The 1/4 Mark

I may be going through a quarter-life crisis of sorts. I’m beginning to think that my life is pointless. I’ll graduate, become a corporate slave for some multinational, squander my earnings on material trinkets, raise a kid or two, and die. Will I leave a legacy? Will I have done something to make this nation or humanity better?

I think I’m seeking meaning in life. Maybe I just want to be part of a grander purpose. Really, it’s tough today because all the great progressive causes have already been fought – our parents spoiled it for us. We already have racial and gender equality, we're approaching equality on the basis of sexual orientation, and we have greater awareness of the environmental. We've firmly entrenched freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, freedom to practice one's faith. Through a combination of free markets and the welfare state, we’ve managed to vanquish absolute poverty. People today are healthier and wealthier than ever before. Life’s good and, if you’re on the right-half of the IQ bell curve, getting better. What’s left to fight for?

I look at other countries. Mahathir Mohammed is an inspiration. Mahathir was the Prime Minister of Malaysia for most of the last two decades, only stepping down in 2003. Throughout his term his chief ambition was to make Malaysia propserous; in fact, he set out an ambitious vision called Malaysia 2020 - to make Malaysia a full-fledged developed nation by 2020. And gauging the skylines of Kuala Lumpur and Penang, it’s well on it’s way. I think it would be great to be a 20 year old kid in Malaysia right now, knowing that the future is bright, and that in every single way your contributions are helping your fellow countrymen accrue a better life, and that you're helping your country gain prominence and respect and renown on the international stage.

Canada is the best country in the world, hands down - a country that’s universally admired and second to none. And when you’re already living in the best country in the world, a country that’s already as rich as hell, a country that's a pillar for humanity... it’s hard to make it better.

I think we need someone like Mahathir Mohammed or a JFK to propel our generation to a greater, more noble good. Kennedy's 1961 “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do you’re your country” inaugural address is absolutely inspirational; so too is his summoning of his nation to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade -

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

It doesn't get more beautiful than that.

I find that sort of civic mindset is acutely lacking nowadays, particularly in my generation. Most of the kids in my program study hard so they can accrue fancy cars and toys and designer clothes. True, my sample is skewed and there’s a degree of selection bias, in so far as the students who’d actually study something as soulless and dry as math and finance have a natural predisposition towards making money; the people that actually care major in philosophy and psych or, if they're really driven, medicine. But I do think that there’s a societal benefit to that apolitical materialistic zeal – when people are fixated on making money, there’s no room for squabbling. Better a nation of capitalists than one of politicians! And usually, where there’s money, there’s peace.

But when by day you're looking at spreads and dollar figures and cost savings all day, when an associate tells you "it's not a matter of morality, it's profit margins", when the Wall Street Journal tells you that your industry is screwing their clients, when by night you’re doing something as morbid as calculating when someone's expected to die, and when fun consists of squandering your pay cheque at swanky malls on the weekend – well, there is a soulless void there.