I Thought WE Had the Brains

I was watching Nature on PBS the other evening. It was a show about Death Valley in all its extreme glory and danger. Tiny fish who have adapted to live in highly saline water- when it is available. Lizards that can tell the difference in water content in different plants. Adapt or die to this extreme- very extreme- environment.

But then there's humanity- the crown of creation. This is the animal with the amazing pre-frontal cortex that makes decisions, weighs choices- and even goes against all logic and intuition and even biological need. They told of a man who tried to walk across it but died- mummified and not even attacked by any predator- within a mile of his car where the water was.

They showed people running in a race across death valley followed by an entourage of other people spraying them with water. They run through this extreme land to win a race. One of the people they talked to had already won the race twice. Wouldn't once be enough?

I kept asking, Why? Why would anyone even want to do this? And I kept getting no real answer. It is truly amazing that people would choose, willingly, with their logical, thinking, advanced human brain to do such things. Just to prove they can do it. They must live with a sense of immortality. Nothing can happen to them. They must live with a need to prove themselves over and over and over. They must always be on the lookout for the exciting that moves beyond the mundane.

The lizards and birds and snakes and fish hide in the ground or the shade. They have one instinct- survival. It makes you wonder why we have lost some of that instinct. It may be the trade-off with the ability to think and make our own free-will decisions. I am sure that most of us have moved away from the best decisions to the dangerous ones many, many times. In the end it may be what truly does separate us from the other animals. We can overcome instinct and common sense to find a good time or to stretch ourselves to new limits.