. She is someone who is generally like most Finns, trusting that the government has at least some of her interests in mind. Unlike me, who is far more skeptical.

However, there is no escape in the forest either here, contact will still be needed and if Smallsteps doesn't go to school, they will likely hunt us down. Plus, I am not really a person who wants to live alone out in the forest anyway, as I don't think it really helps improve quality of life for us.

Some people take a "survive at any cost" approach to life, which seems natural, but I don't think it really is. Maybe it is instinctual for us to in the moment fight for our lives, but I think when we do not feel the immediacy of threat, we just go along with conditions, even as they degrade.

But, if thinking about quality of life, is it better to live at any cost or would it be better to remove oneself from life? Don't worry, I am not planning anything, but I wonder from an "economic" sense, if there is some value of some kind that could be applied to calculate whether we are better off alive or dead, depending on our conditions.

For example for me, I have always said that I do not want to be a living vegetable, so if something like that happens, turn off the machine and let me die. This means that I have made an economic decision where the value of survival is worth less than the cost of living as a vegetable, so rather than make a loss, I can check-out and lower the costs.

This is morbid perhaps, but if thinking in behavioral economic terms, I wonder what costs we incur that if we were to consider them more closely, we would perhaps make different decisions. For a hypothetical example, given the risk of dying from Corona, people are getting vaccinated. However, if later they found out that their child is now disabled because of it, would they still believe that saving their own life was worth it?

As said, hypothetical, but it is an interesting thing to consider as many parents believe they would give up their lives in exchange for the wellbeing of their children. But, this doesn't seem to include the wellbeing of potential children, as people do all kinds of thinks that will impact their yet to be born children, even if they plan on having kids at some point.

What about something less personal, like the impacts on future children because of government legislation or decisions. For example, the trillions of dollars that have been handed out and milked over the last year and a half globally to "fight Covid" is not free money, it had to come from somewhere. In this case, it is debt from the future, meaning that the cost of today is going to be paid by people who had no choice in the decisions, but will be heavily affected in many ways.

That seems personal too - at least for the people who are affected in that future, all to save the lives of some of us now. Is the cost of our survival worth the suffering that will be inflicted on the future? Hard to say, but we tend to err on The side of dealing with immediate problems that face us, even if we are kicking the can down the road.

We do this personally too. For example, a lot of us eat what makes us feel good now, even if it means suffering for it later in life. Or we spend money now, and then complain when we don't have money later to do the things we want.

Everything is a decision of what we value and we inflate what we are willing to pay now and overestimate out ability to pay it back in the future. I will eat that candy bar now, because I will go to the gym later. But, even if I did go to the gym, did I burn enough calories to cover my debts?

At least from my observations, it seems that people are increasingly willing to survive at any cost, even if it means risking their freedom of choice, their health, their wellbeing and their quality of life in general. But, I think most are willing to do this because they underestimate what those future costs will actually be, and how it will make us feel to suffer the degradation in living standards for ourselves, let alone others.

All of the changes in our world carry a cost and affect our experience - and they tend to compound and snowball. Some are for the better (in general) like the advancement of many technologies. But some are for the worse, like the centralization of power into very few hands, as the incentive is for the central power to get more power by degrading the people, not to empower the people.

Eventually though, all debts have to be paid one way or another, and what is the point of surviving, if survival means to live in a world we created, but don't want to live in?

Is it really at any cost for us in order to survive this life?