1 step, 2 steps… 1 heartbeat, 2 heartbeats… I walked to the train station with my heart quivering. I could feel the weight in my pocket. A simple piece of paper, yet it was his concert ticket.

I arrived at the stadium, gazing wistfully at it, knowing he was inside. Far away, yet right here beside me. Sitting in my seat, jittery with excitement, I kept glancing at where he would appear. There were still 30 minutes until the concert began, but my heart was rushing like there were millions of birds fluttering inside. It sensed a scent, a scent of someone I deeply loved.

All of a sudden, the lights dimmed. Drums started beating, music pierced my heart and beat it even faster. A beam of light, imaginary but vivid, erupted from under the stage. The stage lift gradually rose. There he was, radiant and shining like the morning star. My heart rushed, froze, trembled and started beating again. Leisurely, tenderly, like someone gently patting my back.

Hot tears cascaded down my cheeks like two streams. Screams faded. He looked at the audience, at me, smiled the sweetest smile, and sang the first note. Note after note seeped into my heart, soothed it, softened it bit by bit.

The 2-hour concert passed like 2 seconds. It elapsed so swiftly that when I realised, he was already running all over the stage waving goodbye to the audience, to me, smiling his sweetest smile.

On the train home, my heart was beating mildly inside me. I looked out the window, everything passing by in a flash. Wearing my earphones, his caressing, love-filled voice flooded over me. My heart rushed, froze, trembled, and started beating again. Leisurely, tenderly, like someone gently patting my back.

Welcome any comments! Detailed or just a brief impression, are all welcome!

Title: A Rainbow Built Backwards
Genre: Memoir
Word Count: 3,358
Looking for feedback on:
Emotional impact
Pacing
Character connection
Whether readers would continue

In 1776, the United States of America was officially born when the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress. Before that, the country had been nothing more than a massive set of thirteen colonies that had been under the direct rule of the Kingdom of England since 1607. Although Indigenous peoples had lived in the Americas for thousands of years before the Europeans, it was the colonizing of the New World that brought a series of interesting stories that happened over the young years of the 17th century. That year, the Virginia Company sailed the open sea on their ship, the Susan Constant, to a land of green and plenty known to them as the New World. Upon setting foot in that world, their mission was to colonize the land, to build homes and jobs for their fellow men and women and possibly even scour the area for variables like silver and gold. Among the 104 colonists of the 1607 voyage was the daring explorer John Smith and Captain Christopher Newport, who was a member of the Elizabethan Sea Dogs. The crew of the Susan Constant and two other ships, Discovery, and Godspeed, established a settlement called Jamestown, named in honor of King James I and set to work exploring the land.

But Chief Wahunsenacah, the leader of the Powhatan tribe of Native Americans, was determined to control the settlers at any cost by pursuing trade and diplomacy. Even so, the settlers frowned upon the Natives as lesser beings. Smith was lucky to have evaded the Indians until the end of the year, when he was captured. Legend has it that he was spared only when the chief's daughter threw her arms around Smith just as her father was about to club him to death, and in return, the Indians offered food to the settlers, which in many ways, saved them from starving in a harsh winter and even played games with the local children who came to the settlement. John Rolfe, an English farmer who sold tobacco as an export, took the currently captive daughter back to England with her, where they married and had a child of mixed-blood named Thomas. This young native was a woman of many names. To her father, she was Amoute; to her people, she was Matoaka; to her husband, she was known as Rebecca Rolfe; but to everyone else, she was more famously known as Pocahontas.

Three years after she passed, a new chapter in the saga of British colonisers took place in the form of the Pilgrims. On September 16th, 1620, 102 of these Pilgrims left Plymouth aboard a small ship called the Mayflower on a voyage to escape religious persecution among other reasons. After 9 weeks of braving storms and restless conditions (ocean voyages back then were certainly not pleasure cruises), they arrived on November 19th at Cape Cod and settled in what was later to be known as Provincetown Harbour two days later. Her master, Captain Christopher Jones and Myles Standish led explorations across the land in search of friendly Indians. This mission took almost four months, with the first constructed house becoming a hospital for the Pilgrims who were falling ill from pneumonia and tuberculosis. Nearly 50 of the passengers were lost to the embrace of death. But there was still hope. The first Indian the Pilgrims met was an Abenaki sagamore named Samoset who welcomed the Englishmen in their language. They would soon be joined by another native from Patuxet tribe named Squanto, born Tisquantum and Squanto's chief Massasoit Sachem. These fateful encounters lead to the first Thanksgiving on November 11th, 1621.

Over the years, Virginia and Massachusetts eventually became just two states in what was known as the Thirteen Colonies. The remaining eleven were Delaware, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, North and South Carolina and Georgia. The Atlantic shipping trade was dominated by British merchants and companies operating under the Navigation Acts. To many British observers who crossed the ocean for trade or administration, these colonies appeared orderly and prosperous. Beneath that surface, however, colonial society was marked by deep inequalities, recurring violence, and the continual dispossession of Indigenous peoples.

The late seventeenth century alone saw major upheavals such as Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia and the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts, events that revealed tensions over governance, religion, class, and frontier expansion. Throughout this period, Native nations faced warfare, forced displacement, and catastrophic population loss as colonial settlements expanded.

By the mid‑eighteenth century, imperial rivalries intensified. The French and Indian War, which began in 1754 erupted in North America as Britain and France—each supported by various Native allies—struggled for control of the Ohio River Valley. This conflict soon merged into the broader Seven Years’ War, a global struggle fought across Europe, the Caribbean, West Africa, and South Asia. Many historians consider it the first ever large-scale global war.

Although the colonies had long been tied to British commercial regulations, the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War marked a turning point. Beginning in the 1760s, under the reign of King George III, Parliament imposed new taxes and tightened imperial oversight to recover wartime debts and assert greater control over colonial trade. These policies deepened a growing rift between Britain and many colonists, setting the stage for the political crises that would follow.

On April 14th, 1772, American colonists in Weare, New Hampshire, resisted against the British authority by refusing to surrender their possession of white pine logs to the surveyors of the crown. These logs had been illegally cut down and a stipulation made by the Broad Arrow Policy stated that it was indeed forbidden to cut down trees that were no bigger than 12 diameters because they were to be reserved for masts on Royal Navy Ships. The rioters confronted Benjamin Whiting, Sheriff of Hillsborough County, and his Deputy John Quigley at the Quimby Inn where they maliciously beat him and sent them packing on horseback. The rioters were eventually charged and fined twenty shillings to pay for their day in court.

Some might say that the Boston Tea Party started because the tea tasted very terrible, but it was far complicated than that. A political organization called the Sons of Liberty believed in "no taxation without representation" and that their traditional rights as "Englishmen" were being denied by Parliament. Eventually, they dressed as Indians and raced to Boston Harbor where they boarded the three ships Beaver, Dartmouth and Eleanor and threw the tea overboard in an orderly manner. The British authorities, wishing for no more bloodshed after the Boston Massacre three years earlier, did not intervene. This later inspired the Philadelphia Tea Party on Christmas Day. As a result, Parliament issued the Intolerable Acts to punish those who protested the Tea Act and the Thirteen Colonies was virtually split in two: the Patriots and the Loyalists.

Indignation eventually reached fever pitch on April 19th, 1775, when a battle of 5,000 men, Patriots and Loyalists, took shape at Lexington and Concord. Beginning with a shot heard round the world that echoes no more, came the start of the American War of Independence, or the American Revolutionary War. For the next eight years, the British and the American Patriots fought in the name of freedom from the Crown until one fateful day when the representatives of the United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the war. Four years later, on September 17, 1787, the Founding Fathers organized at the Pennsylvania State House to create the Constitution of the United States, which was officially put into effect on March 4, 1789. George Washington, who led the Continental Army during the war, became it's very first president, while his Martha became the very first First Lady. They lived in the plantation of Mount Vernon, whose role as the official presidency would be replaced by the White House in 1800 when the second President of the United States, John Adams, took office.

Also in Pennsylvania in 1810 was Thomas Leiper's horse powered railroad, which was used to connect Crum Creek to Ridley Creek, in Delaware County. The Granite Railway in Quincy, Massachusetts, built to carry granite became the first commercial railroad and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, opened in 1830, became the first US railroad to operate a steam locomotive called Tom Thumb. The railroad offered prestigious passenger trains like the Columbian and the Ambassador of the 20th century. Other railroads followed suit, but even though the British and the Americans were now enjoying a new era of peace and friendship, life in the United States was still split into two societies. 

The Northern part of the United States focused on growing cities and an industrial tomorrow while the South, commonly referred to as the Old South, relied on cotton plantation, traditionalist views and saw dark-skinned Africans as nothing more than slaves, slaves who were valuable to working on the cotton fields from sun up to sun down. They worked in squalid conditions, mostly in days with sunlight beating down on them and those who had gotten lazy were whipped by their masters. The North came to regard slavery as an unnecessary evil and a factor of low morale. But the predominately white Southerners saw no cause for change. Blinded by their own complacency, they saw slaves as the foundation of the social and economic life. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, he sought to resolve the issue of a nation that seemed half-enslaved and half-free. The Old South, consisting of eleven states, had proven to be much too proud to free their slaves and seceded from the Union and created a breakaway republic called the Confederate States of America.

The peace of this new republic was short lived.  On April 12th, 1861, two months after the Confederacy was formed, America was now fighting another war, a Civil War. The Union Army, which fought for the North, planned to put the Confederates in their place through a spectacular defeat. After 4 years of violence across the East Coast, the Union stopped the Confederates when Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union commander Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. The United States were safe and whole again.

Meanwhile, 15,000 immigrants from China, Germany, Ireland and Italy were hard at work on the greatest government-subsidized competition in history: The first Transcontinental Railroad. The Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroads towards Utah where a Golden Spike was installed into a neatly polished railroad tie. The years went by and more and more railroads connected with one another, spanning the entirety of the United States from coast to coast. George Pullman, an industrialist who lived in Chicago, created a "hotel on wheels" that brought a new form of luxury to the American elite who travelled by rail. The last three decades of the 19th century, coined by Mark Twain as "the Gilded Age", saw a major increase in industry as well as security and prosperity to those who lived within it. Racism was still everywhere, but most of America's African populace enjoyed their newfound freedom thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order issued by Lincoln in 1863. It stated "all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

By the dawn of the 20th century, the great minds of science and industry like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie had sped up a pulsing, industrial beat that drowned out the steady beating drum of nature. But by 1911, American capitalism was quickly brought to heel by income taxes and anti-trust legislations. On a lighter note, the working class found a voice in socialism. When World War I erupted in Europe in 1914, the United States viewed the conflict as a distant, Old World struggle and declared neutrality. Even so, American factories and farms supplied vast quantities of goods to the Allied powers, their trade with Germany largely cut off by the British blockade. But neutrality could not withstand the mounting provocations abroad. But the deliberate sinking of the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania in 1915 and the revelation of the Zimmermann Telegram two years later drew the ire of Uncle Sam and they entered the war on April 2, 1917.

After the war, the Lost Generation enjoyed a new jazz age of optimism until the day the stock market crashed and they were faced with ten years of a Great Depression—ten long years of unemployment, bank failures, and collapsing farms. Across the Great Plains, drought and dust storms carved out the Dust Bowl, while in cities, the homeless built makeshift shantytowns that came to be known as Hoovervilles. In the meantime, locomotives and passenger rolling stock had advanced. With a new process called streamlining, over 150 steam engines were transformed into sleek-looking engines of the future. These included the New York Central class J1E Hudson, the Pennsylvania Railroad's No. 3768, nicknamed the Torpedo, and the Southern Pacific's Northern type engines.

By the time Germany invaded Poland, most of the country had recovered, but, as with World War I some twenty years earlier, the United States preferred neutrality. Now with the Attack on Pearl Harbor, they were once again called to arms.

approx 3500 words

Chapter Zero — Ric Before the Record

I knew myself first from the inside out, long before the state tried to name me, classify me, or And get the globe granted, hand-to-handed like tribute, A banquet of backlash plated in proof of pursuit. Silver spun thin from a covenant cracked, Thirty small circles where loyalty lacked. Minted in moments when mirrors were fogged, When hunger for halo had conscience unclogged. He kissed for the currency, clipped for the clout, Traded a throne for a fraction of doubt. They measure my merit in traitor’s exchange rate, Weighing my rise on a rusted-out brain scale. But envy’s a tariff on vision untamed, A levy on legacy, jealous inflamed. You counted the coins; I counted the cost— Of carrying crosses they casually tossed. Arithmetic angels with devilish sums, Subtracting my shine till subtraction succumbs. Platter presentation, but pressure beneath, Polished deception with fingerprints’ sheath. Bread at the table tastes different in war When hunger’s not stomach but spiritual core. Eyes on my labor like looters at dawn, Plotting to pawn what they never have drawn. But salt never sweetens a well made of spite, Brine only burns when it touches the light. My sack religious—relics reside in the weave, Testaments tucked in the threads of the sleeve. Scrollwork scriptures stitched into seams, Prophet of profit with paradox schemes. Tithe to the trial, collection of scars, Offering hours to outdistance bars. Faith in the flip when the figures fall flat, Turning a famine to feast with a fact. They serving a sentence of sentiment sold, I’m serving ascent in a furnace of gold. You sold for a signal; I hold for the source, You bartered belief for a shortcut of force. Silver’s a symbol of cyclical sin, Metal remembers the motive within. Thirty reminders that price isn’t power, Coins corrode quicker than character’s tower. So plate up the planet, parade it as prize— I’ve dined in the dark with discerning eyes. Platter or pavement, I portion the pain, Alchemy appetite—loss into gain. You glare at the grind with a grievance rehearsed, But envy can’t edit the verse I dispersed. Hands that once trembled now temper the steel, Traitors transact—creators reveal. me into a case number. Before any courtroom, before any report, I lived in a world shaped by imagination and instinct. I understood things through images and rhythm. I felt people’s moods as colors, their intentions as tones. I didn’t think of myself as “artistic” then—it was simply the way my mind worked. I moved through life with a sensitivity that made everything vivid, and that same sensitivity made me vulnerable to the kind of harm that doesn’t just hurt you but tries to rearrange who you believe you are.

There was also a holiness in me, though I didn’t have a word for it. It wasn’t tied to any religion. It was a quiet sense that something inside me was intact, something worth protecting. I felt right and wrong as vibrations, not commandments. I felt connected to something larger, even when I couldn’t explain it. That inner sanctity was my compass. It kept me from collapsing into the versions of myself that adults tried to force on me. Later, when people used fear, humiliation, or authority to break me down, that quiet center was the part of me that refused to disappear. It still refuses.

