Adapting To Life In 2026 & Beyond
554: Finding Purpose in Modern Life
Good morning all.
An interesting moment I had online this past weekend gave me a glimpse into where people’s heads really are these days. Nowadays you never really know what is going to go turbo viral online. After 9 years in media I can generally get a sense of what might do super well, but sometimes, especially on platforms like X, it can be an enigma.
This post I made below did just that on June 6th 2026.
As of today it sits at 3,800,000 views, 35,000 likes, and 5,000 retweets. Likely my most engaged “tweet” I have ever made. If you’re unaware the clip is from the Brecourt Manor Assault by Lt. Dick Winters of the 101st Airborne in Normandy on June 6th 2026 from the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Winters and a handful of airborne and other troops quickly took out German artillery hammering the men on the beaches.
It was a textbook assault and is taught still to this day at West Point Military Academy.
You can see my caption below (which I crafted in about 5 seconds) to not only post a quick ode to June 6th (D-Day) but to also highlight the vast differences between life today and in 1944. In this case yes, I used the laughably familiar millennial and Gen Z meme of having high anxiety over a life defined by a corporate job.
This clip generated an ENORMOUS amount of discussion on:
War
Society
The ruling elite (futility of war)
Modern day vs. boomer/older generation lifestyles
WWII conspiracies (which I do love)
I quite enjoyed seeing all of the different takes. Some people were pissed, some agreed with some my sentiment, and others had unique interpretations. One thing was striking to me though. There was a large group of commenters posting that they’d prefer THIS over a corporate or email job.
And while there may have been some joking/jest involved, I actually think there’s some truth and merit to that idea (as crazy as it might seem). Do I think people would prefer to get shot to death in a muddy trench over sitting through Microsoft Teams meetings? No.
Do I think people, and especially young men, lack a mission or uniting factor these days? Absolutely I do.
We’ve touched on this idea before in Modern Man’s Guide to Happiness.
What struck me wasn’t that people were romanticizing war. I don’t think that’s what most were doing at all (and it definitely wasn’t what I was doing contrary to what the trolls thought).
What they were reacting to was the purpose.
In 1944, or in this particular example LT. Winters and his men knew exactly who they were, exactly what their objective was, and exactly what was expected of them. Their lives were dangerous, uncomfortable, and often brutally short.
But they were not ambiguous.
And that makes your existence fairly simple.
Compare that to the modern experience. Millions of people wake up, answer emails, sit in useless meetings, commute hours, update spreadsheets, scroll social media, consume content, eat slop, and repeat the process day after day.
They are materially richer than any generation in human history, yet many seem profoundly dissatisfied and depressed.
Comfort and technology have advanced us, but they have also killed the part of us that carried any sort of spark. We are shielded from the raw nature of the world, we communicate digitally, and dodge confrontation at the first sign. Life can be entirely ambiguous.
Don’t say this, don’t do that, your country and community are worse off but we can’t exactly see or say who or what is responsible for it.
It’s not because life is necessarily harder now than it was in 1944.
It’s because I think human beings (especially men) have a deep psychological need for meaning, challenge, camaraderie, and a clear shared struggle. Throughout most of history those things were unavoidable.
Today they often have to be actively sought out.
And not everyone chooses to do that, resulting in perpetual frustration and unfulfillment.
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal.”
Viktor Frankl