What If You Fly?

What If You Fly?

Feeling the dripping sear of wax down his back, Icarus knows that his wings — and therefore, his life  — are soon to serve as nothing more than a particularly feathery hearse. His wake, attended by the blistering rays of sun, his funeral organized by the frigid ocean below, both paid for by his hubris. Thus, the typical reader will see in him an affirmation; an assertion that there is safety in living an average life. In their belief, the reader may even attempt the proselytization of another who dares to stray from their pre-ordained lot in life. That sounds risky—I would be careful if I were you. However, those among us who have sailed between the extremes for long, as they glide through the finality of their lives, know what the mediocre do not. They know that the extremities, unapologetic ambition and total bliss, imbibe within a dedicated seeker exactly what he is searching for — fulfillment for himself and his fellow man.

You, a beneficiary of centuries of human development, live like the kings of old. Your cravings are satisfied at a whim, digital symphonies serenade you at the touch of a button, tamed beasts of machinery and metal flit you across oceans. Such service was once regalia of the ultra-powerful, if possible at all. In spite of this, we lack happiness. Why? Viktor Frankl’s theory of logotherapy argues that the primary human drive is the search for purpose, not pleasures (Frankl). Ambition, a quality which expresses itself as the setting of goals, a strive for success, and a desire for more, grants its possessors that raison d’être. Furthermore, the quality of ambition is rewarded by our society with material goods and social capital. This abundance of the ambitious is what gives them the time to think. Maslow’s hierarchy says that our basic needs must be met before we can reach for self-actualization, and ambition is how these prerequisites are fulfilled (Maslow). Revolutions are led by the comfortable and educated for a reason. Starving men cannot become revolutionaries. This begs the question: Why do we admire the ambitious? Visionaries, like Steve Jobs, or industrialists, like Henry Ford, or those few who were ahead of their time, like Nikola Tesla, had impacts that were not at all achieved through the same means. The only discernible quality common between them was ambition. With its capabilities, they were able to look at what their respective eras had accepted as a given — computing only for the technically-minded, automobiles only for the rich, electricity only for industry — and solve that which the average person did not even realize was a problem. The technological progression that we have come to accept as a certainty over time is enabled only by ambition. It is the trait that enables individuals to find the meaning of their lives, it was the basis of uprisings throughout history, and it is the bastion of the development we take for granted.

Do you know the name of the inventor of the traffic light, or the screwdriver? Ambitious people, unfortunately, are susceptible to becoming mere conduits for their greater work. There exists another path to admiration, though as fame draws close to ambition, obscurity is left for any other. Bliss. Do not overlook it. Ambition can be understood as the raising of our desire, but happiness is just as easily realized by a radical decrease in expectations. Have you ever accomplished something, only to realize that you did not feel any lasting satisfaction?  You may have yearned for years, only for bitter fruit. Psychologists term this phenomenon as hedonic adaptation, wherein we quickly adapt to changing external conditions to return to a neutral baseline of happiness. Pursuing this to its logical conclusion, we must have complete detachment from our surroundings and instead focus on remaining content regardless of external circumstances. We should be humble in the face of incredible success, and calm when faced with overt tragedy. Stoicism of this nature leads to serenity of mind for any particular individual, as well as to a peaceful collective. Monasteries, for example, are populated by monks that have cast aside the trappings of the materialistic world, and as such are able to employ their hours in search of higher meaning. Conflict is remarkably rarer and significantly less destructive than the quarrels of us uninitiated, a culture made possible only because of its rejection of zero-sum traits. Returning once again to Maslow’s hierarchy; they are only able to do so because their basic needs have been satisfied (Maslow). If only we could all have the same… except we do. In the modern world, we produce more food than we consume by many orders of magnitude. The developed nations of the world have satiated the basic needs of their citizens, and then some. Despite this, discord between us and our compatriots is higher than ever. It is therefore time for us to emulate the example set by monasteries of old, and radically empathize with one another in order to reach a common, higher understanding. Over thousands of years, evolution has led us to this point of excess in material needs. We must recognize that any further branches of advancement should be pruned, in favour of sweeter fruit. We are far beyond the prerequisites for a Universal Basic Income, and a post-scarcity society is no longer in the realm of science fiction alone. It is within reach, but first we must ask ourselves: In a world without poverty, a world without want, a world of equals, what is the necessity of constantly increasing our desire? In fact, shouldn’t we be seeking total detachment from the materialisms we are constantly flooded with? By doing so, we are able to free ourselves from the constant desire for that next shiny thing — the career-defining promotion at work, those new jeans in fashion which you absolutely need  — and maintain our individuality regardless of what agitators may appear at our metaphorical front door. Open your eyes, stare through the window, and shut the door.