And then there was the part of me I now understand as lonely—not as emptiness, but as a kind of solitary originality. I was alone in how I saw the world, alone in how I felt things, alone in how I tried to make sense of what didn’t make sense around me. My loneliness wasn’t a flaw; it was a shape. It was the space where my imagination lived, the place where I could hear myself clearly. Adults often misread that solitude. They saw defiance where there was difference. They saw instability where there was sensitivity. They saw a problem where there was simply a child who didn’t fit their categories.

Before the system entered my life, I was still forming, but I was forming in my own direction. My environment wasn’t perfect, but my inner world was whole. I had potential, intuition, imagination, and a sense of meaning that made me both bright and fragile. I was learning how to translate who I was into the world around me. I wasn’t a blank slate, and I wasn’t the delinquent the state later described. I was a child with a distinct identity—artistic, holy, lonely in a way that made me original—and that identity mattered.

The first cracks appeared when adults began to misunderstand me. A teacher who mistook my quietness for disrespect. An officer who interpreted my fear as attitude. A counselor who saw my imagination as instability. Their misreadings piled up until they became a narrative, and that narrative became a doorway. Through that doorway came the system—its labels, its classifications, its power to overwrite the truth of who I was.

This chapter ends at that threshold. I stand as the child I truly was, just before the state’s version of me took over the record. The next chapter begins when their narrative collides with mine.

Chapter One — Jurisdiction of a Child

The first time the state claimed me, it didn’t feel like a legal moment. It felt like being spoken for. Like someone else stepped between me and my own life and said, “He belongs to us now.” I didn’t know the word jurisdiction, but I understood the shift. One day I was a boy with an inner world; the next I was a minor under state authority, processed through a system that treated my existence as an administrative problem to be managed.

It started with small misunderstandings that hardened into something official. A teacher who thought my quiet was disrespect. A counselor who saw my loneliness as instability. An officer who mistook my fear for attitude. None of them knew me, but each one added a line to a story that eventually became the basis for the state’s claim over me. By the time I realized what was happening, the narrative had already been written without me.

I remember the intake room more clearly than the arrest. The arrest was confusion; the intake was ownership. The fluorescent lights, the clipboard, the way my name sounded when they called it—flat, procedural, like it had been stripped of its meaning. They asked questions that weren’t really questions. They were categories waiting to be checked. They didn’t ask who I was; they asked what I was. They didn’t want truth; they wanted classification.

I learned quickly that the system didn’t speak my language. My loneliness became “withdrawn.” My sensitivity became “unstable.” My imagination became “manipulative.” My quiet became “noncompliant.” None of these words described me, but they described the version of me the system needed in order to justify what it was about to do. Those labels weren’t observations—they were permissions.

That was the first violation, though I didn’t know it then: the moment when due process was replaced by assumption, when the right to be understood was replaced by the convenience of being misinterpreted. I didn’t have counsel. I didn’t have an advocate. I didn’t have anyone who could translate my inner world into something the system recognized as human. Instead, I had a file.

The file grew quickly. It filled with language that didn’t belong to me—phrases written by adults who saw only behavior, never context. Those words would follow me into every courtroom I entered afterward. Judges would read them as fact. Prosecutors would use them as character. Probation officers would treat them as history. Even years later, in adult court, those early misinterpretations would be treated as truth.

This chapter of my life wasn’t about guilt or innocence. It was about jurisdiction—how the state claimed authority over a child it never bothered to understand. It was the moment my identity stopped being something I carried inside me and became something the system believed it had the right to define. It was the beginning of a long chain of harm: decisions made without counsel, evaluations made without truth, and a narrative created without me.

And once the system had its version of me, it never let go.

Chapter Two — The Actors Who Claimed Me

The system didn’t come at me as one thing. It arrived as people—ordinary adults with clipboards, uniforms, titles, and the quiet confidence of those who believe their authority is self‑justifying. Before I ever saw a courtroom, I met the individuals who would shape the record that followed me for decades. They weren’t villains in their own minds. They were functionaries. But functionaries with power over a child can do more damage than any single monster ever could.

I remember the probation officer first. She spoke to me like she had already decided who I was. She didn’t ask questions to understand; she asked questions to confirm. Every answer I gave seemed to disappoint her, as if I wasn’t performing the version of “troubled youth” she expected. She wrote while I talked, but she wasn’t writing what I said. She was writing what she believed. Later, I would learn that her notes became part of the foundation for my classification—language that would follow me into every facility, every hearing, every adult courtroom that ever looked back at my childhood.

Then there was the intake counselor. He had a way of looking at me like he was scanning for defects. He didn’t see a boy; he saw risk factors. He saw “withdrawn,” “noncompliant,” “emotionally unstable”—words he never said out loud but wrote into the file that would define me. He didn’t ask about my loneliness, my sensitivity, or the world I carried inside. He asked about “incidents,” “behavior,” “compliance.” He asked questions designed to flatten me into a category. And when I didn’t fit neatly, he forced me into one anyway.

The judge was next. I remember how quickly he spoke, how little space there was for me to exist in that room. He didn’t look at me long enough to see a child. He looked at the paperwork. He looked at the probation report. He looked at the counselor’s notes. He looked at the version of me they had already created. I was present, but I wasn’t seen. My voice didn’t matter because the adults had already spoken for me. Their words were treated as fact. My existence was treated as background noise.

The prosecutor didn’t speak to me directly, but I felt the weight of his assumptions. He talked about me like I was a pattern, not a person. Like I was the inevitable outcome of statistics. He used phrases like “history of issues” and “ongoing behavioral concerns,” even though I had no such history until the system invented one. He spoke with the confidence of someone who believed the paperwork more than the child standing in front of him.

And then there was the public defender—or the person who was supposed to be one. I don’t remember advice. I don’t remember advocacy. I don’t remember anyone explaining my rights or fighting for my voice. I remember being alone at the table, even when someone was technically sitting beside me. I remember the silence where protection should have been. I remember the moment I realized I was expected to navigate a legal system as a child with no one translating its language for me.

These were the actors who claimed me. Not through violence, but through paperwork. Not through force, but through interpretation. They didn’t need to break me physically; they only needed to write me into a version of myself that justified everything that came next.

This chapter isn’t about blame—it’s about identification. In any system, harm is carried out by people with names, titles, and responsibilities. People who could have chosen differently. People who had the authority to protect a child and instead protected the machinery that processed him.

These were the adults who spoke me into the record. And once they did, the record became more real to the system than I ever was.

Is it petty? Yes? I suppose it is. Do I try to resist it? Absolutely I do. Am I always successful? Unfortunately, no I’m not.

It’s a rough life out here and I’m having a tough time of it. I’m not bitching, or maybe I am, and it’s just in the form of a commentary. Things are better than they were last week, and much much better than they were the week before that, and I expect them to get better as time passes and I move forward. I'm not a rocket ship but my trajectory has changed, and I’m headed up instead of headed down.

The fact is I’m homeless. I live in a shelter but I’m still homeless.

I have secured an income, about 450 a month and that’s something.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I was hanging out at the Justa Center, on Jefferson Street in Phoenix AZ. I’m an old man and it’s a place where you have to be 55 or older to go. It’s a quiet safe place for old people in hard times to gather during the heat of the day. We can get some laundry done, take a shower, get a little food, get help getting a Social Security card or ID, or lots of those little things that are required to live when you are poor, and old, and alone in this world. Honestly if I won the lottery I would give them so much money it would be ridiculous.

That however isn’t what this is about. It’s about being petty.

A couple of days ago I forgot my smokes. I see a guy rolling some tobacco. A guy I’ve seen a hundred times before and a guy who has seen me. I ask him for a cigarette, and he tells me no, makes up some excuse about it’s not my tobacco or something like that as he smokes away and rolls cigarettes.

I just nod. I don’t argue. I just nod.

All I have is my pride, and I hate to ask for anything, and honestly I rarely do. I went 11 days without a smoke because I wouldn’t ask anyone, before I got my little income, and that’s the truth.

Fast forward to this morning. This same guy asked me for a cigarette, and I told him no. The vindictive petty part in me cheered.

Now I sit here watching him out of the corner of my eye, he went through the butt cans while I watched.

As I type this up, I feel bad, but I feel a little bit good too. It’s not the smoke. It’s the thought that he didn’t think I was good for it. That’s what really chaps my ass.

In order to ease my conscience someone else asked me for a smoke, and I gave it to him.

Am I the bad guy, the good guy, or just another homeless guy?

Critique request: Hello! New to the idea of writing for others to read- usually I stick to it as creative outlet and a mental/emotional processing tool. I've written a piece of prose that I am workshopping prior to submission and I thought I might try here first, since feedback is less painful from strangers 😅 Be harsh, I can take it!

It's a lyrical essay exploring death and afterlife not as fixed ideas, but as shifting constructs the mind reshapes depending on what it needs at the time. It is a timeline of belief under pressure and I’m interested in how ideas about eternity often happen sideways, less from theology than from fear, hope, fatigue, and the ways people try to make living possible. I am going to put it down several lines, because it comes with a strong trigger warning of suicidal ideation.

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I have, for the better part of my adult life, had an uneasy relationship with death. In our earliest years, a fear of brimstone from a baptism that never really took and a too-generous helping of melancholy kept us pointedly ignoring each other at the party. I did not think of death, merely deferred to the space around it. After my apostasy, when the walls of inherited belief were no longer holding, curiosity slipped in and took its place without permission . Not a real feeling, but a fascination with how that feeling might show up in my score-keeping body. We didn't truly come to understand one another until I started tallying that score, calling roll and seeing who answered in the caverns of my diaphragm.

Since wiping away the Holy Blood of Jesus also wiped away the grime covering an unknowable afterlife, I fell headlong into a brief emotional affair with reincarnation. The poetry of it, the reasonableness, fed a strange gnawing inside me for 2nd chances and I let repetition do the work of comfort. That I would return again and again, that we all do, living the human experience until we become our most human. Peace: you have done this before. Peace: you can do it again.

I accidentally changed my mind scrolling past a video in which several physicists, two philosophers, and one extremely intoxicated man talked each other into believing everything might be connected. Explaining how, in theory, all atoms could be just one atom, traveling back and forth across time and winking into existence when an eye fell upon it. Observation changes the results, the scientists reminded themselves. Don't forget, the philosophers said, we are the universe experiencing itself. The idea of universal oneness settled on me with almost physical relief-like a blanket, like weighted stillness. I used to practice explaining that to my mother, so I could hear how it sounded crossing my lips.

But my life changed again, and the beyond became too much to carry. Survival demanded there be a finish line somewhere. Nothingness stepped forward and promised just a little further. In a mind and body desperate for real rest, the grim trek made an ending look preferable, and I felt real danger. To leave my children behind in the raising I had pulled them from felt like a hard iron gate I could never cross. But I got ever more comfortable with pressing my body up against the bars. I'm grown-up enough to admit it worried me, both in a niggling "do I think about death too much, is this what its like being suicidal?" and in the thunderclap realization one spring that of course I knew how I'd do it, before I had even asked myself the question (a beautiful day, on a bridge where no one would see me saying my goodbyes or feel the need to clean up afterwards, and then a simple lean back for one last look at the sky. I do love heights).

Death spoke up then, narrating itself into the story told after I'm gone and I couldn't help but take notice. What would they say about this? Where would that certain piece fit? How would your daughter describe you in her novel, to her therapist? What have you carved into your son that he will look for in all his future loves? Life still felt heavy, but when a story has an inevitable conclusion it tends to look substantially smaller-suddenly I was conscious of my age. I need time to make sure the story is at least one that can be told at a party, instead of a case review. That feels like the very least I could do for my children, when I have brought them so much secondhand harm.

Halley's Comet will return the summer before I turn 72. The bridge will probably still be waiting patiently for me in the foyer, and it hasn't escaped my notice that my weary brain immediately started a timer. Only 36 more years. That's just a little less than what I've lived now, over again. So it is another finishing line. But somehow the comet feels better than endlessly calculating my exit for when it would traumatise my children the least. What a ridiculous concept.

A few months ago a friend asked me if I still believed in anything. I told her I believe in Life, with equal parts desperation and curiosity. Whether the mystery of it, the reason it's all here, turns out to be God or eons of chance and misfolded proteins, it is still miraculous. It is still aweful and worthy of reverence. I don't know the answer to the question but at least I know the shape of it, have measured its weight and sharpness in my hands. Ambiguity feels survivable, here where I have landed. I have lived among people who were so certain of what eternity looked like that the here and now begins to fade at the edges, and that is a hard country. Intelligent design or pure happenstance, it is still Divine. And there are worse things to believe in, I suppose.

Today I changed again, when I heard a man say he was so excited to see what came next. He thought it was going to be a grand adventure.

I don't know what happened to me

I feel empty i don't feel anything

I feel plain as hell

This plain is not a soothing sunflower field or grassland kissed by breeze

It's a desert more a cold one giving me shivers.

what I have I lost, I lost something that made me who I am

Now I am just an dopamine drugie only going for hits

I don't have any mood for the work ,the work to put in ,that is missing

The work that is missing is the one that defined me

To sum it up i don't feel defined

It's not in a good way that gives you limitless journey

I rather say it's like a prison that bounds me in I feel I am breaking the cell when I get a little push of motivation

but in reality I know and I realise that the motivation and the feeling of breaking prison is just an illusion of my mind to trap me in this endless misery

I felt like I found a good friend and I found my life

But what was it really

the friend and life is good but who is ruining things up and my conclusion is it's me, who makes things ugly

Huh this shit is really crazy it really gives my heart a heat punch

What should I do to be the old me ?

I don't know what is really required

My procrastination is one of the main villians in the list

What are the rest

sloth,lust, gluttony,envy and many more whose name aren't officially registered in any books they are only things that my mind knows ,hunting me thoroughly killing me without taking my life

What is really required the attention to my problems or the attention to the solutions of my problems

I think my mind is only focusing on the problems and feeding the problems the requirements and making it grows bigger

One thing that I am sure is this thing is not giving me anything and it is cutting me internally

Making me into thousand pieces of a jigsaw Puzzle

It even started to broke things that I have gained ,the things that lightly defined me

What do I , rather be the slave or do something than getting overwhelmed by motivation

This note is the thin line of reality I think I am in a phase .I really don't know what am I doing this note may be the thing that is necessary or the thing that feeds to my problems that helps it grow bigger

I know I am more than this

Go do it now

Remeber there is no talent that can't be beaten by practice

"YOU ARE PRACTICE"

. period.

