Struggles for Modern Man (and Woman)

Sit through an intro literature class. There are five classic struggles that man (and women, though they were created back before women were quite worth mentioning) could face in the scope of a story. These struggles are no way limited to the narrative. They also sum up pretty well the challenges of real life.

As humankind has developed through history, so to has its ability to cope with these challenges. Indeed, today we are much safer from many of the things that worried our ancestors.

Let's take them one at a time...

Man vs. Nature
Poisonous plants, hostile elements, hungry beasts.

Through systematic classifications, better building practices, meteorology, weapons of self defense and disaster planning we have vastly improved our ability to cope with the natural world. Do you often doubt if you will "make it through winter?" Nope. While the occasional extreme climate event may displace millions, the causalities are usually kept to a minimum in countries with efficient and reactive rescue infrastructures.

Man vs. Man
Theft, murder, deceit.

While our fellow humans still can pose a threat to us, we have locks on our doors, personal firearms, security systems, fraud protection, banks, and safety service personnel. Apart from getting stuck in long lines behind masses of your fellow humans, we tend not to be put at odds with each other as often as in the past. Murder, after all, has been on a steady decline on the western world for 700 years.

Man vs. Society
Oppressive social norms and practices.

This one still gets us from time to time, but things are getting a bit better. The internet offers community for the outcasts, social mobility allows people to relocate and start anew, courts exist to try to bring justice to all. While we are certainly still subject to the world in which we live, there seems to be a growing sense of multiplicity, at least allowing people to have more choice about what world that is.

Man vs. the Supernatural
God, destiny, demons, the Fae.

If these entities are real... they have gotten trickier over the years. We rarely face the supernatural in an overt showing of power, and there are many who outright deny their existence and refuse to deal with them as such. I certainly don't discount their existence, and while I wouldn't say that humanity on the whole has improved in its coping with these struggles, it is true that many religions have "softened" their hard lines in favor of a more open ideology.

and finally...

Man vs. Himself
Restraint, fear, doubt

I don't believe that in the thousands of years of human existence we have improved in regard to this challenge. In fact, in the modern world, this is the prevailing worry. Is Mother Nature going to squash humanity under her thumb? Not likely. But could humanity, in its unrestrained self indulgence, destroy the world and itself in the process? Its seems a growing possibility.

In the midst of developing technology, developing social structures, developing interpersonal models, developing health care, developing building techniques, developing science, developing economics, developing spiritual communities, developing governments, and developing infrastructures... humans aren't really developing.

Imagine the possibilities of better tools, better communities, better relationships, better medicine, better housing, better learning, better business, better prayer, better laws, and better transportation. Wouldn't it seem that with all that better, the world would be so much better?

But is it? Some days I think so. But other days I look around, and I see people up to the same old tricks. New systems become sites for new domination. New resources create new poverties. New rules create new bad rulers. Without self restraint, without the ability to challenge the self, no advancement in the struggle against nature, others, society or the supernatural will ever lead to better lives. The man with no self mastery will squander most of the resources afforded by the other advancements... and the ones that he cannot somehow toss aside, he will learn to ignore out of indolent ingratitude. Soon, the near utopia around him comes to reflect the inner wasteland he never addressed.

We need to quit driving and eating the world into glacieral melting. Quit spending into oppressive deficit. Quit channeling our stress and negativity onto all around.

We are among the most powerful people to have ever walked the earth. We have risen to nearly every challenge. Now its its time to meet the one power who's power grows as fast as us. Our own. Humans are no longer infants wailing for their next meal. We have advanced and developed power in this world.

It is time we wielded that power with a more mature outlook.

Sometimes it seems, that the more powerful someone becomes, the more self righteous they become. The great can do no wrong. But in reality, this is precisely the opposite of true. As we become great, our actual ability to do wrong increases with our power.

If we ever want to see the greatest good come to pass, we must commit ourselves to besting ourselves. We must be devoted to live out our better natures, seek our better destinies, and become our better selves.

True. We have yet to explore space at warp speed. Yet it is our inner struggle, Man vs. Himself, not space, that in our future days will prove to be the final frontier.