DO NOT READ THIS

Only just yesterday I witnessed a horrible example of complete lack of self-control. And for once it wasn't me.

You see, there are certain things that exist on the internet, findable through google image search, that one should never look up. I'm not even going to mention any as I have a horrible feeling that people who read this will lack the self-control needed to not google them and then blame me.

This whole topic came up at the hands of a skype status my brother and sister shared. Both were expressing their disgust at something someone had shown them. My sister then informed me that I probably didn't want to google **********. So I didn't. I mentioned it in passing to another friend, who then googled it. I'll admit I was performing a little experiment on human curiosity at the time and she failed with flying colours. As she does most things. But that's not important.

I then went back to my sister. I remarked at how little self-control people could have with thins. I then severely warned her not to look up a certain thing. Her end went quiet for a few minutes. Then I got a message saying, “I wish I hadn't done that.” Adding a few more head-shaped dents in my “wall of frustration” was not quite enough. So I set to pondering the remarkable, amazing, and disturbing thing that is human curiosity.

It is a common joke about pushing buttons. We just love to push buttons. Something inside us is fascinated by the way just pushing a small round piece of plastic can do so much. We want to know what they do. So, of course, we push them. Especially when they are big and red and specifically say “Do not push”. This coincides exactly with the google image search. Being told to not look something up naturally makes you want to do it. There is this feeling that something is being hidden from you, something that might be good. That others don't want you to have. Obviously those exact thoughts don't exactly apply to every situation where you are forbidden from doing something. But it's the general idea.

Recently at youth group here we had a presentation given by a youth leader about a four month mission trip she went on to Haiti. While there was more to it than just this the one thing that really stuck out was the shoes. They brought hundreds and hundreds of pairs of shoes with them to distribute to the people of Haiti. One thing they immediately noticed, however, was when they would bring the children in to find them shoes that fit, they were never interested in the shoes on the table. They all went right for the boxes of shoes that had not been opened yet. This initially puzzled them but it became clear; the kids couldn't help but think that there was something being hidden from them. They were convinced that there must be something better hidden in those boxes.

A lot of this would have to do with human nature, I believe, while one's upbringing may often have something to do with it. Just look way back to where the world initially went wrong; the Garden of Eden. All Adam and Eve had to do was live there, eat the fruit of any tree except one. Just one. And they couldn't stay away. Why couldn't they? It's actually relatively simple, at least how I see it.

God clearly said to not eat of it or they would die. At that point it's a relatively simple matter to not eat it. If I said you would die if you googled [insert name here] you probably wouldn't, would you? The direness of the consequence held them away. At that point in their lives the idea was, “I'm happy and comfortable the way I am. If I eat that I'm going to die. I can eat anything else. Why would I ever want to eat that?” Very easy, right? Well, along comes the Devil, the Father of Lies. He plants doubt in Eve's mind, convincing her that actually, to eat the fruit wasn't a death penalty, but it was just God trying to keep them away from becoming like God themselves. He instilled in her the idea that something was being kept away. Suddenly, eating the fruit seemed like a very attractive option, something to be desired.

The take home message here is basically just what my economics professor explained yesterday. If the opportunity cost is greater than your income, you are losing money, meaning you are not as well off as you could be. The “opportunity cost” is basically how much money, whether in direct cash or not, you could be making in your next best opportunity. If you are making less than you could be you are working at a loss. This rather self-centered mindset is a prime example of basically everything I've discussed. There is something more we could have, and we want it. That's pretty much what drives the world. Sad, isn't it?