A real personality test

[grinninfoole]

Last night I happened to listen to part of Public Radio International's This American Life program. It's an interesting collection of anecdotes and oddities. Last night the theme was superpowers, and one segment caught my attention. The man doing it, I forget his name, shared his personal party ice-breaker question.

If you could have one, and only one, of the following two powers, which would it be? No one else will be offered this choice, and you once you accept the power you can never switch or give it back. The choice: Flight or Invisibility? (And then he asks "why?", of course.)

For me, I choose Flight. I'd love to be able to be weightless, go where I went at my own pace, not have to be stuck in traffic, trudge up and down stairs, or even be restricted to going where the roads go. Also, it's a no-hassles power. There are no issues of paranoia and distrust if people know I can fly. I don't need to hide it.

What would you choose, gentle reader?

Comments

Re: invisability

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Perhaps. I'm not convinced that one need make either choice from fear. One might as easily be motivated by greed, curiosity, vengefulness, or duty as by fear, though fear is a universally understandable impulse.

Also, if one should desire no added abilities beyond what one is born with, why use telephones? Or computers? Or airplanes? or cars? or guns? These all provide capabilities beyond our naked bodies.

Re: invisability

[chinachewy.livejournal.com]

Why does one have greed, or curiosity? Greed: fear of having nothing. Curiosity: fear of doing nothing. Fear is not only a matter of being scared of the boogie man.

People say that Americans can live off of minimum wage if they only eat hotdogs and drink water for the rest of their lives. We don't need anything else. It is just the mentality of humans. We get more, we want more. Modern technology has made humans more vulnerable, more weaker. What would a person do if their computer crashed? Do they know how to use a typewriter? Can they write it neatly by hand? No one complained about writing until the computer came out. If there really was invisability or flight, what will happen to this world? it would be crazy...

Re: invisability

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

As far as the world changing because everyone is flying around or invisible, part of the question is that ONLY YOU get this choice. No one else on earth will get this choice, so only you will have a super power.

I also do not agree with your reduction of various impulses to fear. Granted that it is important, it reminds me of the attempts of Marxists to reduce everything to class struggle and economic disparity. Sort of the intellectual equivalent of 'to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.'

Re: invisability

[chinachewy.livejournal.com]

Think beyond the question. When one person has something that another wants, there will always be a way... I belive it is: "Where there is a will, there is a way."

What is fear to you?

Re: invisability

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Fear is a powerful emotion and a useful survival trait. It is a product of the r-complex deep within our brains, and is one of the most pervasive factors within our psyches. It is, however, not the only one. Affection, anger, curiosity and joy are also quite important, as is our ability to cooperate. Fear is something to resist, that we must resist, if we wish to live as humans and not as lizards.

Re: invisability

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

"Modern technology has made humans more vulnerable, more weaker." Humans are, by the standards of other species, already quite weak. While we are not without advantages, those advantages express themselves primarily in an ability to share our perceptions of the world in useful and extensive detail, and to them use those perceptions to alter our environment to an extent unrivalled by any other species. This has, arguably, made humans less vulnerable to many survival threats, though that argument does depend on ignoring the plight of billions of impoverished people world wide. (Then, too, one really must ask: vulnerable to what?)

Certainly, in a society such as the USA, with an enormous population, most of whom lacks the resources and training to provide directly for their own subsistence, such that they must practice some other activity that is considered sufficiently useful for them to acquire the means of subsistence in exchange, technological change has introduced new variables to our existence. To the extent that those variables are outside of control, or even knowledge, we are more vulnerable than before. Neverthless, the USA today currently supports a population far larger, and in far better health, than could have been possible in a non-industrial society.