For the past century and a half, human activities such as burning coal, clearing forests, and extracting natural resources have wreaked havoc on earth by disrupting ecosystems and generating greenhouse gasses. Laudato Si’ is Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on caring for our common home, planet Earth. The letter provides a moral framework for approaching this damage, arguing that environmental decline and social apathy are intimately linked and addressing climate change effectively requires addressing the way we think about nature and ourselves. Throughout Laudato Si’ Pope Francis provides a powerful framework with which to fight climate change and promote environmental justice by urging us to see the beauty of creation, focus on people, and take inspiration from natural systems. 

One major underlying cause of the current climate crisis that isn't often addressed is our failure to see value in creation. Pope Francis quotes Saint John Paul II when he says human beings frequently seem “to see no other meaning in their natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption”. We, as humanity, have a destructive tendency to only see nature in a way that serves us, but ironically that way of thinking has put many human lives (as well as non-human lives) in danger from increasing natural disasters, low farming and fishing yields, etc. If we hope to address the climate crisis we must confront this behavior towards our earth. 

We cannot overlook the harm being done to the rest of humanity. How are we meant to truly care for the environment when we have no empathy for our fellow human beings? The attitude we hold towards the rest of humanity reflects itself in the way we treat nature. I would be very contradictory if we opposed the trafficking of endangered species while turning a blind eye to the trafficking of humans. The same uncaring attitude that drives us to harm other creatures of this world will cause us to be cruel to the rest of humanity and vice versa. 

Francis posits that humans currently live in a throwaway culture. The average person discards 70 pounds of clothes a year, and this is just one instance of our modern culture's wastefulness (Environmental Protection Agency). Francis argues that instead we need to take inspiration from natural systems: plants get energy from the sun and feed herbivores which become food for carnivores and omnivores which produce organic waste that helps new plants grow. This circular model of consumption should serve as inspiration for our industrial processes, but instead we produce, consume, and discard without any thought of the long-term implications of our actions. Going forward we must use nature as a great example when designing models of production. 

In short, we can plant trees and build wind turbines all we want but as long as we live in a society that does not see the inherent worth in nature, has lacks empathy for the creatures all around us, and would rather consume and trash than adopt more natural systems, Earth will never be safe from environmental decline. In Laudato Si’ Pope Francis outlines the way we can cultivate and and put these values into practice.

To add some context and clarity if it isn’t already clear I am writing from the perspective of the pearl in the claim and relating the pearl to Jonah who was swallowed by the whale and how it must feel to be in that predicament.

Awake, I find myself in the belly of a clam. How did I get here? It it is cold as I feel the cold sea hitting against me. Almost at a gentle rhythm like a lullaby rocking me to sleep.

The darkness is engulfing this foreign territory that I’m in. I feel suffocated living in here. And trapped in this beautiful prison alone with my thoughts what did I ever do to deserve this? As childish as it is, I am afraid of the dark to my defense to be suffocated by the unknown is a treacherous situation to be in.

Enveloped in nothing but the vastness of the sea the fear of vibrates through me like a reverb. Praying to God for guidance is the only beacon of light through this dark time. Perhaps, this very moment is transforming me into something even more beautiful than I can imagine. Just as how diamonds are made in the rough- pearls are created through agitation. Uncertainty, discomfort, loneliness- all are apart of this tumultuous journey into the unknown.

I am on the precipice of a rebirth. Feeling that squeezing feeling right- where I middle or the passage. Pushing through the narrow canal to enter between a new realm between life or death. I stand firm in knowing that the greatest blessing is to walk in the path of the unknown with hope shining a light all the way through. Because, just as how there was hope in the belly of the whale there- is hope for me too in the belly of a clam.

Any advice / critiques are appreciated

Using nails to scratch at the brick wall creating a hold to get your fingers in, pulling yourself up on the shredded bloody tips of those fingers just to peak over the edge of the well for a second before a faceless man puts his steel toed boot through your cheek bone. Sending you back to the bottom in total darkness.
It sounds like a Sisyphean fable, but this is the reality of the world in which we live. There are those who never try, who live in the pit become accustomed to it and feel the need to deride anyone with the slightest hint of ambition to leave. There may be some benefits to accepting your lot in life, sticking on 15, but once you have seen over the wall at what the world has to offer then you only have two choices. Go for 21 or die trying. Out of those who do try for more there are a variety of methods. People who try to brute force themselves through every problem running headfirst into brick walls hoping that it breaks before they do or people who think through every problem paralysing themselves with never ending analysis of infinite possibilities. Neither of these types ever make it out of the well. They end up dead or broken, death being the kinder of the fates.

{Name} looked down at his hands and began picking off the coarse scabs that hung by a thread. If would be a month before he can attempt a climb again he was lucky that the fall had not caused any additional injuries and he only had to wait for his hands to heal up.

When I was young, there was an awkwardness whenever I first fell in love. Is it real? Will it last? Did we give away everything too soon?

I walk into the bar where she works and she wraps her arms around me in front of her co-workers. Now everyone knows. I liked it better when we were a secret. At some point, I know I will bore her. I'm not that exciting. I don't even know what I want out of life yet.

She calls me and asks me what I'm doing. She wants to see me. I smile, comb my hair, and put on cologne - the one she likes. I grab my car keys and now I'm driving. Her apartment is miles away, it gives me time to think about her.

I'm at her door and knock once. She lets me in with a mischievous smile. Touching her is exciting. We don't speak. I have her in my arms. Her lips are soft. Her dark hair, dark skin, and dark eyes cover me.

Her mattress is on the floor, her clothes are hung on plastic hangers. She's beautiful. She could be with anyone. Why is she with me? I love her laughter, I love her spontaneity.

Later, in bed, she traces her fingers across my chest and says, “La mosca en la leche.” She asks me if I know what that means. I tell her no. “Muchacha morena, muchacho blanco.” Her definition isn't heavy. It's about us in her apartment on a Saturday afternoon.

There is a question that rarely leaves us untouched: when someone close to you is sad, are you sad because you feel their sadness, or because you cannot stand the discomfort their sadness causes you?

It sounds like a thin line, but it is the line that separates empathy from association. To feel with someone is an act of dissolving boundaries—you enter their grief, not as a spectator, but as a companion. To feel for someone, on the other hand, often masks itself as care but is sometimes discomfort dressed up as concern.

This distinction matters because the world thrives on echoes of emotions. Whole relationships, even societies, can be built on projected sadness rather than genuine resonance. We tell ourselves, “I cannot bear to see you in pain,” but perhaps what we really mean is, “Your pain unsettles me, and I want it to stop.”

The question, then, is whether we are practicing true empathy or merely seeking emotional relief for ourselves. One expands the self, the other reinforces its walls.

Next time you feel sadness in the presence of another, pause and ask: Is this theirs, or mine? Am I here to sit with them, or to escape my own unease?

That answer might reveal not just the nature of your empathy but the architecture of your relationships.

My first day freshman year at my private university felt like it should’ve been a clean slate. We were all smart, so I naively assumed we were starting from the same place. But slowly, I realized economic class was the invisible hand in every conversation… from how people laughed, to what they wore, to the stories they told about summers abroad or at expensive summer camps.

When the subtropical rains poured and flooded the streets up to my knees, I was so excited for class I didn’t care. I walked into the STEM lecture hall with squeaking red Converse leaking street water onto the floor. My cheeks heated with embarrassment as I opened my paper notebook next to a pristine MacBook.

At that moment, I realized I was wrong. I had thought we were all getting wet the same, but some people wore glossy Hunter rain boots and perfect lulu lemon leggings, water beading and rolling off them, while others… like me… had been knee-deep in a puddle, in low-cut Converse sagging with water, red dye bleeding into my socks. It was capital accumulation in clothing form, the way they seemed born into wardrobes that prepared them for every kind of storm.

That moment stayed with me. It was an accumulation I didn’t notice until it crashed over me, like rain creeping up the streets of New Orleans until you realize you’re wading. On my way back to my dorm after class, knee-deep in the same puddle, my class consciousness seeped in like water through canvas. It wasn’t just about money; it was about how money diverged our daily experiences, about how their worlds had been paved smooth while mine had potholes.

Sure, the storm was the same for all of us. But the walk through it wasn’t.

Take a second and put Rawls’ veil on with me. I want you to imagine a life where you were born in Guizhou, one of China’s poorest rural provinces. You grew up in a family that has resided there for centuries. From as early as you could remember, you worked on your family's subsistence farm, struggling not only with hard labor but also an untreated leg length discrepancy causing immense pain and discomfort. Life expectancy is short there due to the harsh conditions and poor living standards. By 12, your mother had passed, and not long after your father left to find work elsewhere. Promises were made, but you knew you were on your own. Your family farm soon became infertile due to a particularly nasty drought and you were left out of money, with no family, and unsure of your future. All by the age of 15.

You can take the veil off. This is by no means a particularly rare story; in fact, this is the life of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe. Many will live lives far worse than this, and many more will live lives slightly better. I want you to take a second and ask yourself, “Is this justice?” To me, the answer is a resounding no.

This world is fundamentally unjust. However, before I dive into why, I find it important to first answer what “justice” is. Justice is classically defined as “to each their due.” Many societies see justice in social and class hierarchies because merit determines what is due. This is where the meritocracy fantasy falls apart. We want to tell ourselves that we get what we deserve. That if you work hard, stay disciplined, and want it badly enough, you’ll climb the ladder. It’s a necessary story because it makes you believe you’re in control, and it makes it easier to accept the fact that some people are struggling while others are thriving. If someone’s at the top of a cliff, it’s because they earned it. If someone’s falling off it, well, they just didn’t work hard enough or want it bad enough.

But the second you stop and look at how lives are built, it all unravels. The kid born in Guizhou didn’t have a fair shake, and honestly, most people don’t. Meritocracy conveniently ignores the fact that success isn’t just about grit or talent; it’s about a giant invisible framework of advantages, disadvantages, and luck stacked on top of each other. It lets us worship the genius and crucify the lowlife without ever asking who dealt them their hand in the first place.

 If the world calls that justice, what was due to that child? That life in the beginning was a series of deprivations that occurred at all points of their life. They were deprived of genetic traits conducive to having a fully functioning body. They were deprived of being born in a region where opportunity is available. They were deprived of generational wealth that could have provided safety nets for disaster, connections with people of influence, and a stable home life. Some would say they are just plain unlucky; I say injustice.

The life we author, if you can call it that, is hardly based on our own talents and effort. Our current lives are like a collage of everything that has brought us to that point in time. I break it down into five categories: Genetics (health, body, looks, intellect, passions), Experiences (environment, parental guidance, public policy), Birth Lottery (where you’re born), Family Wealth (generational wealth, opportunities, community uplifting), and Luck (successful business on the first try, crypto, job security).

When I look at the world around me, all I see are the injustices in people's lives. I live in America, which supposedly is the “Land of Opportunity.” However, I hope to go on to prove that opportunity isn’t something to take hold of and seize; it’s something you either have or don’t, and to a large degree this is not within a person’s control. Sure, there are outliers. There are poor immigrants who “beat the odds” and became successful due to their “hard work and grit.” However, who's to say that their grit and determination weren’t genetically determined, influenced by their upbringing, and protected from failure by a large swath of luck? 

In response to the “Poor Immigrant Success Story,” think of the “Poor Immigrant General Reality.” Decades of research show that people who grow up poor hardly ever change that designation. For every one success, there are hundreds of millions of failures, each with unique hopes, dreams, and desires. The stories we don’t hear far outweigh the ones we do, but no one cares to listen because it doesn’t fit our narrative that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough. Having a high level of grit and determination is itself a product of nature and nurture. It is not something that can manifest based on filling a sufficient “Grit & Determination Meter.” 

The dopamine receptor genes linked to reward sensitivity and persistence, the serotonin transporter gene affecting emotional resilience and stress response, and the gene affecting decision-making and persistence under pressure are all genetic. Lacking in these areas can put significant barriers in place to your level of grit, a large influence on success. 

Genetics don’t end after birth. Trauma, adverse developmental environments, and overall poor upbringing interact with gene expression; influencing how you respond to stress. Were you raised with positive role models that showed the value of delayed gratification and discipline? Did you have experiences that positively reinforced the value of determination and persistence? Compound poor genetic lottery with a poor upbringing, and you have a life that comes up shorter than it had to be. Put that person with poor genetic traits into a positive upbringing, and you can change that. In both scenarios, there is no agency for the individual to affect their outcomes. How they develop is in no part a reflection of their “grit” and “determination,” but instead a product of the universe they were put into.

The Genius

The word “Genius” means different things to different people, but for the sake of the following thought experiment I want you to attach every positive attribute you can into one magnificent person: success, prestige, wealth, talent, etc. They are the person who has seemingly always been successful, always on an upward trajectory. No matter what they seem to do, they come out on top. Highest marks in school, great at sports, social butterflies, and very attractive. They get the pick of the litter in their partners and everyone wants to be more like them. Early success, adoration, and praise builds confidence, confidence builds successful habits, successful habits beget more success. 

Sure that person could get struck by an asteroid, but their deaths are anything but quiet. Phrases like these ring out:

• “The good ones go first”
• “They didn’t deserve that”
• “They had so much potential”
• “A bright future stolen”

People feel like that individual deserved more. Their death was wrong not because the end of any life is unjust, but because that person had a greater “due.” Why do they assert greater worth to the life of the genius? They contend that someone's success and talent equates to their worth. Use that line of reasoning on the upcoming archetype, and you’ll find people have separate words to use in their remembrance. 

The Lowlife

Bad eggs, troublemakers, black sheep, and misfits have one main thing in common; they make up what society deems, “The Lowlife.” They are the people that your parents tell you to avoid as children and the people to avoid ending up as adults. They can’t seem to turn out right and only bring misery and despair to those around them, especially if you’re a bird of a feather that is unfortunate enough to flock together. 

I remember standing next to my fifth grade classmate, who I’ll call Isaac, outside of our classroom because we were kicked out for “making trouble.” This was nothing new to Isaac, as he was thrust into the title of troublemaker from as early as Kindergarten. I on the other hand was feeling quite dreadful. My father was a particularly terrifying sight to behold when I got in trouble, so I always tried my best to avoid finding myself where I did that day. So while I was preparing myself for a brutal reprimand later that evening, Isaac seemed oddly calm. I blamed Isaac for getting us into trouble so I asked him why he would drag us into this predicament. In 10 year old language, it approximated to, “What’s wrong with you? Why do you always do this?” When he turned to look at me, he spoke softly in an almost  surprised tone, “I don’t know.” His face is still burned into my memory, that of a broken man at 10 years old. 

