Navigating Solutions and Darkness

It's Blogtober and I'm 4 days late to the party already. Time for some intense backdating. I was 5 when I watched  Titanic, although I've remembered myself as being 3 for some reason. I can't say I understood everything that happened in the movie - whatever happened with the place that had all the vintage car stuff was a complete mystery, and I'm pretty sure Dubai censorship rules are the reason I never realized Jack's painting was a nude painting. But there's a reason why the movie was hailed the way it was - and still is. And that is the sense of something so vast and inescapable. The sense of watching a tragedy unfold in real time, and being made to feel helpless by it. Something like that is incredibly tragic. Watching men self-destruct in real time, on the other hand, is tragicomic. My friend watched me laugh as I compared a couple of people I've dated - their patterns of self-destructive behaviours, their detachment, the utter hopelessnes...

Photo by  Stephen Leonardi  on  Unsplash “We are not reliable.” A friend of mine recently exploded in indignation and fury, pointing out that despite high levels of intelligence, sometimes there were those of us who could be brought down by a bout of depression at any time. She felt that judging us on the basis of the good work we did when we were able was unfair, that expecting us to continue that level of work at all times was unfair. “We need to stop placing pressure on everyone to be productive, regardless of their health and social situation.” – A heavily paraphrased, anonymous quote I remember seeing online. That is an essential expectation of our capitalistic system – that everyone earn their own keep. That one is only entitled to what one ‘earns.’ Of course, this concept grows problematic the more one stares at it, regardless of which social class is under scrutiny. When taken as a whole, it is easily noted that each class above benefits, in ...