...although I just realized that the MU theme argues that individual choice is an illusion and we're all at the total mercy of our environment. We're all the Borg.
Mirror Spock: "
One man cannot summon the future."
James T. Kirk:
"But one man can change the present."
Sorta, kinda, not really in the way most people think when they ask this question. I think it's delusional to follow the thinking that "you can go out there into the world" (where exactly?) and change it (to suit your megalomania).
It's as much chance as skill. No stranger to megalomania, Napoleon said, "I am the instrument of providence, she will use me as long as I accomplish her designs, then she will break me like a glass."
If it were just a matter of skill, well, there are 6 billion people on the planet - many of whom are far more capable individuals than Napoleon Bonaparte - yet he was the last great emperor of France. He wasn't millions of times the human being his millions of subjects were. He just filled the role they needed of him that he was prepared to produce.
Movies, literature, they hyperbolize the extent to which individuals can and do change things to the nth degree. I think it's disrespectful of the complexity of the world and dehumanizing of the capacities of us all.
As for if the world needs changing...I think the aggregate of everybody's actions exposes what's at the core of the human heart. This moment in history (and nature too), this level of social and technological ascent out of the primordial pool, and it wouldn't matter who's at the helm - you'd get this world. I think I know better but heck, how much do I know myself really, let alone everyone else, let alone everything else, let a alone what next years crops will be like or market index numbers. I know a thing or two about how an office works, science fiction, and my family and friends and I try my best and hopefully what I throw out there helps.