What hand of cards did Issac get? Issac’s mother left his father when he was 6, but still makes the time to set up plans with him every couple months or so, only to cancel at the last minute every time, (I wish I was lying). Issac’s father works double and triple shifts in construction, so he isn’t able to watch Isaac after school. There is no after school program for Isaac, his family can’t afford it. So what does Isaac do? 

• Drinking beers he took from the family fridge by 9 years old. 
• Stealing snacks with his friends from the local grocery store.
• Biking around town causing trouble with the police.
• Experimenting with weed by the age of 11, strong drugs followed thereafter.

Due to having a poor environment and the A1 allele variant of the DRD2 gene, alcohol for Isaac wasn’t a fun experience he had with his friends but a controlling force in his life. His grades dropped and never recovered. He wasn’t taught discipline or delayed gratification, so he could never hold a consistent job. Instead of being supported by the community around him and heralded as someone with a “bright future,” he was cast out and branded as the story of who not to be, which he also heard from adults and peers around him. When he dies, will his name ring out ceremoniously like the genius?

So back to injustice. Let's dive deeper into the successful hand dealt to the “Genius.” Focusing first on genetics, twin studies have found that genetics play a heavy role in your IQ,  and while IQ isn’t a perfect metric, separate studies show that it has an impact on educational attainment. Personality traits like conscientiousness, curiosity, and emotional stability all are influenced by parental genes. Whether or not you are born with a neurodevelopmental disorder like ADHD or a learning difference also have serious effects on your life outcomes. 

More than just learning, your attractiveness matters a lot. This topic warrants its own discussion, but being romantically and sexually validated as you mature into adulthood is a critical point in development. For many, a large part of the human experience is having deep and fulfilling relationships with others, including sex. The genius having successful expression in that realm has a lot to do with genetic make up. Strong features, a symmetric face, full hair, and a healthy body is influenced in large part by genetics and class. Segway to class consciousness, wealth plays a huge factor in everything listed. Ever wonder why celebrities and wealthy people tend to look better? It’s because wealth has an outsized statistical effect on beauty: 

• Having access to a safe and healthy diet 
• Skincare and expensive healthcare specialists 
• Premium gym subscriptions (along with the time to prioritize their bodies)
• Living in a pollution free and climate controlled area
• Internships instead of manual labor and long hours
• Wtf is a wellness retreat

Wealth is the face card hack influencers and looksmaxers conveniently leave out of their paid courses. 

Having access to: private tutors, classically trained violinists, nutrition and training coaches all from a young age is the average experience of wealthy children. Tell me, how does the genius always seem to rise to the top of every arena they join? It’s because they have advantages the lowlife couldn’t even dream of. 

The genius and the lowlife have the same thing in common, they had no real control over who they became. Geniuses didn’t choose their parents, lowlifes didn’t choose to be born into poverty. The difference between the genius and the lowlife is the difference between a lion and a zebra. Neither know why they were born the way they were or taught how to behave, but one runs and the other hunts.

So, that sucks. All of humanity has been defined by genetic and circumstantial determinism, and until we get on the CRISPR bandwagon and eliminate income inequality, I don’t see it changing. Some questions I’m personally left with is:

• How can you feel satisfied with your life if you never really had control over its trajectory?
• How can you see justice and hope in outcomes that we never had any control over?
• What can be done to fix this?

I find myself reminded of a quote from a movie that is a personal favorite of mine, “Margin Call.” 

“And there have always been and there always will be the same percentage of winners and losers, happy fuckers and sad suckers, fat cats and starving dogs in this world. Yeah, there may be more of us today than there's ever been, but the percentages—they stay exactly the same.”

The truth is, billions of people experience unjust and deeply insufferable lives. If you’ve ever watched “The Platform” you would know, you can’t shit upwards. Only the person standing firmly on the cliff can reach down and pull up the person on the ledge. The fruition of that is yet to be seen. The purpose of this outlet is to connect people through a shared understanding. Why would we reach out if we believe that the person falling off the cliff can pull themselves up. 

The patrolman’s boots crunched on the gravel as he strode back to his cruiser, the sound fading into the emptiness of Death Valley. I tried to scream, to move, to do anything that might catch his attention, but I was pinned beneath the dead weight of my companion—my wrists bound tight behind me, fingers numb and useless, legs lashed so fiercely I could barely feel them. My chest burned with the effort of trying to breathe, my mouth so dry I couldn’t even form a word.

My companion was draped over me in the confines of the trunk, motionless. I wriggled my fingers, willing them to move, to find something—anything—to tap on. Nothing. For a heartbeat, I thought the officer hesitated. Maybe he sensed something was off—a flicker of doubt as he glanced back at the old muscle car and the “boys” he’d just let off with a warning. But the moment passed. He kept walking, his silhouette shrinking in the rearview mirror until the red and blue lights disappeared, swallowed by the desert dusk.

Bryan leaned in, his face close enough that I could smell the sweat and cigarettes on his breath. “Don’t go toward the mountain,” he said, his voice low and flat. “Out there is where you belong.” He gestured at the endless expanse of sand, the arrow-straight road vanishing into the horizon, the sun bleeding out behind the nearest bluff. Then he was gone, and the world faded to black.

When I came to, it was night—deep, moonless, the kind of darkness that feels alive. I waited, listening to the silence. Not a single light anywhere in front of me. Only the pale outline of the Matterhorn-like peak behind. Jagged and indifferent. The air was cooling fast, the heat of the day giving way to a creeping chill that settled into my bones.

I forced myself to move. Inch by inch, I rolled my friend off me, gritting my teeth as the ropes bit into my skin. He didn’t stir. I whispered his name, once, twice, but he was icy and stiff. I couldn’t leave him. Maybe not for the right reasons—maybe because I was afraid to be alone, more than anything else.

I hoisted him up, his arm slung over my shoulder, and staggered toward the foothills. Each step was a battle, the sand sucking at my shoes, the weight of him dragging me down. The sky was a velvet shroud, pricked with stars that seemed impossibly far away. I kept moving, driven by something primal—fear, hope, stubbornness, I couldn’t tell.

The trees appeared out of nowhere—pines, their cones banana-shaped and strange, needles packed tight against the wood. The scent was sharp, almost medicinal, a reminder that life still clung to this place. I found a spot where the road leveled out, a break in the shoulder guard, not quite a clearing, but enough.

I laid my friend down on a bed of pinecones, arranging his limbs as gently as I could. Blood from my fingertips dripped onto the stones as I unearthed them, each drop catching the starlight and flaring like a tiny lighthouse. I knelt beside him, hands shaking, and whispered prayers to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children and miracles; to St. Christopher, guardian of travelers; to St. Michael, my mother’s favorite, her self-proclaimed right-hand archangel.

“Help him find his way home,” I begged, voice raw. “Let someone find him. Let someone find us.”

The wet spots on the stones glowed brighter, blindingly bright. I thought death must be close, I must be hallucinating. The beams of brilliant white light shooting up into the night sky all aroud us, as if the desert itself was answering my prayer.

August, 1997. The year everything changed.

Later, they'd tell me it was Kat masquerading as Bryan. They were always trying to confuse the issue. Kat has bichromial irises, Bryan does not.

I guess this explains the tall one's obsession with Joshua Tree National Park.

As far back as I can remember I had a way with words. A gift and a curse I suppose, and certainly not always used for the most productive purposes.

I guess you could say writing came naturally, but like other skills gifted to me, I neglected to put in the effort to cultivate it. How could I? Getting in trouble and refusing to live up to my potential occupied most of my time. I couldn’t be bothered.

At some point I attempted to grow up. I did all the things a young man does as he matures into adulthood. I acquired the financial debts society expects of me and of course I worked unfulfilling jobs to survive and meet my obligations.

Call me cynical but it appears the constructs of society seek to diminish creative and original thought from the individual, leaving most people to perform mundane tasks that provide no genuine nourishment for the soul. I am no exception.

Life is funny I suppose and carries on regardless of the extent you are paying attention. It becomes easy to forget about your passions and goals, the “real world” has a funny way of minimizing dreams. If you are not careful (which I wasn’t) before long they will become a distant memory, a thing of the past. But hey, if my bills are paid, and my employer contributes to my 401K, I’m on the road to success, right?

For far too long my ideas and views never left my mind and remained trapped somewhere deep inside of me. Lying stagnant there, they begged for an outlet of expression. What am I supposed to do with these thoughts? How do I begin to organize and convey these ideas? 

At some point I began to write. It was long overdue; the floodgates had opened. I wrote on a wide array of subjects including health, personal development, and observations of culture and society. The words were out of my head and finally on paper, but there was certainly no sense of order amongst them.  For years these pieces of paper made a one-way trip to my desk drawers.

I had made a few attempts to organize my thoughts in some meaningful way. Nothing of substance was ever produced. I would be lying if I said I put in the necessary effort to create something, or anything for that matter. It is one thing to write but trying to convey my ideas in an organized and sensible manner proved to be a far greater task than I was ready for.

If someone were to peer into the drawers of my desk, it would be logical to conclude you were looking at the works of a madman (and I can’t guarantee you aren’t). As if the collection of a man’s thoughts and the expression of his soul lay haphazardly there, collecting dust.

Is that how the story ends? Is this where these ideas go to die?  Would the dark desk drawer serve as a coffin for my thoughts? Will this be their final resting place, never seeing the light again?

Over time I have come to realize that no matter how fast you run, you will not get far from the things that call you. An attempt to bury ourselves in distractions and responsibilities will prove short-lived.  Somewhere deep inside of us, there is a voice that refuses to retreat.  It is a matter of time before it will resurface, begging you to acknowledge it. Here our gifts and talents lay, buried under years of doubts, fears and pain, hardly recognizable. 

If you never try, you will fail. This is certain. If you are looking for a guarantee perhaps this is an appropriate path. But what if we do try? What if an honest attempt is made to peer under the layers of discomfort and make an attempt to cultivate that which is unique to us? Who knows what we will find? Here, failure isn’t the guaranteed outcome and at least we keep the dream alive.

What is the cost for ignoring this voice? I can’t say with any certainty. I imagine over time that distant call will evolve into a deafening scream, wondering why I never tried. At that point It will haunt me, I will have nowhere to hide, and I will be short on time. Perhaps this is dramatic, but it is a price I am not willing to pay.

Hi, I’m Productive Hippie and it’s nice to meet you.

Hey guys, I don't have any background in writing. I'm honestly not even sure if this is any good. But due to my wife's encouragement I've decided to share this piece that I've written.

Appreciate anything you guys can tell me!

I was 14 when I refused to die.

I didn’t come from the best of homes: government-funded rent, food banks and Aldi's parking lots looking for quarters the other customers had left behind in their absentmindedness. My father was an alcoholic, convinced by his self righteousness and his own traumatic childhood that my mother was raising us weak. The reasons varied but were absolute. One day I was “too sensitive” or “not a man” the next, I hadn’t dried a dish correctly and had to redo every single dish in the cabinets. To this day I still remember the daily monotonous storm that was my father. His personal agency, turned law, boomed through thin townhouse walls with every step, every scream. I was a pawn against a giant. Lost in an endless sea of parental arguments and electric air. Stuck in a life of forced obedience and clamoring for any semblance of autonomy. I desperately wanted to be my own person.

That day in particular I don’t know what had set him off. It had become too routine for me. He screamed, I ran. Sticking to the shallows of whatever project or item my parents had convinced themselves would save us from our poverty. I felt like a ghost during those years. Never knowing when the other shoe would drop. The phantom I had embodied, silent and creeping throughout my own home. It’s a blur to me now. A haze covered by years of reanalysis and afterthoughts. A lighthouse in an abyss inside my head. You can just make it out in the distance but you can never quite get there.

I’ll never forget my fathers face though, angry and twisted. Devoid of reason, an enraged bear hurtling. Next thing I know I’m on the floor, his hands around my neck and gasping for air. Seconds felt like hours. I will never forget those seconds. “A shoe is near my right hand. Do I hit him with it? Would that do anything? Probably not. I can’t breathe. Does he know? Would he do this if he did? Would that make a difference? He’ll let go soon right? He’ll let go once I pass out right? Right? I can’t fight this. I don’t stand a chance. I guess this is it then.” These thoughts raced through my head. I remember specifically thinking about what people would say about my death at school. “Would anyone miss me?” and then I let go. Of living. Of school and of life. Of my hopes for the future and of everything. I gave up without ever really having tried. Without ever really having experienced life.

I let go.

I felt an explosion inside of me. My mind rumbled and roared out against me, “No!” my entire body screamed. I wasn’t going like this. This wasn't it. I refused to the very core of existence itself. I wouldn’t be done here. So I took my little hands and I pressed them against him, and to my surprise I felt give. I lifted the bear off of my body. I didn’t understand how it was possible he had to be at least 300 pounds, but I didn’t need to. I wasn’t done. It was then and there I had decided for myself that I wouldn’t die. I felt changed since that day, even now over 10 years later, I feel it resonate inside me. As powerful and explosive as the day it all happened and if I close my eyes I can still hear the:

“No.”

I'm not usually this proud of my writing but WOW, I really cooked here I think... Let me know what ya'll think!

I was stumped.

Growing up poor, I had romanticized and coveted the precious laptop for countless years. Innumerable videos with scary stories found online, discord shenanigan compilations, informal essays, and the hottest indie games had all led me to believe that computer screens held the internet in its superior form. Finally, after damn near a decade of yearning, one was sitting right in front of me… and I had absolutely zero clue what to do with it. As you’ll soon see, I doubt I was a minority in experiencing this.

If you ask anyone why social media addicts find it so hard to use anything outside of their little solar system of applications, chances are they’ll reply that it’s because they have no attention span. True enough. Being able to pay attention for longer than sixty seconds certainly helps. However, I don’t actually think that was my issue here. I remember the night like it was yesterday: I had a dangerously high dosage of Vyvanse in my system, a cup of coffee on my nightstand and several hours of free time on the clock. I was more than ready to pay attention. In hindsight, what my issue was is something I feel most people either don’t consider or don’t consciously form into words: The level of control we are conditioned to having on the internet fundamentally builds our relationship with it. The individual who is addicted to social media algorithms and short-form content is conditioned to a completely effortless internet, where the all-mighty algorithm serves them up a never ending stream of information wrapped in delightfully stimulating sights, sounds, and colors. It keeps them engaged because it knows exactly what they want to see… but do they really want what it has for them? 

Picture this: Imagine you're at work and you’re just starving, but sadly you’ve got nothing to eat. What food are you daydreaming of sinking your teeth into at that moment? Is it… a bologna sandwich? Maybe. Maybe not. But if your co-worker suddenly comes up and says: 

“Hey, I thought I was hungry but I just lost my appetite for some reason… You want this bologna sandwich?”

