Skip to main content

On Needs And Capabilities



It doesn’t happen frequently but recently I had this conversation with one of my former classmates on how every innovation is meant to fulfil a need, how everything we humans do is to make things easier or better for us, how every action of ours has a reason necessitating it.

Like, for example, we ever thought of water conservation because a) our survival was dependent on it and b) there was a slight chance that we might run out of clean water. Why would we ever think of it if there was no threat to us, if we were never going to run out of it?

This need necessitated action to be taken. It set our minds thinking about all the possibilities and how to overcome this problem.

Now, here, it can definitely be counter questioned that if every action has a reason behind it, essentially necessitating it, then why do we strive to explore beyond the boundaries of human reach? 

To say with an example, what was the need to venture space explorations and why did we, the residents of the blue planet, even think of going to the moon?

Nothing goes unanswered my friend. But can we explain this based on what we just discussed above?

Here, as I like to put it, most human actions are obviously centred around our needs and requirements. But not all, some are also to overcome challenges to mankind, to prove it more capable than it appears to be. Really, we do so much to prove ourselves worthy, worthy to live in a better world created by ourselves.

In this case, I think space travel was once a challenge to humanity. Blessed with the ability to think, imagine and wonder, we humans found a way to overcome it. This didn’t only broaden our horizons but proved that mankind is capable of reaching out to things beyond its reach if it tried really hard.

And so to say, we accept the challenges poised before us. Why do we do that? Probably because a) we need something to fiddle with to overcome boredom, b) we want to understand things that do not make sense, yet, and c) to put our ability to think to a better use, to a more productive use.

If I think of it now, humans change the way things work to make it easier for themselves. While animals on the other hand change the way they function, they have adaptive features and what not to make their survival easier.

That’s what sets mankind apart from all other living organisms. We have the ability to think and the potential of making it happen.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On The Annual Whirr Of Excitement

The annual whirr of excitement, as I just quoted it. In simple words, the excitement/fear/anxious feelings among all of us on entering our first board year, grade 10. There’s this whirr of excitement. It’s there every year, it’s there this time too. Although, I must say people are kind of reluctant and nobody was actually excited because as each year passed, the difficulty level, knowingly or unknowingly, shot up. But we were also keen on freeing ourselves from grade 9 so, I guess ultimately, it was inevitable. *Shrugs her shoulders* Every year we’re excited about new books, friends, hopefully more likeable and lenient teachers than last time, which makes up for most part of our worries before we begin our one year journey and we also hope that this one turns out to be better than the last one. Is this whirr going to last? Well, its annual actually, it comes, stays for some time and leaves. It lasts mostly for two to three weeks until the newness of everything sinks amongst
7 comments
Read more

On The Concept Of Random Capitalization (and standing out)

                                                                                      It’s unique. From what I know, it was introduced in John Green’s book, Paper towns in which the main protagonist, Margo Roth Spigelman believes in the concept of random capitalization. According to that, iT Is oKAy foR a sentTEnce tO Go LiKE this. Pretty cool right? It makes her stand out in the book because of her uncommon beliefs but how she justifies it seems just right. She thinks that the rules of capitalization are too unfair to the words in middle. Which is justified. Also, kind of extraordinary. Although, I must say, Microsoft Word wasn’t happy with my random capitalization, its red lines under the text. I believe that it is unique and actually good because what we’ve been doing is what has been done previously by others. And by simply following it, there’s not much that we’re doing to change things. I’ve seen some people do this and I feel it’s a way of standing ou
8 comments
Read more

Thoughts On An Airplane

Its night time and I’m on an airplane and when I look down, all I can see are specks of illumination, a sign of life. If I were to exaggerate and speak, there is no square metre of land that is accessible to us and not owned by us.  By us, I mean humans. Individually we may or may not own a lot of land. But if you see it amongst us humans, we have huge portions of it. Like, huge. So large they can house millions, hold cities, metropolises. From above, the land looked so vast. And the vastness did not fail to fascinate me. It was as if an enchanting spell. So much that I'm yet to comprehend. I have to admit you get a better view from a height. Okay following this statement, it might go a little on the crazy side. By crazy I mean my hopelessly imaginative side. Flying over cities, like I said, I see specks of light. They look like stars in the night sky. Sure they don't twinkle. But there's spots of light in the dark. Just like we see in the sky. Apologies, bu
5 comments
Read more