On Doing Great Things

I have thought lately that the vast majority of people never undertake great things not because they can't, but because they actually don't want to. There is a basic principle of human interaction - people always do that which they perceive will give them the greatest return. In other words, actions reveal real desires, regardless of what people claim they desire. Regarding the object of desires, in our society, people want comfort over truth. Most desire pleasure over passion. And how do we know this? Because people spend money that they don't have in an attempt to appear better off than the person in the car next to them.

Part of the thing that makes great things great is the fact that they are undertaken by so few. If everyone did something truly great with their lives, before long we'd raise our standards by which we distinguish the great from the mundane. We know that everyone doesn't do something great - in fact, many settle for the truly mundane. We know this because of the great lengths that people go to in order to "find themselves" - and with little success. Many simply assume that life is meant to be lived purusing the hopelessly mundane.

Is this a phenomenon of the post-modern era? Or has this crisis always been part of the human condition? As we escape from eras defined by oppression, perhaps now we are arriving in an era defined by a new type of oppression - the oppression of passion by the material. That is to say that today, lives are increasingly devoid of passion, and instead filled with a shallow quest to maintain the acumulation of material. It has often been said that most things in our society are done because of an obligation to a mortgage.