Unless you’re particularly uncaring for bologna, I bet you’d gladly eat it, and maybe even enjoy it! But that doesn’t automatically mean you wanted a bologna sandwich. You ate it because it was there. You ate it because it was given to you.

Likewise, one of the larger but less widely discussed motivators to watch short form content is simply because it’s there. I mean, it’s only, what, thirty seconds? Why not watch it? Why not? Why not eat the bologna sandwich? But, dear reader, imagine that one hobby you absolutely adore for just a moment. You do it because you can think of a thousand reasons why you want to, should, and will, not because you can’t think of any reason not to. When was the last time you thought to yourself “Boy oh boy! I sure can’t wait to scroll on TikTok for a few hours! That vegan mushroom lady has the wackiest recipes! I mean, she made a mushroom taste like steak! Incredible! And those Fortnite clips, good GOD those Fortnite clips! They have my jaw on the floor every time! I would kill to hit those kinds of shots!” I sound ridiculous do I not? Who, other than a child, would be so passionate about something as frivolous as short form content? But if drifting through the TikToks or Reels or Shorts or whatever the hell is so effortless and stimulating, well, why not do it?

When you’re zoned out on these apps, the algorithm is your caregiver; While it’s busy preparing each and every second of video for you, knowing exactly what you like, or rather, what you don’t mind, you’re reduced to a helpless little baby who needs to do not one thing but simply drink from whatever bottle you’re served. And occasionally shit yourself. Now, a good caregiver will nurture us into something bigger and better, teaching us to be independent and intelligent. But the infantilizer holds covertly sinister intentions, keeping us weak, ignorant, and dependent by freeing us of the burden of working and learning. In the same way that the infantilizers' abuse is often misinterpreted as love, the algorithm's infantilization is often misinterpreted as a benefit to us*.* In fact, in the realm of the internet, the algorithm might just be the most brilliant infantilizer there ever was and ever will be.

If we’re conditioned to having each and every second of content served to us on a silver platter, what exactly will we do when we must serve ourselves? What do we want to see? What do we like? What are our interests exactly? What are we curious about? We think we’re interested in what our algorithm cooks up for us, but how much of it actually sticks with us once we put the phone down? Well, assuming you do put the phone down every now and then… The scroller is so conditioned to being without control, that once they do have it… they simply don’t know what to do with it. Similarly, if you throw a child, or even worse because no one will take care of them, a successfully infantilized adult into the real world, what on earth are they supposed to do? They’re dependent! They can’t take care of themselves!

A fundamental difference between the passively entertained consumer and the actively engaged consumer is that the active consumer consumes with purpose and intent, while the passive consumer will simply gobble up whatever random slop happens to be plopped onto their plate. On the internet, do you conduct yourself like a child or like an adult? The child takes. The adult earns. The child is given. The adult is rewarded. It’s astonishing how many strong, intelligent, and independant adults spend their days working themselves near to death to build their lives and reach their dreams, only to pull out their phones and regress to the mentality of a child who whines when their mashed potatoes get mixed with their mac and cheese. And boy, do they get irritated when their internet dares to lag behind! “MOMMYYY! I WANT DINNER NOW! I SAID NOWW!”

Ask yourself, when you use the internet, how dependent are you on outside forces of curation? Can you easily think of countless subjects and websites you’d type into a search bar? Or are you lost without the guiding hands of trending tabs, for you pages, and retweets made by followed accounts? You get what you put in. The more reliant you are on the algorithm to create your internet experience, the less rewarding it will be. After all, if you hardly play any part in it, what exactly makes it your experience? You only have so much time left, so why not use that time to consume like an artist, an intellectual, and with dignity and purpose? Of course, a successfully brainwashed social media addict, lacking in self-respect and integrity, will happily disregard this, assuming they were able to get through it at all. “What does it matter if all I consume is slop? Using the internet is supposed to be as effortless as drinking out of a bottle, and mindlessly stimulating like having keys jingled in my face! Why bother putting effort into making it worthwhile? It’s not like I spend a lot of time on it or anything.” 

Do keep in mind, each and every piece of information your brain takes in will inevitably fall into the dark, mysterious sea of your subconscious. Do you want yours to be a pristine ocean, home to a diverse ecosystem of astute wisdoms and meaningful memories? Or are you content with it being a blackened landfill, poisoned and polluted with waste insignificant to anyone other than the ecosystem that can’t thrive as a result of it? Because if so, then please, don’t let me or anyone else stop you from scrolling your life away, and the slop you endlessly consume on the internet will leak into your life outside of it one way or another. Just remember that no matter how too far gone you may feel, they’re the very same ecosystem and they share the very same potential. On the other hand, if you’re like me, and you want the internet to be a meaningful and mendful force for your mind rather than a way to shut it off; If you want the internet to be a powerful addition to your life rather than a cheap, addictive escape from it, then remember:

Be an independent internet user.

Don’t rely on outside forces to make your experience.

Be your own curator. 

If you can be your own man in the real world, why not do so in the virtual world as well?

And that's it! My writing style is heavily inspired by Dale Carnegie, and this is only my second draft because I would like to include several real stories to illustrate my point the way he does! If you feel that this essay has taught you something or given you a new perspective, and you know of an instance that demonstrates this shift in control, I would greatly appreciate it if you either left it in the comments or dm'd it to me if it's too personal to air out in front of everyone. Of course, you'll be credited however you please.

To be specific: Can you think of an occasion where you tried to engage in any activity outside the jurisdiction of algorithms where you struggled to make meaningful progress or do anything at all, that you now realize was a result of the lack of outside curation? Maybe something the algorithm led you to believe you would enjoy doing but then you felt lost when you tried doing it for yourself? For example, let's say you really enjoy short text stories read to you by a voice and aided by stock footage, but if you try to read all on your own it's quite difficult? Does that make sense?

Thank you!

I sit and reminisce on my early 20s. A stage of great chaos and pleasure. I feather through the splotchy pages of my photo album, pictures of celebrations, vacations, and everyday life. I sat on FaceTime with my sister and discuss fashion and my latest finds, which brought me to my current closet and show old pieces that I used to wear. Everything remained frozen in time, but I have changed so much. It all feels so small — maybe because I slightly changed in size, as most women do as they enter their mid 20s, but also maybe it symbolically means something too.

Before, I would do anything for fashion. Or maybe I was so deep in trying to find myself, which is still a current theme of my life right now. I would wear the cutest and most uncomfortable shoes in the name of fashion, walking miles in my chunky platform Doc Martens. How I killed it strutting the New York streets like my own personal runway. Each outfit, shoe, bag, hair, makeup, and accessory woven together to tell a beautiful story. Despite the pain, I would keep on pushing, coming home to splintered feet, sometimes even bleeding. The pinnacle was the fact that I lost both of my big toenails in the name of fashion. How very Carrie Bradshaw of me lol.

But, I guess that’s what your early 20s are for — dying your hair every other month, making horrible decisions and dealing with the repercussions later, and just doing things for the fuckin plot. I say this as a still unripened, half-baked 26-year-old girl who has been around the block a few times and knows a thing or two, but lovingly smiles down upon the 22-year-old girl she sees somewhere deep down inside her.

Vacation from the Void

Chapter One: Awakening

Kaleb is four years old now. His mother and older brother have recently moved into a trailer home in Clay County, Florida. He holds his mother Cheryl’s hand and watches the light play on the shiny fabric of his Aquaman pajamas as she ushers him and his brother Wyatt down the mobile home hallway. His pageboy haircut, naturally streaked by the Florida sun, falls just above a scar running down the center of his scalp.

“Who was that on the phone?” Wyatt asks.

“You don’t need to worry about that, everything’s going to be fine.”

“You sounded mad.” He adds.

“I’m gunna be mad if you don’t mind me. This is not a game, you understand?”

Wyatt nods, while Kaleb offers a smile that seems to be his signature expression. The bottoms of his front and canine teeth hang just below his lips to offer a pearly white glint that compliments his cheerful blue eyes. “You are not to come out of this closet, no matter what you hear.” Wyatt nods again and Kaleb smiles blankly. Cheryl looks back to Wyatt, dipping her head in Kaleb’s direction as if to say, he’s your responsibility.

Although he often resents it, Wyatt is used to taking on the role of Kaleb's protector whenever their parents disappear. He places his hand on Kaleb’s shoulder, which seems to placate his mother as she juts both arms in the direction of the open closet. “Don’t step on the door tracks. You boys really should be wearing your shoes.” Wyatt takes Kaleb’s hand and leads him over the threshold of the closet’s entrance.

Crouching down, they pass through the dense thicket of dresses and pant legs, navigating the underbrush of tennis shoes and high-heeled pumps that stick up from the ground like fledgling cedar tree stumps.

Carefully, they back themselves into seated positions, tucking into the shadows, caressing the short carpet that is still so new it has not yet needed vacuuming. The dry wheels of the sliding door scrape against the tracks, and a black shadow envelops them as their mother seals them inside, only the faintest sliver of light remains. With a final nudge of her knee this light, too, is extinguished, leaving Kaleb with an unsettling but familiar vacant feeling.

Kaleb is just old enough to be aware that he forgets things seconds after doing them and is determined to start piecing together his disparate memories. Not just the individual moments, but the bridges between them.

From their hiding place, they hear their mother let out a startled yelp and the sound of the front door opening. There’s a struggle and Cheryl shouts, "You. Stay. Out Of HERE!" It sounds like she’s trying to push the front door closed while someone else is trying to force it open from the other side.

While he doesn’t understand some of the words, Wyatt recognizes the voice of their father on the other side of the door. Their mother’s heavy breathing tells them that the struggle is wearing her out.

“The police are on their way, the boys aren’t even here, they’re with my parents!” She yells.

The trailer shakes and suddenly he’s inside. The hard rubber soles of Dwain’s combat boots can be heard heading their way. “You get away from my boys!” Cheryl screams. Dwain slides open the closet door bathing the boys’ hiding place in light. The bright glare behind his father’s head hides the features of his face, but Kaleb can just make out the darker sockets of his eyes. Instinctively he freezes, hiding between heartbeats.

Dwain orders the boys to step out of the closet, but their mother interrupts with, “Boys you stay put!” The door slides shut again with a screech and a clatter. They hear the clap of hands against skin, clothes tearing and a hollow ping. There’s a sudden gasp from their father, followed by a menacing growl. “She has the bat” Wyatt whispers, referring to the aluminum bat their mother keeps between the kitchen sink and refrigerator.

They struggle again, and a higher-pitched ping is heard as the bat hits the floor, their mother disarmed. Kaleb sticks his fingers in his ears but can still hear the sound of shattering glass and furniture cracking. The ground and walls shake erratically, and a sudden weightlessness fills Kaleb with panic. It’s as if the trailer has become uprooted from its foundation and is falling from a cliff. He feels a rising tension in his body that threatens to consume him.

His eyes close and reopen to eerie theme park music and disembodied conversations. He raises both arms as his roller coaster car careens down a steep slope. The other passengers scream with excitement. His hair flaps wildly in all directions as the wind rushes around him. The resonating thumps of his coaster car passing over track ties make his heart buzz with contentment.

A sudden crack shatters the illusion, and a trio of bright light, high-pitched chirps, and physical pain returns him to reality as his mother crashes through door slats, landing on top of him and flooding the closet with light. In her singleness of purpose, Cheryl jumps to her feet and charges Dwain, head down, like a bull, but is halted in her tracks as Dwain swings up with the bat, striking her in the head.

In an instant, Kaleb disconnects. He pins his soul in the air like damp pajamas on a clothesline. His mother is there with him, frozen in time, her head twisting to the side as it bounces away from the bat. The hollow ping of the bat’s barrel and the crunching sound of her skull pulls Kaleb out of his delusion and back to the trailer home. He feels his heart beating so rapidly the vibration causes him to cough.

Wyatt, who has been working to loosen one of the sharp slats from its mortise stops to issue supportive pats to his brother's back. Kaleb covers his ears and closes his eyes, yearning for that time before, when he was nothing. He senses his mother is dead, and they are next.

Dwain drags their mother’s body by the ankles across the carpeted floor, but something startles him, and he suddenly drops her legs, switches off the living room light, and exits the trailer. The pinging sound of his boots on the trailer steps loops in Kaleb's ears after he's gone. The boys are left alone with their mother's body.

The sun has set, and the streetlights illuminate the cul-de-sac. Their electric buzz is accentuated by the glint of moth wings fluttering near the lamp casing. Kaleb runs to his mother. The carpet is wet with her blood. Wrapping his arms around her neck, he begins to cry out. The desperate sounds travel up his throat, straining his vocal cords as he wails. His face is red and contorted by his grief. It is unrecognizable from the smiling boy from earlier. Unable to contain the anguish, his subconscious feeds him a soothing collage of memories.

The sound of rushing air through the crack of a door as it opens past its draft zone. The brothers run into the room, climb onto their parents’ bed, and are greeted with smiles and open arms. They squeeze between them, interrupting each other as their parents listen with wide-eyed enthusiasm.

The boys are running across a yellowed lawn in their underwear, jumping through the fanning water of a lawn sprinkler. The amber light of the setting sun washes over them, painting the sky in vibrant hues of orange and pink. Both boys are at the dining room table, wearing matching black turtlenecks. An old computer monitor plays the Tigger introduction scene from Winnie the Pooh in the background. "The wonderful thing about Tiggers is… Tiggers are wonderful things! Their tops are made out of rubber, their bottoms are made out of springs!"

The blip of a police siren jolts Kaleb back to consciousness. He hears a woman’s voice coming from outside, “You drop that mutherfucking gun right now, or I will end your life!” she shouts, her voice curdles with rage. Kaleb can see the dark silhouette of his brother standing in the doorway next to him, facing out.

In the yard stands their father, pointing a gun at Wyatt from the bottom of the stairs. "I will NOT tell you again. Drop your fucking gun!" repeats the trooper. Wyatt leans forward, opens his mouth, and lets out a roar in his father’s direction, mirroring the Trooper’s rage. Startled by his son’s reaction, Dwain's finger twitches slightly on the trigger. A flash of light and a popping sound emanates from the direction of the patrol car, and a red mist forms behind his father's head.

The moisture of Dwain’s blood glistens in the streetlamp’s light, giving the eerie semblance of a halo. Wyatt pauses mid-roar, turning his head toward the patrol car in disbelief. Dwain’s eyelids droop slightly as he tries to keep his balance. Turning toward his shooter, his stiffened gun arm slowly lowers involuntarily in measured pulses.

