I finished Patton Oswalt's book of the same name quite a few months ago now, but this concept of Zombie, Spaceships and Wastelands keeps bouncing around in my brain.
Knowing what I know, I should technically be a spaceship, but I don't think I can handle the isolation. I don't have the desire for destruction in me to be a Zombie, and I think I have some of that hopefulness that needs to be inherent in a Wasteland.
I think too many of my peers are Zombies and Spaceships. Zombies are aggressive-- they don't take no and they're unapologetic for the chaos and destruction that they inflict. They are stereotypically the embodiment of the selfie/ "me" culture. (See hilarious commentary on old-timey selfies here.) Spaceships really don't like being part of this bigger society, and they would much rather forge it on their own. I think this is fine actually, but it leads to a very isolationist lifestyle, which I don't think is super healthy. I am all for people being more introverted, but I think that spaceships take it to an extreme, and they are inherently running from the things that they can't fix or change instead of trying to change them.
Being a Wasteland isn't actually great either though. You're often in limbo-- stuck in the in-between where you aren't sure and moving forward it sometimes the same thing as moving back. Call it the problem of my generation-- moving up isn't the goal anymore, making it big quick is more often than not the aspirational story, but everything is becoming so much closer, competitive, smaller-- that you see your opportunities shrinking. You've been told your awesome most of your life, but real life is not so nice. But you're hopeful. It's a paradox and although I'm not entirely comfortable with it, I'm still thinking about it.
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