Ruminations on Who You Think You Are

Aweh Dear Ruminants and Groupies,

A Bar, a Cow, a Vice President, and a Vorlon

A pink cow, JD Vance, a Vorlon, and I walk into a bar…

This is not the beginning of a joke, although it probably should be. It is also not, strictly speaking, a bar. It is more of a dining room decorated in golden-dictator chic for people who use words like “the fabric of society” after their third glass of red wine. But “walk into a bar” has better rhythm, and rhythm matters when you are trying to explain why an ancient alien in ceremonial bone armour is interrogating the spiritual collapse of the human species over a bottle of Château Who-Are-You?

The Required Reading, Which You Have Obviously Neglected

For those of you who have not done the required reading, and frankly, that is exactly the kind of casual intellectual negligence that has brought us to this point, the Vorlons are one of the oldest and most advanced civilisations in the universe. In Babylon 5, they are not the chatty, approachable sort of alien. They do not arrive wearing Hawaiian shirts, handing out friendship bracelets, and explaining themselves in PowerPoint. They are vast, ancient, cryptic, vastly superior, and deeply annoying in the way that only beings with millions of years of civilisational continuity can be.

The Vorlons have a question.

Not: How are you?

Not: What do you do?

Not even: What are your deliverables for Q3?

Their question is much worse.

Who are you?

The pink cow sipped her wine with the terrible calm of livestock that had already passed the exam.

The question sounds simple until you try to answer it without cheating. Most humans respond by producing a CV, a passport, a job title, a grievance, a trauma inventory, a political tribe, a religious affiliation, a nationality, or a LinkedIn bio written in the language of the undead.

“I am a strategic thought leader passionate about transformative impact.”

No, you are not. You are a cosmically irrelevant, confused mammal with an inflated ego, lower back tension, and a pathetically curated sense of outrage and entitlement. And because you are shallow, vain, and busy, you have probably mistaken that twitching little bundle of fears, labels, and public performances for an identity. Who you think you are, who others think you are, and who you actually are may be three strangers sitting at the same table.

Wake up.

Exhibit A: JD Vance, Version-Controlled Human

The Vorlon starts with JD Vance, because every identity crisis needs a man who has reinvented himself often enough to require version control.

There is the Hillbilly Elegy Vance: the poor kid from Middletown, the broken family, the formidable grandmother, the Marines, Yale, the American Dream with mud still on his boots. Then there is the venture-capital Vance, the Silicon Valley-adjacent Vance, the polished interpreter of working-class pain for people who buy hardcovers and worry about “the base”.

Then came the religious journey: Protestant inheritance, atheism, and eventual conversion to Catholicism. Perhaps profound. Perhaps sincere. Perhaps also useful. In American politics, the road to Damascus now comes with branding opportunities.

And then, of course, there is Trump. Vance once criticised him sharply. Now he looks like a possible future of MAGA: articulate, clever, wounded, ambitious, sanctified, and extremely adaptable.

The Vorlon leans forward.

Who are you?

Poor boy? Yale man? Catholic convert? Venture capitalist? Trump critic? Trump heir? Working-class witness? Anti-elite elite?

Perhaps you are not just a chameleon. You are a chameleon sitting on a box of Smarties (for American readers, think M&M’s with a British passport) changing colour as often as Trump lies.

Is this personal development or political opportunism? Possibly both. Even a chameleon may sincerely believe in its latest colour, especially when that colour polls well, flatters donors, and gets it invited onto the right branch.

Exhibit B: The Ruminator, Tragically Available

Then the Vorlon turns to me.

Who are you?

I am Bruce Young: retired engineer, reluctant academic, pink-hatted intellectual colossus, Johannesburg oracle, energy-transition heretic, family man, chess sufferer, and the only known South African to combine industrial experience, moral irritation, and a hugely influential blog.

I have survived corporations, committees, consultants, strategy decks, hydrogen fantasies, academic rituals, and several decades of people saying things with great confidence and very little evidence.

Some people think. I ruminate. Deeply. Powerfully. Some say better than anyone has ever ruminated before. The pink cow has confirmed this privately.

The Vorlon listens, silent and appallingly unimpressed.

Then it speaks.

“You mistake verbosity for depth.”

JD Vance, for all his mutations, has power. Influence. A constituency. A vice-presidential seat. Access to the machinery. He may be a chameleon, but he changes colour on a branch that matters.

You, Bruce Young, are a pink-hatted man with a blog, a glass of wine, and a dangerous overestimation of the historical significance of your irritation.

You call yourself awake. Perhaps. But many men wake up, shout at the furniture, and mistake the echo for civilisation noticing.

The cow has authenticity.

Vance has ambition.

You have adjectives and a mailing list.

Who are you?

At present, mostly a footnote with a pink hat.

Exhibit C: The Pink Cow, Untroubled by Metaphysics

The Vorlon turns to the pink cow.

Who are you?

The cow does not flinch. Cows rarely do metaphysical panic.

“I am the Pink Cow,” she says. “My mission is simple: to make humans more honest. Not cleverer. Not louder. Not better branded. Just honest. I stand in the room looking ridiculous so that everyone else can stop pretending they don’t.”

The Vorlon pauses.

For the first time, approval flickers in the cosmic darkness.

The cow knows who she is.

Exhibit D: The Vorlon, Annoyingly Unavailable for Interview

Because I am a stable genius, and therefore constitutionally incapable of leaving a cosmic being unprovoked, I lean across the table.

“Fine,” I say. “You keep asking us who we are. So, who are you?”

The room freezes. The Vorlon turns slowly. Even the cow lowers her glass.

“You mistake access for equality,” the Vorlon says.

“I ask because I can see through you. You ask because you are noisy, mortal, overdressed, and briefly confident after wine.”

A pause.

“Do not confuse curiosity with standing.”

Another pause.

“Ask again,” the Vorlon says, “and I will answer in a form your species calls annihilation.”

The Exit, Followed by Cowardly Bravery

The Vorlon rises without ceremony, folds the universe back into his ceremonial bone armour, and disappears in a shimmer of ancient judgement, leaving only silence, wine, and the faint smell of being found inadequate.

I wait several seconds to make sure he is gone, then lean back with the courage of a man addressing an empty chair.

Perhaps, I think privately, the Vorlons are not all they are cracked up to be. Perhaps they are overrated. Tremendously overrated. Very old, yes. Very shiny. But maybe not so smart. After all, anyone can ask “Who are you?” and then vanish before the bill arrives.

So, dearly beloved readers, who are you?

Until next time,

Bruce