What’s A 21st Century Guy To Do?

Lets say, for a moment, that you’re a twenty-something megalomaniac of above average competence and ambition in the 21st century. As a patrician in Roman times, from say 100 BC to 400 AD, your path was clear – hone your skills in combat (for what else were you doing as a child), rise through the ranks of your peers and attain your status as a noteworthy general in an outlying region. Defeat some barbarians, gain the adoration of your legions, usurp the republic/empire and submit yourself to early assassination, though as the ruler of the civilized world.

In the medieval times you take over some band of soldiers and find your fortune in some pious manifestation of your avarice. In the renaissance, you command a ship to mysterious lands of legend. Even in the 19th and 20th centuries you can get caught up on some side of an epic good v. evil battle, finding meaning in the vanquishing of evil and/or good.

In the future, you’re some variety of space cowboy. Excelling as some flavor of officer or masquerading as an interstellar fighter pilot – either way you’re on the frontier, in space, exploring the unknown realms of the universe. What could be better? A power trip on behalf of all of mankind and morbid fanscination of the unknown to boot.

Ideally, the limiting factor of one’s ascension is only his intrinsic potential. In the days of yesteryear and yore, the fusion of drive, ambition, and talent propelled strapping young lads inexorably toward their glass ceilings or unfortunate demises.

In a time of disillusion, when nothing matters more than anything else, when the courts of public opinion convene long before the trials have even started it is nearly impossible to be noteworthy at anything of grand import without being carefully deceitful from birth. It is not virtue or skill that distinguishes one from another. It is the careful presentation of vague virtue and specious skill, the deft manipulation of the millions of similiarly ambiguous masses; those are the attributes favored by current society.

Equilibrium breeds decay and decay is self-perpetuating. In a world of balance, where everything is already in its place (for better or worse), nothing but the slavish protection of shallow contentment is important to the people. Such people eventually long for the past, forget what got them to where they are, and succumb to the irresistible will of those things passionate and new. To buttress or seige, to renew or restart, to glue or fracture? Or to do nothing? These are the questions for this age. And I don’t know the answer.

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