My good friend Ben Kepple recently had an interesting take on a variation of an old question, which asked "If you were to be stranded on an island with only ten CDs, which ten would you take?" In this post to his blog, Ben answered, quite correctly, I might add, that that is a silly question. If I end up stranded on some island somewhere, I'm guessing that I will have bigger problems than what CDs I had on hand. Much in the same vein, Ben then went on to say that he'd take a large stash of precious metals instead, because if he took the CDs, sure, he'd have CDs, but that's all he'd have. The CDs, as Ben says, would be worthless. But with gold bars, for example, he could actually buy something. This is true. Ben didn't take it the logical step further by stating that, with the gold and silver bars, one could just buy all the CDs one needed.
Of course, then Ben went on to cop out and actually answer the somewhat inane question by listing his ten selections.
Really, though, what does such a question really prove? What kind of a person you are, as measured by what CDs you feel one cannot do without? Well, fine, but why not simply ask, "what are your ten favorite CDs?" Why is some emergency scenario always required to get people to think about who or what they like ("Who would you most/least want to be stranded with on an island?" "What pet would you like to be stranded with on an island?" "If you could take a life supply of one beverage on the island, what would it be?" and so on).
And why did I write about this?
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