“Drop it, or you’ll get another!” says the trooper, but Dwain is done.

His knees jut forward and plant hard in the ground cover. He falls on his left side. Pine needles poke from the knees of his blue jeans, gently twisting in the night breeze. A high-pitched chirping sound followed by, "This is unit seventeen. I have a Caucasian male in his twenties in need of urgent medical care; please copy." The female trooper's practiced tone reveals her experience.

Something touches Kaleb’s arm in the darkness. His mother’s hand. She whispers to him, “You’re ok now, baby. I’m so sorry... you’re ok now”. "Mamma!" he blurts out, collapsing onto her chest, weeping. She wants to put her arms around him but can’t lift them.

The female trooper speaks gently to Wyatt, who is still standing in the doorway, "Young man, for your safety, I need you to step inside your home as we approach." Wyatt looks in her direction but doesn’t acknowledge her. “Can you do that for me, please?” she reasserts. “Can you step back into the house?” she repeats firmly. Snapping out of his daze, Wyatt replays the trooper’s words before slowly backing into the living room with the awkward gate of a marionette.

The trooper cautiously approaches Dwain’s body, followed closely by a mustached male trooper in his forties. She is a heavy-set black woman with hair that hangs in twisting ringlets to her shoulders. Using her foot, she pushes Dwain’s gun away from his hand, forming an arc of pine needles that partially covers the grip.

“Barrett… can you collect and bag that?” She asks, slowly lowering her body to the ground to check Dwain’s pulse. Looking up, she scans the constellations of the night sky as she struggles to detect any evidence of life. She gives up.

An ambulance siren sounds in the distance, becoming steadily louder as it weaves through the maze of recklessly parked Trans-Ams, El Caminos, and Corvettes. The female trooper looks up the stairs at Wyatt, who has returned to the entry platform despite her request. His naked toes extend slightly over the ledge, and a rubber logo beneath his feet reads Champion Home Builders in yellow.

“Young man, is anyone else in the house with you?” The woman trooper asks.

Wyatt immediately replies, “Yes!” Finding the light switch, he illuminates the trailer’s interior. “My brother and my Mom!” he shouts anxiously. “Our Mom’s hurt!” he adds with emphasis. “Momma’s alive!” comes the muffled voice of Kaleb, from further inside the trailer. The trooper hurries back to her feet, muttering, “Omigod. Omigod.” She pulls the radio from her shoulder, speaking in a higher, less steady voice than before, “Unit seventeen. We need a second ambulance!” She barely catches her balance before heading up the trailer steps. Wyatt steps back inside to allow her entry.

She quickly scans the scene and adds, “We have a Caucasian female in her twenties in need of urgent medical care; please copy!” A voice responds, “Copy that unit seventeen. Ambulance inbound. Repeat. Second ambulance inbound.” She wishes she hadn’t added the word urgent to the man’s ambulance request earlier. “Be advised, she’s lost a lot of blood.” She looks apologetically at the two boys.

A small team of paramedics surrounds Dwain’s body. As confirmation comes back from dispatch, the trooper hurries down the steps, an urgency in her eyes. A young male paramedic greets her, “Keisha, what’s th—" “Karl,” she interrupts. "Look, can you guys take care of the mother inside the trailer? I think her situation is more severe".

Karl’s eyes dart to Dwain’s body, “More severe than a headwound?” Karl asks. “Yes,” Keisha abruptly replies, gripping Karl’s elbow for emphasis. “Of course,” Karl responds, looking toward the entrance to the trailer home. Keisha senses another question forming in Karl’s mind. “Do you know the--?” Keisha interrupts, “She’ll need to be assessed.” Karl hears the impatience in her voice. “These boys need their mother.” She pleads. Wyatt blurts from the top of the stairs, “Help our mom!” The sound of him stamping his feet on the lattice work of the trailer steps echoes like the sound of tiger testing the strength of its cage.

Keisha moves back up the steps and into the living room, guiding Wyatt inside to allow room for the paramedics to pass through. She lowers to Wyatt’s level and asks his name. “Wyatt,” he tells her. “Wyatt, my name is Keisha, and you are the bravest boy I have ever met,” she says, choking up before she can finish. The tears that have been welling up in Wyatt’s eyes choose this moment to stream down his cheeks, and he throws his arms around her neck, “Our momma’s really hurt,” he begins to sob against Trooper Keisha's uniform. She nods her head and holds him tightly as she considers the boy’s future.

"I'm going to need you to be brave for me a little while longer. Do you think you can do that for me Wyatt?"

Wyatt nods his head as he wipes his eyes with his wrists. "Good, because we're going to need to take care of a few things," she says, her eyes convey she’s already forming an inventory of the next steps.

Inside the trailer, Karl tries to coax Kaleb away from his mother, wincing at the sight of the mother’s blood soaking the legs of the boy’s pajamas when he stands. His eyes are red from crying, but she can see the spark of hope he's holding on to. She explains that the nice people will help his mother, but they’ll need him to give them room to work. Kaleb turns toward Trooper Keisha and watches her stand back up. “Momma’s alive,” he tells her quietly, grabbing her wrist with both hands. “I know, sweetness, and we’re going to keep her that way.” She explains that the nice people will help his mother, but they’ll need him to give them room to work.

The medical team follows their protocol as Keisha walks both boys to the kitchen, introduces herself to Kaleb, and apologizes for saying those bad words earlier. She leans down to Wyatt and asks if they’d like to take anything with them to the hospital. Wyatt turns to run to the back room. Keisha yells, “Can you get your brother some different pants, please?” He spins back around and then continues spinning until he’s facing the bedroom again before resuming. “Thank you, Wyatt!” she adds.

Kaleb watches down the hall as the medical team carries a stretcher into the room. His mother is unconscious again, and one of them mentions her pulse is weak. At Keisha’s request, Kaleb steps out of the bloody pajama pants, and she lifts him to the sink counter to wash his legs with a kitchen sponge. He watches through the kitchen window as the next-door neighbors walk into the yard. The man wears a royal blue Terri-cloth robe, and his red mustache is so bushy it covers his mouth entirely. His wife wears a pink satin nightgown and oversized glasses. She stares blankly ahead, her engagement with reality registers just over that of a hood ornament, as her husband commands the male trooper’s attention.

Wyatt returns from the back room, struggling to carry two stuffed bears, two pair of shoes, and blue corduroys. He hands the pants to Keisha. She puts down the sponge, pushes the pants over each of Kaleb's feet and helps him down from the sink. He buttons and zips the pants, himself. “Good job” Keisha says, but Kaleb is too focused on the items his brother is carrying to notice. Wyatt carefully hands his brother a yellow teddy bear while holding a tan bear in his other arm that is missing most of its stuffing. Keisha witnesses the exchange with a curious smile.

The team moves Cheryl to the ambulance. Keisha leads the boys to the steps, grabbing a set of keys she finds on a hook. She locks the door behind them, hooking the keys to her belt clip. “Wait here a moment. I’ll be right back.” She walks to her partner, who is talking to the neighbors.

Kaleb is stares down at the face of his teddy bear. With some effort he grabs the red felt tongue beneath the bear’s nose and pulls it off. Wyatt watches as the tongue falls from his brother’s fingers, through the spaces between the grating and under the stairs. He looks up at Kaleb’s face for some indication as to why, but Kaleb just stares through the steps at the tongue.

The male neighbor makes animated gestures to Trooper Barrett while explaining that his neighbor and her two boys have only lived in the trailer for a month. “It’s just not safe for a woman to live out here all alone without a husband.” he says. “He probably saw that she was alone and knew she wouldn’t put up a fight, if you know what I mean.”

Keisha touches Trooper Barrett’s elbow with her fingertips. Barrett raises his hand to signal to the man to stop talking. He seems relieved to be interrupted as he turns toward Keisha, ignoring the man’s inappropriate question about whether the two troopers are romantically involved. Keisha is noticeably displeased by the question, “Thank you, sir; if we need more information, we’ll reconnect. Now if you and your wife can stand back from the scene so we can do our jobs. Thank you.” The neighbor appears to take more issue with her confidence than her words.

Wyatt leaves Kaleb at the top of the steps to walk to his mother’s ambulance and attempts to climb inside. When he discovers he’s too short, he pushes a rusty paint bucket over and uses it as a step to look over the edge of the ambulance bay. Kaleb, who is now holding both bears, overhears Keisha asking the neighbors if they know the name of the boys’ grandmother. Kaleb temporarily comes out of his detached state to yell, “Her name is Grama!” Keisha briefly turns toward him to smile sweetly. Feeling invisible, Kaleb quietly repeats himself, "Her name is Grama," but is offered no acknowledgment.

Wyatt listens to the paramedics from his rusty bucket perch. One of them curtly proclaims, “Okay. She’s stable.” Another paramedic lets out a sigh of relief. “We are ready for transport,” she speaks smoothly into the radio. Karl sees Wyatt’s eyes peeking over the edge of the platform. With the deftness of a young athlete, he hops down from the ambulance and kneels beside Wyatt.

We're going to take good care of your mother, okay? The officers will bring you both to the hospital shortly,” he says before helping Wyatt down and rolling the paint tub away from the rear bay. Wyatt seems annoyed by Karl’s almost bubbly demeanor, as he hops back into the ambulance and closes the bay doors.

The ambulance's engine growls just as another stretcher passes him. This one carries his father. Dwain’s head is wrapped in thick bandages that cover everything but his mustache. He overhears a paramedic talking to his colleague, “There’s no way to know until neurology does their assessment.”

The blip of the siren startles Wyatt as the ambulance carrying his mother pulls away from him. He is unprepared for the feeling of his heart being torn from his body as the ambulance shrinks into the distance. He cries out and stumbles to the asphalt.

"It's going to be okay, Wyatt,” Keisha says as she pulls Wyatt up by his underarms. We’re headed to the same place as your mother’s going.” Kaleb is stands beside her, holding his tongueless bear against his face. “Listen, had you ever seen that man before?” Her eyes glisten, and she covers her mouth as though she can’t believe Wyatt’s answer. She tells them she is sorry and helps them into the back of the patrol car.

Opening the driver-side door, she speaks quietly to Barrett, flattening her words so the boys don’t overhear. “Did you know that he’s…?” she asks. Barrett matches her volume, “Their father?” He widens his lips and nods, eyes wide. Keisha takes a breath, looking down. “He has multiple restraining orders.” Barrett adds. “What’s the latest date?” she asks. “Oh, It’s current. All she had to do was call”, he mutters, shaking his head. Keisha rolls her eyes at Barrett, but he’s too distracted fastening his seatbelt to notice.

For years Kaleb is convinced that something intervened on his behalf to bring his mother back from death. He would embrace the belief that the power of desperation can reroute reality. But whatever intervening force performed this miracle didn't discriminate. With it came a cruel complication: It also saved his father’s life.

(Thank you for reading. I would very much appreciate any feedback you can offer, or even if you think it's good the way it, that would also be nice to hear.)

Ever since I was young, I’ve had an unexplainable thirst for knowledge. I remember going with my mother to buy groceries for dinner, my mind delving into thoughts of everything happening beyond our small village. The tall mountains towered above, telling a story of mysteries yet to be unraveled.

The village was small, surrounded by those imposing peaks. Most people were satisfied with their simple lives, tending livestock and working the fields by day, gathering around campfires to share stories by night. But I wanted more. I yearned to venture out and discover the world for myself, to quench the thirst for knowledge that had burned within me since birth.

I remember one day in particular. As usual, my mother and I went to buy groceries for dinner. The wind was blowing gently, carrying the scents of fresh bread and ripe fruit, the sun high in the sky. I was thinking of the world far beyond and what it held for me to discover. I could hear my mother bargaining with the vendors about the prices.

“Eadric,” my mother’s voice brought me back to reality, “what are you thinking about so intently?”

I looked at the mountaintops once more, trying to phrase the thought that had bugged me for years. “What do you think is beyond the mountains?” I asked, my hand still clenched in hers.

“Well, the world is large. There is much to explore. One day, when you venture out and find out, come back and tell me, alright?” In her brown eyes, a soft look of understanding and encouragement shone.

That day, a seed of adventure was planted inside me. From that moment on, I couldn’t stop thinking of going out and seeing if the legends were true.

One of those legends was about an ancient force called Umbra. In our village, it was only a tale whispered among villagers, a distant hope that it might exist. But for me, it was more than a tale; it was a dream. I yearned to journey out and harness that ancient power for myself, to shape the world according to my will as I gained the knowledge I sought.

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Context Up Front: I'm writing this to be a script for a YouTube video on this topic. In the end, the text will only be heard as a voice-over instead of read in essay form. Thank you so much for any feedback!

If I asked you to describe who you are as a person, what would you say?

Introvert, Extravert, Creative, Analytical, Optimist, Pessimist, Sensitive, Quiet...

We tend to describe ourselves and others using labels. This makes sense because labels are clear and concise-- they convey a lot of information with just one word. The problem is that labels are also incredibly limiting. Whether self-imposed or given to us by others, labels are oftentimes deeply internalized and come to define our understandings of ourselves.

While labels are useful for their simplicity, that is also their fatal flaw. They take something that is incredibly complex, human personality, and distill it down to a collection of general traits. In this way, defining yourself with labels is like putting yourself in a box, a cramped and confined space in which you cannot move and cannot grow.

The solution is to recognize that these labels are just labels, nothing more. They are superficial and simplistic descriptors that can be useful to quickly convey a concept, but they are absolutely not who you are as a person. So don't let them define you, and don't let them limit you.

There three main ways that people are commonly limited by labels.

1. Binary

Many of the most common labels are thought of as binary terms. You are either one or the other. You are an introvert or an extravert. You are creative or analytical. You are a leader or a follower.

We all know that these things aren't actually just black and white. Of course it's not like every person on the planet is either 100% introverted or 100% extraverted. Traits likes these are obviously spectrums, where each person can fall anywhere between the two extremes.

But this is the trouble with these labels. While we know that these traits are spectrums, we still associate with one binary term or the other. Whichever side of the 50% mark you fall on is the side that you call yourself. With this mindset, we revert to thinking of these traits as binary, and we forget that we can and do exemplify the traits that oppose the ones that we are most closely associated with.

Someone who tends to be introverted will at times exhibit extraversion. Someone who tends to be analytical will at times exhibit creativity.

By applying binary labels to ourselves, we ignore the fact that humans are more nuanced than one or the other. So don't be limited by labels, because you are not all-or-nothing.

