Trial and Error

As you get older you do get wiser. It’s not that you’re necessarily that much smarter but you’ve picked up all these life experiences through trial and error. Trail and error is still one of the most effective ways of learning.

Imagine life as one of the earliest of our ancestors. They had to learn EVERYTHING by trial and error. They couldn’t google it. They didn’t have Wikipedia. They couldn’t call a friend. There wasn’t anybody to ask.

Think about it. They’re all sitting around wondering why they can barely move and one by one they seem to drop dead after three to seven days. Water! Suddenly one of them discovers that if you drink water, you don’t feel like that. Trial and error.

But then they’re sitting around again.

Gorrak: “Ugh. Me hurt inside and growl noises coming out from here.”

Other Cavemen: “Kill him. He has an evil spirit in him.”

Of course, ultimately after killing each and every person that became hungry they soon realized that this was a inevitable natural experience that everyone had. They had to conclude either

a. Evil spirit possession was just a reality and must be dealt with through death
b. Perhaps it was like the water thing. If we eat something then maybe this won’t happen.

Trial and error.

Of course, then you have them eating anything. Dirt. Hmmm, cross that off the list…it tastes like dirt and doesn’t help. And obviously as the bodies pile up by eating poisonous plants they start to notice a pattern. Eat this, don’t eat that. Trial and error. I’m sure they perhaps even got wise enough to convince the stupid cavemen to do the trail tasting and then waited to see the effects…

I’m sure menstruation perplexed the hell out of them. “She’s bleeding…kill her before she dies anyway.” And as the bodies again piled up they figured out that she only bleeds for a few days and survives. Then they worship her. And hunt food for her. And suddenly they have this list of things they must do for her. But they don’t. Hunting for food is hard enough and they still want time to go throw rocks at each other (let’s face it…there were no sports so they had to improvise on how to waste their time). So in a key pivotal moment they shift the burden of work onto her sighting the hunting/gathering as a major stressful situation that equates to the 2,583 other activities that must be performed to survive.

I’m sure there were so many humorous trial and error snippets from early history. “What if I take this rock and thrust it upon my friends head?” Friend screams, grabs a different rock and thrusts back. Trial and error…don’t thrust rocks into heads.

What fun times…