Don't give up the fight

Yesterday evening, while watching yet again another episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I realized that I might have sounded too fatalistic in recent posts whenever I made reference to the material reality: the fact that things are the way they currently are does not mean that we cannot or shall not wish and fight for a change. In the end, it is the conjoined effort of all those who dream of a better future what propels us forward, bringing about astonishing discoveries, wonderful technologies and  heartwarming social change.

In the episode "Statistical probabilities" a group of genetically engineered (and very awkward) humans project through mathematical models of incredible complexity that the ongoing war is going to end unavoidably in a defeat, including an enormous amount of casualties, so the most sensible path ahead is surrendering and saving the life of "900 billion humans" (sic). They continued to project that, within five or six generations a resistance movement will grow to have enough power that they will overthrow the conquerors with a significantly smaller loss of human life.

Photo: Daniel Alvarado Silvera

Of course, the proposal met with a long of opposition from the idealistic soldiers who argued that they'd rather die than surrender, and my first reaction was to side with the scientists: if the invaders are willing to respect the lives of the defeated, why keeping the fight? It brought back the echos of the adage that "A winner never quits...", which always induces a certain visceral reaction from my side, because frequently there are more than enough reasons to quit and cut your losses.

In this case, the main characters manage to show to the troupe of gifted humans that their models, strong as they were, could not grasp the complexity of the human behavior, particularly when you consider the capacity of humans to work together to produce outputs that would be simply unthinkable for a single person. In other words, even if the chances seem to be slim, there are still possibilities to revert the course of the war, one just have to find them.

It turns out that the so-called "emotional support" can be a complete game changer in this kind of situations. Having someone that supports your points of view, that provides useful feedback or even unconditional affection has been demonstrated to improve not only the self esteem, but also the stamina and the creativity.

The bottom line is that, as in the 1973 song by Bob Marley "Get Up, Stand Up", you can only take care of your loved ones if you keep fighting for a better world. But you have to pick your battles lest you run out of strength and end up defeated and powerless. Have a nice evening.