aggressive young man

Years ago there was an ad that used to run every day in the "Help Wanted" sections of the two San Francisco daily papers. It began with the phrase, "Wanted: aggressive young man."

If I remember correctly, what the ad implied was that this was some sort of sales position, but the specific duties the job entailed, the rate of pay, location where the work was to be performed, and so forth, were not actually specified, probably for good reasons. This ad ran every day for years. I was always curious about this solicitation, but never investigated it as I fulfilled only one half the necessary personal attributes required for the job. Keep in mind that this was over 40 years ago.

There has always been opportunity in this society for aggressive young men, and passive old men like myself need not apply.

Even now, as we continue trying to sell our version of How Things Should Be overseas, we send missionaries and armies consisting mostly of aggressive young men all over the world, so that the face of aggression provides many people's first impressions of this country, from Kabul to Timbuktu.

But as we look around today, we see an American economy in ruins largely due to the aggressive and reckless pursuit of huge amounts of money, obtained by fair means or foul. We're presented with a society which has unraveled because of the aggressive and deliberate sabotaging of any vestige of a social contract by a greed- and power-obsessed corporate oligarchy, ably assisted by their faithful and well-rewarded servants of which what we're pleased to call "our democracy" is composed. And we see as well, in places like Detroit and Youngstown the physical ruins of a once-powerful industrial society, whose jobs and infrastructure have been "outsourced" to people willing to do the work cheaper than we can do it, and thus contribute to an aggressively-enforced "bottom line."

And looking at all this, it occurs to me that aggression is half, or probably more than half of our problem.

Such circumstances would call for aggressive counter-measures, except for the fact that you can't eliminate aggression with more aggression.

And "So," as the poet William Blake said, "I turn'd into a sty, and laid me down among the swine."