Apathy Sketchpad

I work, ultimately, for Colgate. I’m part of a research group whose task is to find new ways to diagnose various tooth ailments and run clinical trials to test new Colgate products’ abilities to prevent or treat them (or sometimes, to debunk similar research done by rival toothpaste companies, since that’s how science works these days, apparently). The aim is to make sure Colgate always has some new thing to sell you to make your teeth better. And I think we’re fairly good at that. And not just us; all the companies are — people’s teeth are far better now than they were in the middle ages. But sometimes I wonder if we’re onto a loser here, as a society.

Capitalism is good, of course, in general. It seems to keep most people alive and gets most of them contributing. And those that don’t are forced to wear hoodies and populate the next generation with ridiculously named children (as is my understanding). But here we are pumping millions into developing incrementally better toothpastes and other companies spend just as much slightly improving shampoos and cosmetics and what-have-you, and I can’t help feel that if the money and equipment and scientific knowledge mankind currently pours into the quest to discover the absolute best moisturising cream had been put towards research into, say, curing cancer, we might well have cracked it by now.

Trouble is, not that many people have cancer. Everyone has teeth, practically, and those that don’t can be sold Polygrip. There’s no money in bettering society. There’s lots of money in bettering society’s hair. The same goes for things like football: you can make more money spending ten million pounds on a squad of players than you will spending it on medical research.

You could probably fix that if you got all countries to agree a massive tax on all payments to sports stars, say 90%, but that would kill the small-scale game. Ultimately, though, this doesn’t concern me, because the fact is we have to die of something and cancer is as good a way as any. If we cure that, and prevent heart disease, then people’s bones will give out. If we stop that, they’ll all go mad as they approach 170. Cure that and they’ll just think of another even more ingenious way to die, like succumbing to trivial illnesses like the common cold or a bad haircut aged 234. Or their lungs will give out. Or their digestive system will pack in.

If we could keep everyone totally healthy all of the time, nobody would ever die in accidents, and accidents would be pretty rare — I’d be more careful if I was going to miss out on 500 years of life than if I’m going to miss 50. You’d have to start putting people down when they hit a certain age. And of course, everyone would get all up in arms when it was a celebrity. Imagine what would happen if the headline one day was “DAVID TENNANT APPROACHING 200, DEATH SCHEDULED SATURDAY“. No, that would never work.

Of course, the government could hand out extra life then as payment for certain things (such as services to one’s country, or inventing some wonderful new machine, or making a large anonymous donation to the Labour party). They could give an extra 25 or 50 years, or even keep all the big achievers alive forever in a vast underground bunker or special island or something. And then you could have some crazy murderer get loose there or something; that would make a great film. You could have someone a bit like Bono, and some genius inventor (for preference, played by John Rhys-Davis), and a great charitable type who was against any violence against the murderer. Oh, and you’d need to have some great psychologist or something who’d studied the murderer before. You always need that guy.

Hmm. This has rather carried itself away from my original point, whatever exactly that was.

See, this is why I never get things done. I start doing them and end up plotting great films which never get made. If one did start production I feel sure I’d go off at a tangent part-way through and end up discovering something of great scientific importance. But try telling that to a film producer. Which brings me back to my original point — how much money is spent on films (which doesn’t usually appear to make them any better) and not on important things.

I know. I’m as surprised as you are.