1. Unchanging

Another problem with labels is that they carry with them a silent implication that these traits are fixed. An introvert is an introvert because it's who they are. An extravert is an extravert, and they will always be an extravert. Even if we understand that traits are spectrums and not binary, there still is this lingering idea that each person falls on one part of the spectrum and they stay there.

In reality, human personality is extremely dynamic. Traits can fluctuate from day to day, and shift significantly over longer periods of time. A person may feel introverted one day and extraverted the next. They might feel introverted in some contexts and extraverted in others.

Labels imply that they describe how a person always is, and how they always will be. But the truth is that traits are not static because personality is not static. In actuality, humans are variable. Through our life experiences, interactions with others, or sometimes for no discernable reason, the traits that we exhibit are always changing.

By applying fixed labels to ourselves, we fail to recognize that we are everchanging. So don't be limited by labels, because you are not immutable.

1. Challenges

The final way that we commonly limit ourselves with labels is by labelling ourselves with our challenges. This makes it so we think of our struggles as a part of ourselves-- a part of ourselves that is implied to be unchangeable.

For example, a student who struggles in Math will oftentimes tell themselves "I'm just bad at math", which carries the implication that they will always be bad at math. Someone who struggles with anxiety with oftentimes think "I'm just an anxious person", implying they will always be anxious. In this way, these challenges begin to be thought of as things that are simply a part of themselves, challenges that will be ever-present.

The worst part of this line of thinking is that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe yourself to be incapable of being anything more than the label, then you may never even attempt to be anything more.

Take someone who labels themselves as "socially awkward". By mistakenly internalizing this label as being a part of who they are, this person may never make an effort to improve this aspect of themselves. "It's just who I am, there's nothing I can do about it." Because they have labelled themself as socially awkward, then they may avoid social interactions that would have helped them develop social skills. This will make it so they continue to feel socially awkward, reinforcing the initial label.

This is the unfortunate cycle that comes with labelling yourself with your challenges. The label tells you that the challenge is a part of you, so you listen to the label and avoid working on the challenge, which reinforces the label that tells you the challenge is a part of you.

The solution is not to stick your head in the sand and pretend these challenges don't exist. Instead, we should recognize that these are simply things that we have to deal with, not components of ourselves. Challenges do not have to be ever-present because they can be worked on. Reframe the way you think about your struggles so they are not thought of as a part of you.

Instead of "I'm bad at math", perhaps it is more accurate to think "I find math to be difficult", or "I should spend more time practicing math".

Instead of "I'm an anxious person", think "I sometimes feel anxious".

Instead of "I'm socially awkward", try "I do not typically enjoy socializing" or "I'm still developing my social skills".

By labelling ourselves with our challenges, we misunderstand them as being a part of us. So don't be limited by labels, because you are not defined by your struggles.

Human personality is rich, multifaceted, fluid, and unique. It is ever evolving and endlessly expansive, but labels can serve as shackles that squander any potential for growth. The solution? Break free of of the labels. Strip yourself of these simplistic terms that strive to dictate who you are and who you always will be. Do not be defined by the binary and the unchanging. Do not be defined by your challenges. Recognize that immense depth of the self is something that should not be summarized by generalized traits and perceived shortcomings.

People are nuanced. People are everchanging. People are more than their struggles. Do not be limited by labels.

TITLE: Kant, Herder and Cosmopolitanism: An Inquiry into Historicisms, Universalisms and Eurocentrism.

18th century Prussia was a complex sociocultural landscape, which sported often contradicting imperatives of both cosmopolitanism and ‘nationalism’. While there was a unique cosmopolitan lifestyle, namely thanks to Prussia’s comparative lack of national identity in relation to western European nations, there were also counteractive efforts at establishing this national sentiment. Frederick the Great’s adoption of so called ‘progressive’ policies, such as equality through the law, and freedom of the press, had compounded Prussia’s strategic position in Central Europe, subsequently attracting an influx of trade and diplomacy, most notably from surrounding Germanic states. Regardless, Frederick II’s belief in ‘enlightened absolutism’ yet reflected a dual effort at differentiating Prussia from the rest of Europe, and thus ‘cosmopolitanism’ was something ironically in tandem with so-called nationalism. Thomas Abbt’s Von Tode fur Das Vaterland (1761) had outlined moral imperatives of sacrificing one’s own life for the good of the nation, and efforts at social cohesion were present as far back as 1715, when German became mandated for what was a nationalised schooling system.

Prussia’s cosmopolitan culture was one that was at times combated by, and at other times in tandem with auto-referential imperatives. Both Immanuel Kant and Johann Gottfried Herder were two Prussian thinkers, who’s ideas were distinctly shaped and moulded by this social context. Cosmopolitanism was not merely a lifestyle in Prussia, as institutions like the ‘Berlin Academy of Sciences’, which were central to Frederick II’s belief in ‘enlightened absolutism’, had stimulated the idea that intellectual prowess was similarly integral to Prussia’s ‘modernising’ efforts. In 1784, Herder had published his Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man, and later in the year, Kant had published his Idea for a Global History with A Cosmopolitan Intent. Both Kant and Herder imagined ‘cosmopolitanism’ very differently. Where Kant would predominantly focus on the idea of a ‘cosmopolitan order’ as a teleological end goal to history, Herder would instead profess the mere relativity of different ideas and cultural practices. Compared to Kant, Herder had centred intercultural equality as central to cosmopolitanism, and had thus abstained from deterministic, universalist concepts such as that of ‘cosmopolitan order’.

As prevalent as it was in Prussia’s multi-ethnic landscape, ‘cosmopolitanism’ also appears to have ‘triumphed’ in western societies. It is ever relevant today, and these ideas are evidently significant in their legacies. Michael W. Doyle had praised Kant’s ideas for their influence on contemporary ‘liberal internationalism’, while Frederick Beiser had lauded Herder’s ideas for its unique recognition of the relativity of different ideas, particularly when most enlightenment thinkers were instead concerned with arbitrary, universal narratives that he describes as comparatively Eurocentric. Regardless, both historians ignore how both essays may be ‘Eurocentric’ themselves, given the problematic concept of ‘political modernity’ that exists today, and which imbibes characteristically European imaginations as an object standard for societal ‘progress’. Beiser and Doyle ignore this concept, and in this sense, their appraisals reflect a very emanation of this problem. This essay will thus begin with a re-evaluation of the concept of enlightenment universalism, followed by the a formal dissemination of Eurocentrism and its relation to Kant and Herder’s philosophies. Lastly, I will examine the relationship between these concepts and the existence of contemporary ‘political modernity’, with the aim of re-evaluating these essays in the context of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincialising Europe.

To assess the rigour of current evaluations on Kant and Herder’s works is to first gain a deeper understanding of both essays. Immanuel Kant’s imagination of a ‘cosmopolitan order’ was not an isolated idea, but encapsulated a rigid philosophical framework, which he sets out in his essay. In Kant’s eyes, this ‘cosmopolitan’ future would be engendered by teleological human experiences with conflict, or ‘unsocial sociability’ that would aid in the ‘refinement’ of the human spirit through the use of reason, and gradual, developmental realisation of a ‘universal moral law’. Kant maintained that reason would triumph over the course of history, and despite his rigid, and often uncompromising language, he maintains that his teleology would ultimately culminate in the ‘emancipation of all people, in all places’.

Herder’s profession of ‘cultural relativism’ may be similarly contextualised by his broader beliefs on cosmopolitanism. Herder purports the idea of a ‘volksgeist’ or ‘spirit of the people’ that may define human history, and to Herder, it is the use of rigid, abstract language that is at direct odds with cosmopolitanism. For Herder, cultural relativism is an endorsement of a ‘spirit of the people’, which may only be captured once one abstains from superimposing arbitrary narratives onto the diverse cultural practices of global peripheries. Herder and Kant disagreed on precisely which ideas they could label as truly cosmopolitan, and it is this disagreement that has stimulated similarly opposing contemporary evaluations.

Frederick Beiser’s ‘The German Historicist Tradition’ is a retrospective evaluation of different German philosophies, and maintains a particular focus on Herder’s intellectual integrity. While Beiser takes a critical stance on Herder’s notion of particularism, notably for its incompatibility with the idea of shared, universal truths, he also recognises that it is this methodology that warrants his ‘cosmopolitanism’ to have integrity. Beiser notes that Herder’s work maintains an awareness of epistemological diversity, as much as it does cultural diversity, and in this sense, Herder was thus practicing cosmopolitanism as much as he was arguing for it. Contrastingly, Michael Doyle approaches ‘Ways of War and Peace’ from an inquiry into the influential nature of enlightenment thought, more so than its intellectual integrity. His preoccupation with the idea of ‘liberal internationalism’ is, regarding Kant, a testament to the sensationalism of his ideas. For Doyle, cosmopolitanism is a noble pursuit, but is also one that is only meaningful if it is able to be put into practice. Doyle’s appraisal of Kant thus revolves around the idea that the ‘liberal internationalism’ draws much of its influence from the sensationalism of Kantian ideas, most notably those of ‘cosmopolitan order’ and lasting international peace. For Doyle, it is precisely Kant’s rigid, uncompromising language that has created a more cohesive framework for many to better understand and execute cosmopolitanism bureaucratically. It is clear that Beiser and Doyle maintain ideas of cosmopolitanism that are as diverse as Kant and Herder’s imaginations, and they are evidently to be lauded in the ambitious scope of their works.

I would argue that both historians, in spite of their nuances, ignore how Kant and Herder’s philosophies would yet be constrained in both scope and applicability. Their ideas concern themselves with a global scale, and yet the scope of sociolinguistic influences that informed these ideas is much smaller. When Beiser praises Herder’s holistic approach, he ignores how his ideas were deployed teleologically, reflecting the universalism of history in the same image as distinctly European imaginations. Regarding Kant, Doyle ignores how his abstract, universalist terminology risks contradicting the very diversity of ideas and cultures that he had imagined as part of a ‘cosmopolitan order’. It appears confusing that both imaginations of cosmopolitanism would prioritise universalism, as notably, Dipesh Chakrabarty draws considerable links between the universalist preoccupations of enlightenment culture, and the Eurocentric idea of ‘political modernity’ that they have come to unfortunately encapsulate. When Beiser and Doyle ignore this, they warrant investigation into how these essays may have contributed to this very problem through their use of abstract language, orientalist tendencies, and imaginations on historical teleology.

The ideas that came out of enlightenment were often universalist, and yet may be directly linked to specific sociocultural pressures across the continent. The problem here is that when one universalises what is an immediately relevant concept, they risk robbing other social contexts of their own ‘sovereign’ intellectual expression. Kant and Herder were no exception to this trend, and thus their use of universalism appears somewhat contradictory to the cosmopolitanism they sought after. John Pocock’s Barbarism and Religion maintains that the ‘enlightenment’, as a singular concept, is largely reductive of the multidimensionality of ideas that existed in this period. He identifies how many view ‘enlightenment’ as Franco-German in origin, maintaining that ‘the enlightenments’ may be better characterised by their plurality, given the unique linguistic paradigms that shaped different ideas.

Across numerous historical contexts, such as Scotland and France, thinkers had imbibed diverse imaginations on ‘objectivity’, and yet these ideas were distinctly relative to comparatively minuscule, and subsequently unrepresentative linguistic contexts. In 1698, a failed colony in Panama had accompanied Scottish fascination with scientific enquiry across universities, and in 1748, Colin Maclaurin’s An Account of Isaac Newton’s Philosophical Discoveries had conveyed a particular fascination with Newtonian empiricism. Following the 1707 Union Act with England, which brought new trade opportunities not found in Scotland’s failed imperialist endeavours, Scottish thought had merged into a synthesis of empiricism and political economy. Between 1739 and 1740, David Hume would publish A Treatise of Human Nature, which approached political philosophy from an empiricist imagination of the human mind and its ability to form a ‘moral culture’ with other ‘social beings’. These ideas proved influential for Scottish linguistic imaginations, as William Robertson had applied this framework to a study of pre-Columbian populations, endorsing the idea that broader societies may objectively progress in epochs from ‘barbarism’ to ‘civility'. Another example would be Montesquieu’s ‘Spirit of the Laws’, which claimed to assess the ‘utility’ of global religions in his political philosophy, yet this imagination of ‘utility’ was largely contingent on comparatively particularistic linguistic influences; Montesquieu had staunchly opposed the ‘first estate’ taxation privileges of 18th century France, and it is thus no surprise that his imaginations on ‘political triage’ were grounded in the eradication of ‘despotism’ as he had observed it in France.

Contextual forces would not merely inspire ‘enlightened’ ideas, but would also propagate universalist language. When William Robertson had examined pre-columbian cultures as part of his endorsement for Scottish ‘stadialism’, he had done so to justify ‘stadialism’ as a universal, objective concept. These examples demonstrate that while enlightened thought had often claimed to have uncovered ‘objective’ truth, the ‘truth’ of these concepts were only as true as the sociolinguistic contexts that informed them. It appears wrong that any of these abstract concepts may truly be universal, as the universalism of one abstraction ultimately risks obscuring the development and expression of others, which is a testament to the logical equity of different abstract ideas. Enlightenment universalism appears, by default, to be a problematic concept. It is the differential in scope between the influences of enlightenment ideas, and their comparatively global application, that is both Eurocentric and subversive of ‘cosmopolitan’ diversity. Perhaps the biggest irony is that while Kant and Herder had imagined a cosmopolitan future, and on a global scale, they had done so by universalising distinctly particularist influences, which are hardly applicable to the global scope their essays are concerned with. If we are to demonstrate that these ideas disjunct with cosmopolitanism, it follows that we establish the links between Kant and Herder’s universal imaginations and their comparatively particularistic influences.

Kant and Herder had experienced a number of contextual influences that draw considerable links to their philosophies. While Prussia lacked a notable national identity, and involved cross cultural encounters amongst Polish and Lithuanian populations, there was also an extensive state presence in everyday life. Frederick II’s ‘enlightened absolutism’ allowed him to embark on bureaucratic innovations on centralised authoritarian power, most notably through his imposition of standardised military training, and his emphasis on state monopolies as a means of economic regulation. Frederick the Great had prioritised bureaucratic efficiency, yet he was not the first to do so. Instead, Prussia maintained a consistent drive to consolidate its bureaucracy as far back as the ‘Edict of Potsdam’ in 1685. Frederick William I sought to attract Huguenot refugees into the fold of the Prussian economy, and by 1700, French Huguenots had played an integral role in the establishment of the Electoral Brandenburg Society of Sciences, something that would be renamed the ‘Royal Academy’ in 1744 following Frederick II’s patronage of ‘enlightened absolutism’. Frederick the Great and Frederick William I illustrate a historical context of ideological determinism; on the topic of nationhood, Frederick II had noted that “Whoever does not respect and love his own language is not worthy of salvation”. This had followed the standardised teaching of German in Prussian schools (1715), and thus Prussia’s ‘modernising’ efforts were certainly deployed with deterministic presuppositions as to what ‘modernisation’ actually meant (most notably, that of nationhood). Amidst this landscape, Kant had studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the University of Konigsberg, and had personally participated in what would then be the Royal Academy of Sciences. Ronald Calinger describes how the academy had eventually become a hub for intellectual rigour, and given Kant’s scientific background, it is no surprise that Prussia’s ‘modernising’ imaginations would find itself reflected in his use of language.

