Powers
The Covenant - horrible movie, but an interesting point: if you had been born with specials powers, could do something that no one around you could do, how would you know? How could you develop them? Skills require a long time to develop, more than one human lifespan. So, you can learn to do something more effectively if someone teaches you, just as that person learned and expanded a bit upon the knowledge of someone else. If you are the first with an ability, you need to seek out others with your powers, if any exist. Together, you could discover what you couldn't separately. Kind of like sex: solo vs couple, but with powers!
How would you know if you had powers? If the method of releasing them were complex. What if it required beating yourself with a baseball bat, how would you find out? If it involved slipping a bat inside one of your lower cavities, I've seen pictures, and none of those people look like they had any special powers, except the power to excite others. But there are easier ways for that power to manifest.
How do you think you might become invisible? Or fly? Would you really trust jumping off of a building? How would you know that flying only works off of buildings less than 20 feet high or greater than 30 feet high, and you happen to be on a 25 floor building this time? Or that you become visible again when seeing naked people... scary stuff! (Since I do not believe in inductive reasoning, ever event appears to be unique. Just because I could fly yesterday in no way implies I could fly today. So, how could someone like me ever find or use powers? :(
What kind of powers could or do exist in this world? Sure, we've all seen a man fly, but have we seen a man with the ability to see through women's clothing (or through any material in the Universe except bra and panties)? In comics, mentalists can make people do whatever they want, but maybe in the real world, one can only make people act like chickens or dump you to sleep with your best friend? Then there is The Flash, people with super speed, but what if they lack the lighten quick reflexes needed at those speeds, so they become the next smear on the wall - or so fast in bed that they lead sad lonely lives? So many possible powers, yet I see so few to choice from in literature. I hope the world is more complex when it comes time to discover my real secret powers!
What about side effects of powers? Using them caused a sun somewhere in the universe to go out, or some one on this planet to suffer or die, or it shortened your life? Is it just better to stay with the flock, pretend that you are the same? Or take a chance, try to be someone new, try out your powers, sure it might kill you (or someone else or some far off planet), but it could make you stronger, or allow you to find others like you, or teach you something you could pass along to future people like you. But, how could you find them to pass or get passed info? With a blog!
The Edward
1 comment:
Not sure that I buy into your assertion that skills require multi-generational learning.
Walking on two legs is a fairly complex skill, involving eye/body/inner-ear coordination, world-modeling, reasonably responsive reactions to a changing environment - and requires an urge to overcome a level of effort/dexterity unnecessary for quadrupedal locomotion.
Yet birds, toddlers and some chimpanzees/lizards are able to learn this skill rather rapidly without instruction.
How does a child a know that they can stand and walk, b) know in advance that there are advantages to bipedal locomotion, and c) choose to overcome the reluctance to expose themselves to the potential danger of falling?
I submit that the process is much like the way a newborn foal knows to get up on it's feet - it is simply driven by instinct.
While instincts may take millenia to become genetically engrained - they only provide the motivation to try. The skill to actually perform the act seems to come fairly quickly.
In summary, I believe your statements better apply to a subset of skills - those that might be labelled 'unnatural' (not driven by inborn instincts).
The first human to learn to fly would likely do so by accident, or as an extention of some other existing skill, such as jumping.
Should this become a skill useful in increasing the number of offspring or their survivability, it would be likely that the instinct to attempt such an act would eventually become genetically engrained.
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