fifty-fifty
i’m catching up on some of my television programs and just finished the season finale of the usa program “the 4400″. in a nutshell, the premise of the show is that over the past 50 years or so, all of those ufo abductions have actually been people taken by the future. in the future, they were changed and then sent back to present day seattle. the people were changed in the future, altered by a chemical that caused many of them to develop special abilities. some heal, some see the future, some can make you see things, some can make you think things. the reason they were all altered and sent back is to prevent a catastrophe in the future.
in this season, the chemical that gives the special powers was isolated and developed in to an injection by the government and stolen by a group made of 4400 with the intention of freely distributing it to the public. instead of having the government control who gets “special powers”, their theory is that they need to give it to everyone if we have any change of survival in the future.
now, i’m not going to discuss the logic behind their plan. instead, i wanted to talk about how the season ended. specifically, the last few minutes of this episode. the 4400 gave the syringes to a group of people to distribute. except, there is a catch with the chemical. take the chemical, and your odds are 50/50. you either get the super power, which is random as best as anyone can tell, or you die. you know the odds. do you take it?
i’ve been trying to figure out what factors i would use to make the decision. obviously, we do things every day that provide a risk of death. driving. walking down the street. eating. but the reason we do these things is because the risk of doing them is minimal, at best. yes, people die every day from car accidents, murder, allergic reactions, or food poisoning. but the change that it will happen to you is so insignificant that we take it for granted and live our lives. we need to drive to get to work. we need to go places. we need to eat.
we also do things that have a higher degree of risk. we get on airplanes. we engage in sports. we do stupid things around the house, like walking down stairs carrying too many boxes and not seeing the steps. we stick forks in the toaster.
some people do things that have even higher degrees of risk. they skydive, or bungee jump, or rock climb. clearly, the risks associated with these activities is higher. with the amount of people that do these activities every day, the chance that you will be that fatality is still such a small chance that people continue to do these activities.
i think the first thing that differentiates the 50/50 proposition is that the “good” 50 has the potential to be really, really good. of course, your super power could be that your fingernails grow really fast (i love family guy). it could also be the ability to walk through walls. or heal cancer. the adrenalin rush from skydiving is a positive result of doing something that comes with a risk of injury or death. but what kind of adrenalin rush would you get from doing something where your chance of survival is 50/50 and surviving? that’s russian roulette with one bullet in a gun with two chambers. but that says nothing about the potential extra reward of developing a unique ability that may change the world.
i think there are a lot of different types of people that would make the decision for a lot of different reasons. motivation is another factor. i suppose some people would risk the chance simply because they could develop an ability that they could market for a profit. tragically, that’s a sad commentary on our society, but it’s an unfortunate reality. i could also envision some people being so desperate that they would do anything to make a change & take it and they will either die and end their perceived misery or, in an instant, change their lives, maybe for the better or maybe not.
but what about me? would i take the chance? i have a good life. a fifty-fifty proposition that could end with me losing the good life (for good!) seems like it would make a pretty easy decision on my part. but what if? what if the power i developed was the ability to cure disease? what if i was the only person in the world that could develop that specific gift? sure, i wouldn’t know that going in and, as i said above, it could happen that my gift was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. what if having a power like that corrupted me and i used it the wrong way? what if i healed the next hitler? what if i couldn’t heal the next martin luther king, jr.?
whatever my decision is & whatever i feel inside, i hope that if a decision comes to me, even if it isn’t as grand or as risky, that i take the time to evaluate the possibilities. i hope that i make the decision that provides the greatest good. i hope that it doesn’t change me from who i am and i hope it brings me closer to who i want to be. i hope the odds of me becoming that person are greater than fifty-fifty.