Outlaw or hero?

So, in my last post I listed what I’ve been doing as an aging warrior to counter my PC21 – my personal conflicts with the twenty-first century.

What I didn’t explain is what these conflicts are, or perhaps more accurately, what the conflicts are primarily caused by.

Here’s the headlines:

- Corporate greed, hypocrisy, and incompetence.
- Lack of integrity within, and unchecked profligacy and abuses of process and power by, government and bureaucracy.

- News media bias and manipulation.
- Expectations of the society in which I live.

These causes are like four hydraulic rams pressing in from four directions and they edge ever forward into the shrinking central space where I stand, ineffectively pushing first against one - and then another.

But I have no control or influence over these rams – so, I will either be crushed or I must remove myself from the shrinking central space; and thus from the conflict they represent.

Ekhart Tolle, modern day philosopher and teacher, offers three options for dealing with the places where we end up in life: change them, accept them, or leave them

And in a sense, after a great deal of consideration, I’ve adopted his advice – I’ve considered the shrinking space that the advancing rams have formed – and I’ve taken my leave.

I could put up with the place in which I’ve found myself, but that's the compromise I mentioned in my last post, and why should I compromise my life?

Ten years ago I stumbled across a profound remark made by Sigmund Freud that describes my whole life up until that point, and it has certainly shaped my life since: ‘Since the beginning of civilization, man has had but one choice, to conform or not to conform. If he conforms, he is a dead man. His life is over, his life's decisions predetermined by the society he joins with. If he chooses not to conform, he buys himself one more choice, to become outlaw or hero.’

I'm an aging warrior. But am I an outlaw, or hero? That’s for others to judge. Maybe you have an opinion?