Hope & Hopium, or Where are the Princess Bride & Westley When We Need Them? Part I

As someone who played soldier through much of his childhood, it's a little embarrassing to admit how much I love The Princess Bride. Now it's true that I had much more admiration for Ulysses than Achilles and was much more interested in developing cunning than brute strength.

There is so much to admire in the characters of The Princess Bride. The courage of The Princess Bride, Westley, and Inigo Montoya. The cunning of Westley. The wisdom of The Grandfather. 

On the flipside, like Vizzini, I have often been too smart by half, and as inarticulate as The Impressive Clergyman. Like Prince Humperdinck, I have overplayed my hand and come to regret it.

I would love to live in a world where virtue is usually rewarded and vice punished. I visit such worlds in fiction, but they seem further and further removed from my understanding of reality.

Though this will seem an aside, when I bought a Volvo, I suddenly noticed there were a lot more Volvos on the road. This was in the early 1970s, and Volvos may have come more popular in my community. However, I suspect that the larger cause for my change in perception was my purchase.

I do sometimes question to what degree my newly acquired sense of the evil in this world is a consequence of the ministry that has called me. Have things gotten that worse, or is it merely that my perspective has changed?

While I make no claims to objectivity or omniscience, I definitely come down on the side that says that things have become much worse and will become even worse than they are now. We are making the planet increasingly inhospitable, and we are likely to make it uninhabitable.