The human capacity for self-destruction

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GilesGuthrie

GilesGuthrie

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I was posting this thread, and it got me thinking...

What is it about humans that makes them strive so hard to reach their goals, and then, when they're getting really close, they go and throw it all away with some stupid indiscretion?

There's loads of examples, not least the one in the referred thread (where if you can't be bothered to read it, the 2002 F3000 champion has been stripped of his title after testing positive for cannabis consumption). As another example, the actor Hugh Grant, caught receiving oral sex from some gutter hooker just as he was releasing a movie.

I wonder what it is that motivates these people to do things. I've come close to losing everything in the past, but it's always been because I've allowed a niggling problem to snowball by ignoring it, which is kinda the same I suppose.

Anyone got anything sensible to offer on the subject?
 
Well, the intelegent being that I am, I presume it's caused by a feeling of immunity.

Say you have a person, call him Paul. Paul is a racer. Paul starts racing little time. Paul then makes his own team. Then he gets a Protege and starts racing in the Speedworld Challenge with Bonnacorsi Racing, his team, and Tri-Star, a supporter. Paul starts doing better and better. He then wins several races and becomes the top Mazda racer in the Speedworld challenge. Now, this is where we currently are in time. Present. Now we get theoretical: Paul starts becoming full of himself. Over-comfident. So he gets cocky. "I'm good enough to win races lets try screwing around and winning during the race" so he starts by bumping people out the way slightly. Then he starts driving the piss out of the poor Protege. One race he's super comfident "I can win this race with Maz's 323 if his pop would let me!" but, then, it happens. He's flying around the track, tires squeeling, engine over revving, and he makes an error. He flips the car several times, becomes paralized or worse, and never can race again. All because he thought he was immune. "It will never happen to me" but it does.

Now that last half is only theoreticly, it won't happen cause Paul doesn't screw around.

And it happens to everyone who becomes over-confident, immune, or full of themselfs.
 
Good point, Maz. It's a big world - no matter how good you are, there's always someone better, and it's wise to remember that. The other side of the issue has to do with Man himself.

Man is a rational being, unlike any other animal. Animals have instincts and behaviours that automatically - and unerringly - show them what they need to do to survive. Men do not.

Man is given his only tool of survival - his mind - but he must use it by choice. Many people fail to understand this, and thus fail to predict the consequences of their own actions when those actions are not ultimately constructive (and thus, ultimately moral).
 
Well, I tend to differ.

My dad is the best Mazda Master tech in the nation. Now, before you or anyone starts to say no, he's been asked by reps and big wigs with Mazda to move to Texas, Cali, or KC to work directly for them. They even offered to help us move. Sometimes they call him and ask him to go to a dealership near him to fix a car that the mechanics there can't fix.

One thing that's different, though, is that he doesn't go around saying he's the best or anything, he does his job and that's that. Every year he's asked to come to the Mazda Master tech competition, but since '93, he's turned it down cause the other guys cheat. In '93, 12 mechs each had thier own screwed up MPV to fix. Each had exactly the same stuff done to it, and the engine light was on. Some guy from Mass. placed first with an impossible time of 1 hr, 38 mins and 29 secs. My dad got 9th. It was found that the 8 before my dad, and one after, cheated, the winner simply took out the insturment cluster and removed the bulb. Did my dad get anything for the other guys cheating? No. That's the main reason he doesn't do those anymore.

There's been many mechanics at my dad's place that became full of them selfs, and then have literally hurt people. One guy worked on a 2nd gen RX-7. Replaced hoses and did a check up. Car comes back to the shop the next day, burned to the ground, and the driver was in the hospital for 1 week and a half. RX-7s don't just burn down. This guy messed up, and not only did it cost him his job, but it costs the costomer his car and almost his life.

Self-destruction turning into public destruction.
 
Same this with drinking and driving. People do it all the time. Then they kill someone. And thier defence? "I've done it a lot of times, nothing happened" But then it did happen.
 
yup.

Ask anyone else my age I bet they are clueless...

I advanced!
 
This issue comes to the forefront so often in the US. How many times have we seen a rising Star in the NBA, NFL or other sports league end up dead due to a drug overdoes?

I recall a Snowboarding Gold medalist from a recent Winter Olympics that had his medal jeopardized due to a positive marijuana test.

Where does this propesity for self destruction come from? I think it has to do with our nature. One that we were born with. After times of high stress, we need to relax, and recover from this. People now adays are stressed to the point of explosion. They no longer relax enough to recover. How many of you working class people have had to work through a weekend? I have more times than I care to think about.

The people that are put under such a spot light, and such tremendous public pressure, they think they don't have the time to relax. They resort to artificial means. What they don't realize is that this is counter productive. It may help at the outset, but too soon and too easily it takes more time from your life.

I have cut down considerably on the drinking that I used to do. Why? Because I relax enough while drinking, but can't perfrom the next day. I used to play GT3 to relax. Now due to OLR, I place too much stress on nailing a time down. Subsequently, I have to go back and run the Roadster enduro to unwind.

Is this self desturctive? I think this capacity is born with us, and we carry it forever. It is only through stringent self control that we can use this propensity as an opportunity.

We, as a basic animal, can only take a pressure cooker situation for so long. I have a rough time staying 100% on an enduro for two hours, I could imagine what these guys are like after a 200mph - 2 hour adrenaline rush.

I've played paintball against a professional team (Black Shields out of Montreal) for an entire day. I was so exhausted, and wiped out the next day I could barely move. Think that if I did that on a level that the Formula one drivers do, practice monday though Thursday, qualify on Friday and Saturday. Then Race on Sunday. I'd be burnt out the following week.

I'm still up in the air on Marijuana. So many people I know have used it, and it is so readily available, (especially in VT) that it starts to take on a prohibition era speakeasy atmosphere. Statistics state that a bit more than 1 in three people have used/tried it. I know people who are more against alcohol than they are against pot.

It's a wierd world we live in.

For example Jeff and Tracy

My two cents

AO
 
I wouldnt say there is always someone better than you just look at m. schumacher he is currently the best in the world of formula 1 and every race he earns himself 22m everytime he is the most higly paid sportsman of the world and yet he doesn't let it get to his head maybe its just a case of remembering who you are and where you came from to understand that you shouldnt get to big for your boots when your at the top
 
hehehe Snoop...

DA, a ton of kids at my school use Pot all the time...there's about 6 on my bus who use it, deal it, and everything...I mean I'm not pissed at them cause of it, I just think that if they want to screw up thier lives let them. And they tell these stories about how Andy passed out onto a bush and how once Anthony rode a bike into a tree while high...it's funny as hell to me atleast. I know I'll never do that stuff so it doesn't affect me.

It's still bad, but I'm not going to try and stop it...

Think of it this way: If these people screw up thier lives, then they allow the people with non-screwed up lives to become better.

yes? no?
 
Originally posted by Der Alta
My two cents
Click to expand...

Value for money as always...

I can understand that people look for ways to relax, and sometimes they kinda lose the plot, but the phenomenon I was wondering about was the 'throwing it all away' thing.

I think I've come to the following conclusion:

A lot of the time, it's due to two things: a refusal to consolidate, and a feeling of immunity.

Anyone who's really driven will push themselves to the absolute limit, but will refuse to accept that things are pretty good as they are at the moment, and then take some time to settle, and come to terms with what they have. This settling and coming to terms is what I refer to as consolidation. On the other hand, the really driven people suffer from the syndrome that was best described in the U2 lyric from Even Better Than The Real Thing "Ambition bites the nails of success".

The immunity thing is well known. It's the 'couldn't happen to me' syndrome that MazKid described so well...
 

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