Turns out that after some research, more expensive running shoes tend to lead to more injuries because the feet become weak from disuse. You spend money and are worse off at the end.

This being me, I can't help but draw an analogy to the moral realm. We have a million technologies which keep us from having to exercise our "moral muscles", all sorts of pills and devices and, shall we say, surgeries, which all act to exclude perceived sources of pain from our lives and allow us to be "authentic" or perhaps loyal to our feelings.

But in the end, you end up a less charitable person, a less giving person, and a more self-centered person. Abortion, which starts for the "hard cases", moves to be a general method of contraception, and next thing you know infanticide is all the rage in Europe when a genetically inferior child somehow manages to be born. Plastic surgery, which starts as a theraputic technique for soldiers and such, becomes a cosmetic necessity which distorts our ability to see beauty in difference.

I can assure you that you do not wish me to write a paragraph on my opinions concerning our treatment of body hair as a society.

So this is just a brainstorm, so I'm not sure about its truth value, but it does seem somewhat plausable that the more money you spend trying to insulate yourself from unfortunate events, the more painful anything that gets through is. Perhaps if we spent more of life running barefoot we'd be better in many ways besides having stronger feet.

Labels: contraception, morality