Where'd it all go?

When did all the magic go out of the world? And I don't mean alchemy or spells or that sort of thing. I mean the adventure, the fun, the strange weirdness and bad craziness that made the world so exciting.

There used to be places left to explore, that anyone could get to. I mean, if you really wanted to, you could go explore the rainforest, or the mountain ranges. It was all unmapped, and even if someone had explored it before you usually ran across their dessicated corpse at some point, so it was all good. There was still treasure at the end of the trek, and while it might not make you rich or famous, it still meant something to you, right?

Now, it's all mapped. GPS devices can get you directions to the chemist's, or out of the deepest wilds. Survival has become a sport, and you can get a cellphone signal anywhere on the planet. In fact at this point I'm pretty sure you could buy dehydrated water online with your cellphone and have it delivered to you in the middle of the desert.


There used to be magical things in the world. Every strange bottle contained a djinn, or a letter from one of the aforementioned dessicated corpses. There were still creatures that lurked at the edges of perception, silently threatening to drag you away from reality. Cthulul still slept in R'lyeh and Count Dracula would happily suck you down like a milkshake.

Cthulu's corpse is rotting away into webcomics and horror film chic, Dracula's a bisexual frenchman. Those creatures get medicated away into nothingness, hallucinations, stress-induced sillyness. No one even sends letters anymore, god, how many people still remember their own address? And it seems to me that the only bottles I touch anymore either contain something poisonous, or intoxicating.



There used to be rebels in the world. There used to be solitary men who would stand before entire nations and say "Hey. You. Sod off, alright?" There used to be warriors, people who would wade into enemy lines and lay waste. There were men who fought gallantly, honored their enemy, and only killed him because he didn't want to but by god he HAD to. In the old days, if you swore loyalty to someone, it stuck, and it wasn't "good business sense" to jump ship and leave your captain behind.

Now the "rebels" are nothing more than punks with anarchy symbol tattoos. Now we can't even get hundreds of people to protest anything with meaning. There are no warriors anymore, not when you can kill millions of people from thousands of miles away by hitting a few buttons. And gallantry, chivalry, honor? Please. Not even among theives, now. And somehow, Machiavelli's ghost has possessed the business world.



So what the hell happened to all that? Did science kill it? Did we just grow out of our myths and legends? Did our little Industrial Revolutions expansionary orgy finally prove to us that, yeah, we're number one? Did the last century finally see the end of honor and respect, subjugated under the weight of enforced morality and fear of an honest death?

Or am I just finally going mad?