The truth is when a group of young male friends get together they talk about three things: Sex, money and alcohol.

How much they have, how much they will have but never, ever how much they don’t have. That’s against the rules. To not have sex (let’s admit it, the activity is seen as a commodity in the majority of male minds) is to be a loser. To not drink alcohol is to be a spoil sport, and to not have money…Well that depends on what you spent it on.  I realise that by revealing this truth to the women of the internet world, my male ‘wingmen’ will be preparing some disgusting mixture of what only can  be described as brew for me to ‘longarm’ as punishment. Yet secretly, in the dark corners of pubs and clubs across the world, we all know it’s true, and what’s worse is that we all know that women all know.

When is it that the social dynamics of a ‘group’ are formed? If it’s just two guys talking to eachother then the topics will vary enormously. Depending on the friend it may include work, family, politics, philosophy, and goodness knows what else. If three friends hang out then the range of topics decrease as obviously the number of shared interests also decline. Four friends? Well now it’s reduced to universal interests such as music and sport. When there are five friends or more together, it’s my experience that unless you’re all spending a lot of time together and sharing loads of interests, the universal topics are those that you can all relate to is shagging, spending and boozing.

Take today for example. Brad and I were in the car driving into town to meet two others. Our conversation ranged from University, Archeology, websites, future plans, Anthropology and recent parties. We met two good friends for a game of Squash ( a shared interest). Sadly (or thankfully as some of the worse players *cough* would say) the courts were full so we went to the pub for a drink, or two…Actually three (another shared interest). Conversation included recent happenings and future plans as well as a bit of sport. Then we were met by another good friend and after about twenty minutes I pointed out to the group that all we had talked about was sex. How much we were having, how much we would be having, but never, ever how much we are not having. That’s against the rules.

Yet Is this really all we want to talk about as a group?

There is only so much one can talk about sex, money and alcohol. I’m a strong believer in that if a man talks about sex for more than five minutes, especially if it’s about how good it is or how much he’s getting, it means that it’s complete bullshit. Yet real men don’t blab on about this stuff, real men save the world from an economic crisis, or poverty, swine flu and even AIDs. I’d like you to read this following excerpt from a GQ article that discusses the meaning of ambition,

“Because we’re a shower, us modern men, composed for the most part of grasping, solipsistic knuckleheads, any game of tennis-elbow-foot that begins with the word “ambition” will quickly and inexorably tumble towards “money”, “power”, “success”. This is not how it ought to be. A Maserati is not an ambition. It’s a fast car. Being headhunted by a hedge fund, buying a second home in Wiltshire, picking your third wife from an online catalogue, watching your collection of Guatemalan sculpture appreciate in value, looking on as your daughter wins Wimbledon… these are goals, perhaps, but they are far too prosaic, too small, to be ambitions.”

No. This isn’t all we want to talk about. These self-gratifying instant pleasures are for boys. Curing cancer, creating an artificial black hole and solving the energy crisis is for men. This unwillingness to grow up, to look at our adolescent dream of fast cars, fast women, instant cash and to honestly say they are crap is the problem. This week I read a status, “David is finally twenteen!” Not the first time I had heard this new number popping up as teenagers seek to prolong their lack of responsibility. What’s next, twenty-thirteen, thirty-one-teen?! It’s time to aim higher, to find ambitions with slim lines of success, to put our skills to use and make this world a better place.

I am Generation Y. Many of you are Generation Y. Together we are more connected then any generation before us. We blog, we text, we Twitter, we Facebook, we call, we meet and we all have access to more of the world’s information as well as each and every human being than ever before. Yet just because there are more strings does not mean they are stronger strings. Having 10,000 friends on Facebook means nothing if you don’t have a relationship with any of them. Our quantity of connections have increased with technology, but our quality of relationships have not. Tribes start small. They are built on trust and honesty. This is why you’ll find groups of men who have real ambitions that talk about anything but sex, money and alcohol.

They will be obsessed, they will keep trying until death takes them and even then their message will spread. They will only talk about what they talk about because it’s their ambition. It’s a real man’s ambition.

Yet don’t assume those who only talk about materialistic prospects lack ambition. I think we all have it somewhere, under that layer of false beliefs. We can feel it; that yearning for more yet not in a self-gratified way. Men who talk about sex, money and alcohol do so because they haven’t found their calling. Sometimes it will take a death, other times an inspirational story or an inability to prevent something catastrophic that tears your heart apart. Just try and find it before your time runs out. My ambition is to explore the bigger systems at play in this world. To try and grasp an understanding at what makes us tick, how we as a species dance to the rhythm of life. And now that I’ve said it, we can stop talking about sex, money and alcohol… well, maybe just a little bit.

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