Cease your gaze and avert your eyes from those beautiful wings for a moment. Abandon the warming rays of ambition as well as the cooling waves of bliss below, and instead plant your feet firmly on these overlooking cliffs. It is here that I solemnly present to you the real, horrifying tragedy of the myth of Icarus. Today, our ancient hero would be able to commit neither a feather nor a drop of wax to his wings. Ambition is suppressed to a degree only fathomable by comparing it to the corresponding deterioration of bliss. The perpetrator is algorithmic, it is inhuman, and it has infected every semblance of our being. Know this: if the Wright Brothers had access to ChatGPT, we would not have achieved flight. It would have analyzed all of the information available, and issued the then-logical conclusion so thoroughly that it would be nothing more than insanity for them to continue their trials. Flight was achieved by the owners of a bicycle shop, and today we cannot imagine a world where it remained as a possibility only in the minds of the delusionally idealistic. How many inventors today have been castrated of their fervour, and how many life-changing inventions have we lost as a result? The prodigious son or daughter, that rare genius who appears maybe once each century, they work as an investment banker today. The ambitious sacrifice their individuality to chase meaningless metrics, and we all suffer as a result. Bliss, of course, is no different. Those ancient religions that described enlightenment as a total destruction of the self have now become markers of identity, viciously fought for. Social media and its constant stimulation has formed a society which, in all the wrong ways,  is constantly chasing bigger and better. The average starter home has nearly doubled in size, and so we are not able to even have the necessity of shelter without stretching ourselves to the point of tearing apart. Beauty standards have increased such that plastic surgery is on track to becoming as routine as cavity removal. Bliss is laughably out of reach for the vast majority of people. On those rare occasions when we experience even a fraction of it — a walk in the park on a rainy day, perhaps an evening with friends where you are fully in the moment —  we feel alive, but only temporarily. This is the fundamental struggle of the modern man. It explains why so many of us feel so aimless, why we feel the need for constant self-improvement. That is how complete the corruption of both ambition and bliss has become. We consume content that makes us feel broken, and therefore it becomes profitable to wield that hedonic equilibrium as a crowbar, giving us a bruise of constant inadequacy. Ambition is no longer directed toward meaningful change or societal impact. Instead, it directly undermines the precursors to joy. Substance abuse and other methods of avoidance have bastardized bliss, such that the concept as a whole is stereotyped and ostracized by the average person. Think of what we have lost. These extremes have been turned against one another. We have lost our wings and barely even remember the wind rushing past our ears.

This is not our first dark age. We have recovered from periods of near illiteracy before, and our renaissance this time can be incredible. To you, dear reader, I contribute a solution so that we may steadily return to what we once were. In matters of genuine meaning that you can control, be unapologetically ambitious. Reject any and all detractors from your health. Perish in your attempt for the great and impossible (Nietzsche). In dichotomy, for that which you have no control over, you must accept even the worst. You cannot choose your family, so why do you lash out at their imperfections? Your features may never be accepted into the beauty standard, but why must you hate yourself as a result? We will grow old, our bodies will fail, and we will suffer incredible loss in our lifetimes. Face it all with a stoic demeanour, and the worst of times will pass. You see, in matters of ambition and bliss, we must look at Icarus’s flight to understand exactly what we need to return to. Our wings may have been clipped, but we will soar once again. And you may ask — what if you fall? To that, I ask you instead: what if you fly?

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Works Cited

Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, 2006.

Maslow, Abraham H. “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Psychological Review, vol. 50, no. 4, 1943, pp. 370-396.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, Penguin Books, 1978.