“Upbringing could pose as a hindrance to survival.”

This thought sounded absurd to me at first, but further upon review, I have observed how decisions based on convictions and values, for example morals, could be a reason for apparent hardship. This was my reality as life recently threw me curveball, and the project manager in me did a postmortem on why this could be. It was during this period that I also had a conversation with a good friend who alluded that it is possible that good upbringing could be a disadvantage to survival.

Hence, some questions I sought answers to in this regard became:

• Is it correlation or is it a cause that upbringing could pose as a hindrance to survival?

• Does my will and desire to be good mean I will potentially lose out on current opportunities and potentially future ones?

• Do my decisions serve as input to my life algorithm?

• Is life like Netflix or Google algorithms, that show content – in this case experiences and opportunities – based on previous history or system configuration?

I understand an algorithm to be a set of instructions designed to perform a specific task or set of operations for solving a problem in a finite number of steps. Is there a guide that we program with our inputs? Does my decision to say no, to an immoral situation, preclude me from future opportunities, in an immoral world? Of course, my decision is borne out of my convictions
which have been largely formed from inputs from the sum of my life’s experiences. Hence my “choice tastebuds” have been programmed to churn out responses and preferences in various situations.

I have been told severally that Korean shows are the rave, and I have decided not to try them out, as I believe this will distort my content algorithm. The type of shows presented may be misaligned with my actual taste. Therefore, I diligently guard my Netflix account, since I do not know how long I could get away with out of character content consumption. The effect would be an algorithmic adjustment resulting from consistent inputs of new content selection over a period. My Netflix account would no longer resemble my preferred, or should I say former taste of content. It would seem like a new account. Is this the same with life? Is there such a thing as spiritual algorithm? Can this be explained using the bible verse, “things that are seen are made of that which is unseen”?

Can we imagine our life decisions and what we input into ourselves becoming the basis for the set of rules that program our life, including things we have not seen or heard?

When we think of this, we can see how this might be the case. We have all heard statements like, “Oh no! don’t take that to him o, he is too honest” or “No she is a prude”.

The characterizations of you living your morality can be colorful, but also does it serve to derail your participation in the economy, does it prevent you from creating value. Do you end up being a yellow goat walking into the pen of red goats?

by Osaretin Oswald Guobadia