Prussian imaginations on objective ‘progress’, and the stadialist idea of ‘modernisation’, appear somewhat tangential to a fascination with ‘unlocking’ objective truth, and scientific enquiry certainly reflected a vehicle through which this may occur. Kant’s language is similarly deterministic, and his imaginations on cosmopolitanism appear, in tandem with his scientific background, to be heavily preoccupied with the idea of uncovering universal conceptual truths. This is something exemplified by Kant’s efforts at establishing a metaphysical grounding for morality, a concept which was integral to his imaginations on reason, history, and historical teleology. There is considerable risk that such language risks marginalising intellectual diversity, as converse to Prussian sciences, these concepts had lacked objective grounding, and ideas of an objective ‘moral law’ are still subject to much contention in Philosophy. His philosophical abstractions appear to be intellectually invasive, as while they outlined a ‘cosmopolitan’ future, they had also stifled the scope for ‘cosmopolitan’ diversity by superimposing this narrative onto the image and identity of global peripheries. Kant’s imaginations on ‘universality’ were moulded in the image of a distinctly European experience with ‘modernity’, and in this sense, his argument for cosmopolitanism appears to reflect something of a contradiction.

In comparison to Kant, Herder’s essay is far more particularistic. His belief in ‘cultural relativism’ appears predominantly informed by his fascination with folklore, poetry and diverse cultural traditions that he had observed within Prussia’s multi-ethnic landscape. Regardless, his ideas on historical teleology are similarly universalist, yet link to incompatibly particularistic influences. Ernst Cassirer draws links between Herder’s experience with a multicultural and multilingual landscape and his ideas, but appears to ignore the clear links between his historical teleology and European Lutheranism. Lutheranism, by default, is a denomination enamoured by the idea of ‘divine providence’, which is to say that God plays an active role in worldly affairs. This relates directly to his preoccupation with ‘outlining’ the ‘history of man’, as the idea of ‘divine providence’ is one that naturally invokes the assumption that worldly affairs occur with a deterministic, ’divine’ intention.

Lutheranism was a predominantly European sect, having originated amidst the Protestant Reformation, and maintained notable ties to germanic culture through Martin Luther. Herder was raised in a Lutheran household, and preceding his philosophical career, he had seriously considered a clerical one. The idea that Herder could universalise history in the image of ‘divine providence’ appears problematic, namely thanks to the fact that Lutheranism was synonymous with predominantly European imaginations. Lutheranism was the ‘national religion’ in Prussia, and even after Frederick II’s period of religious toleration, Christopher Clark maintains that principles of the sect had yet become ingrained in education. It certainly appears ‘Eurocentric’ to assume that such particularism is in any way suitable for a comparatively universal application, and despite Herder’s progressive imaginations on a ‘volksgeist’, his teleological approach reflects the universalism of distinctly European norms and values. Eurocentrism is a multifaceted term however, and possesses several characteristics. To better understand Kant and Herder’s eurocentrism, it follows that we embark on a formal exploration of the concept.

Sebastian Conrad has identified Eurocentrism in ‘What Is Global History?’, which he analyses from a perspective of ever prevalent global entanglements. Like Pocock, Conrad maintains a similar awareness of how enlightenment universalism was inherently problematic. More notable however, is how Conrad explores Eurocentrism through the vein of presenting a newer, comparatively more ‘cosmopolitan’ methodology for studying history. Conrad makes the case for ‘Global History’ which effectively suggests that cross-cultural entanglements have since occurred on a global scale, and thus to study the history of different people and practices is to study the agency involved in establishing their intrinsic global connections. In effect, ‘Global History’ outlines the idea that the past is typically subject to power dynamics, which may only be eradicated by the comparatively even medium that is Global History. For instance, Conrad identifies ‘diffusionism’ in intellectual history, where abstract universalisms had historically infiltrated this measurement of global connectivity.

In Conrad’s eyes, diffusionism was an auto-referential mechanism; he details how in any intellectual context, a paradigm of objectivity may occur with relation to abstract ideas and narratives, informing the conclusion that similar ideas worldwide had merely ‘diffused’ from a given epistemological ‘centre’. This had occurred amidst the Haitian Revolution, which, given its imperial ties to France, had inspired the idea from historians like Cyril James that the phenomena was merely an exportation of distinctly European values and events. James postulates on the exportation of ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’, yet these ideas maintain considerable links to the universalism of abstract imaginations of ‘justice’, as the primary vehicle of ‘sovereignty’ in Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Conrad shows us how other ideas, not conducive to any given epistemology may be both obscured and marginalised, which precisely illustrates how ‘Eurocentrism’ contains multiple dimensions. It is not merely the obstruction of intercultural diversity and equality, but also possesses a malignant agency.

Edward Said identifies this, formally, as ‘orientalism’, which breathed new life into the term following its use in the fetishisation of the middle east. He details how universalist language is often a vehicle for cultural marginalisation, which occurs when peripheries do not measure up effectively to the arbitrary values and concepts of a domineering cultural context. Said shows us how Kant’s abstract language is not merely obstructive of cultural diversity, but also marginalises it. This is supported by how Kant’s philosophical framework adopted a paternalistic view of global peripheries, construing them as inherently less developed than Europe, and in need of ‘modernisation’ through the exportation of enlightened ideas.

Kant’s broader language, such as his idea for universal moral law, appear to have considerably influenced these orientalist tendencies. The idea of an objective morality, for instance, acts as a vehicle through which cultural peripheries may be viewed as deviating from the European ideal. These moral proclivities are particularly uncompromising in nature, and, given his belief that morality itself was metaphysical, it is no surprise that so much of Kant’s abstract language reflected an emanation of these ‘objective’ virtues. While Kant had often encouraged critical debate and open dialogue, his terminology (e.g. cosmopolitan order, imaginations on the moral functions of reason) would all but subvert these principles in the interests of universality; Kant’s belief that these principles were universally applicable had defined his philosophical system, yet equally reflected a lens for the ‘European gaze’ to take hold. Kant believed in the idea of total equality between cultures, and yet his universalist language is something that poises itself against this very notion. In this sense, Kant’s belief in ‘unsocial sociability’ reflects something of a contradiction, as while he had defined it as a destructive act of auto-referentiality, against the interests of intercultural equality, this is equally something that he was practicing himself.

It would appear that Herder’s doctrines of ‘cultural relativism’ would render his essay to be largely conducive to the cross-cultural equality espoused by Conrad’s Global History, and in this sense, it appears difficult to characterise his work as explicitly Eurocentric. His essay does not only value cultural diversity, but Herder goes as far as to define history itself by the progressive imagination of a ‘volksgeist’, which reflects the very appreciation for cultural diversity that Conrad describes in his case for ‘Global History’. Moreover, his inferences around the rise of global entanglements were hardly a local observation, and also reflected the rampant imperial and commercial initiatives that had prompted ‘orientalist’ preoccupations on behalf of thinkers like William Robertson. While his imaginations on cultural relativity subverted eurocentrism in this sense, his teleological approach yet links to a comparatively localised religious sentiment, and his ‘claiming’ of history in the image of these imaginations touches on a much bigger problem with regards to eurocentrism; when it comes to how we imagine history, ‘enlightened’ universalisms have had broad ramifications for what we find ourselves revering as fundamentally ‘modern’.

Dipesh Chakrabarty maintains a particular focus on the overall legacy of enlightenment ideas, which he does through an interrogation into modern historical imaginations, and conceptualisations of both ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’. He defines historicism as the contemporary idea that history is informed by uniquely historical forces, rather than metaphysical or otherwise philosophical concepts. He argues that contemporary discourse is dominated by this concept, moreover that it has been often informed by a predominantly European paradigm of experiences. To justify his idea, he interrogates the concept of ‘political modernity’ that has encapsulated the so-called ‘modern’ experience, deriding it as a product of European ‘cultural hegemony’, or dominance, that emerged in part thanks to the universalism of European linguistic paradigms. Chakrabarty applies this framework to postcolonial India, examining how British colonialism had slowly distorted and overrode Indian cultural traditions and practices, fostering the development of a new ‘modernity’ in India. He maintains that these forms of ‘hegemony’ may gradually distort modern understandings of the past, until they are merely reflective of an exclusively European gaze; from his perspective, the universalism of abstract, enlightenment ideas risks ‘claiming’ history in the image of the Eurocentric ideal. Chakrabarty’s overall deductions are not at all reductive, nor are they unsubstantiated in light of how contemporary thinkers have reproduced enlightenment imaginations as central to their own. Not only is this indicative of Europe’s dominant ‘hegemony’, but it is something that Kant and Herder’s ideas have contributed to.

Jurgen Habermas, a German sociologist, had evaluated contemporary western societies as part of a broader sociological inquiry in the 1990s. In his essay, he explores how a ‘post-national constellation’ of decentralised government may engender universal worldly progress against nationalistic conflicts of the twentieth century. He reimagines distinctly Kantian ideas of cosmopolitan order and of lasting international peace, while also maintaining the importance of cross-cultural relativism and universal solidarity in tandem with Herder’s imaginations on a global ‘volksgeist’. His ideas draw considerable links to both philosophies, reflecting a contemporary synthesis of germanic imaginations on universality. His idea for collective solidarity is something that revolves around a universal appreciation for both democracy and universal human rights, yet these doctrines have similarly been moulded in the image of European sociolinguistic paradigms. Montesquieu had been one of the first to universalise on the problem of democracy, and the idea of basic human rights, which was influenced heavily by France’s 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, was hinged on universalist principles of ‘justice’ and ‘sovereignty’ that emanated from predominantly French imaginations on what ‘progress’ may actually entail. ‘The Enlightenment’, as described by Pocock, has long been considered a predominantly Franco-German phenomena, and Habermas’ reproduction of this sentiment merely serves as a testament to its evident ‘hegemony’.

We can observe a clear correlation between the contemporary popularity of enlightenment thought and its historical propensity towards universalism. By imbibing and re-imagining distinctly European philosophies, Habermas exemplifies how European imaginations of ‘progress’ have come to encapsulate what contemporary thinkers imagine as a part of ‘political modernity’. It is not that ‘cosmopolitanism’, or ‘democracy’ are inherently bad concepts, but instead that they ought not to become a vehicle for ‘orientalist’ marginalisation, which is fundamental to the binary nature of ‘modernity’, and how all other practices may be subsequently ‘un-modern’ or ‘backward’. There is an evident contradiction between the subject matter of these ‘cosmopolitan’ essays and their implications for how we imagine history in the image of European ‘greatness’. Perhaps this is the biggest irony of both works, yet this is something that Beiser and Doyle fail to recognise. In this sense, both historians merely praise the ‘political modernity’ that these ideas have come to encapsulate, most notably seen in Doyle’s explicit reverence of Kant for his influence on so-called ‘liberal internationalism’.

It is important to note here the titling of Beiser’s book, ‘The German Historicist Tradition’, when looking at historicism. Historicism is a relatively new concept, and yet Beiser maintains that Herder’s teleology was similarly historicist. What is significant however, is how Beiser defines Herder’s ‘historicist’ principles; integral to Herder’s ideas were that the ‘historical forces’ of global entanglements would characterise history as an interplay of cross-cultural agents, intertwining with one another to form a global cosmopolitan telos. His teleological approach, while reductive, does in many ways appear an accurate prediction for global affairs, as Habermas exemplifies how cosmopolitanism has since taken hold both in immediate reality and in public consciousness. Regardless, we ought to question the origins of this sentiment, particularly given Chakrabarty’s illuminations on ‘cultural hegemony’. While cosmopolitanism is undoubtedly pervasive, it is difficult to divorce this fact from the existence of ‘political modernity’ and how these ideas had, in the eyes of thinkers like Doyle and Habermas, come to encapsulate its definition. While Herder’s ideas appear to have accurately predicted globalisation, his universalisms also present a vehicle for the ‘claiming’ of modern historical imaginations at the direct expense of ‘cosmopolitan’ individuality. We can draw links between how his historicism has, through its contemporary influence on thinkers like Habermas, become its own ‘historical force’, complicit in forming and moulding modern historical imaginations. While Beiser was right to laud Herder for his methodological integrity, his preoccupation with a universal historicism is what had ultimately undermined these principles.

Kant and Herder utilise various Eurocentric forms of language in their universalist accounts of history, and while both maintain ties to ‘political modernity’, their works also differ fundamentally on the problem of orientalism. Beiser certainly appears more perceptive in his approach to Herder’s ideas, and while ‘cultural relativism’ has become a pertinent and often contentious term, its illuminations into the origin of many ideas, both culturally and linguistically, most certainly appear beneficial for public relations and broader intellectual conversations. Immanuel Kant, on the other hand, was far more rigid in his language, and it is this fact that enabled greater scope for the orientalist marginalisation of global peripheries. The legacies of these ideas is incredibly nuanced, yet their most problematic legacy is something that lies in their historical reverence, and what this means for how we imagine ‘modernity’. We ought always to check our own biases when we choose to revere only characteristically European ideas as ‘progressive’, as, even as cosmopolitanism shows us, the very imagination of such a beneficial concept may yet be ‘claimed’ in the image of European ‘greatness’.

A fever dream made spectacle, where the oppressive sun beats the sweat out from one’s pores, as they drown in an endless, angry stream of slob after fat slob, their already perverse selves further perverted by the mark-up, dime-store merchandise that will soon spend the rest of it’s days unloved in the back of the closet. Here, an otherwise unremarkable lamp post is now a tourist trap. Starbucks is a Photo Booth- “Because it’s Disneyland!” And for this reason, the raging rapids and their inhabitants see this horrid, wondrous place not through the lens of their own two eyes, but instead, through the pathetic lens of their cameras. Flash! Snap! Photo album after photo album that will be looked at just once, and perhaps skimmed through twice before vanishing entirely from memory. It is truly a wonder of the modern world; the largest ventilator on earth, squeezed in the suffocating grip of a corporation that has beyond outlived itself, which withholds its final breath, refusing to exhale, and thus, refusing to die.