End Of The Beginning

This song plays during the end credits of the 2013 comedy film "This is the End", and it is within that context that it has two meanings. First it is clearly someone's quirky cherished song memory, something that reminds them of feeling amazing as a kid or teenager, that feeling is the one that defines our preferences as adults. In that sense it is closely related to the other important song to this movie, the Backstreet Boy's "Everybody".

But unlike that piece of listenable, likable pop about superficial and (alas, rather lame sounding) wooing strategy, the Sabbath song presents a curiously science-fictional, introspective lyric. This is a song in Frank Herbert's Dune (Gurney Halleck would have song to balliset to the young Paul Atreides). The guitar solo is a knife fight training when the poetry is done. Intellectual, cold, manly, and demanding. The lyric here dares you to be exceptional, after giving you instructions on how (and why).

"You don't want to be a robot ghost, occupied inside a human host," that is, you don't want to be an empty soul, easily cloned and used. It's not clear specifically what this means, but it doesn't sound good.

"Rise up and resist, be the master of your fate" it prescribes. Do not be a mindless non-conformist. Question assumptions. Have courage to fight injustice when you find it, etc.

And yet, there's a tinge of sadness when I dissect this song lyric. This is a message squarely aimed at the boy I was, not the man I am today. As laudable as this message is, it is incomplete, and so it remains fundamentally only the message of a juvenile power fantasy. What is the missing message? Yes, grow in whatever unique strength you possess (which will never, ever be nearly as good as what literally any of the protagonist in any story has), and pursue your own unique goals, but take heed of the mainstream, and do not reject it all outright. Time spent learning to stay out of trouble and foster friendship is time well spent.