Civic Sanity

Civic Sanity

The Subtle Art of Sanity

  • Kamikazed your life? Same.

    Life in freefall, in mid-2026.

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    Emotions are the most fickle of the ‘Human Condition’. They are all-consuming, powerful, and able to shift your cemented perspective of this otherwise simple world.

    If you love them, love them. If you want them, want them. If you like them, like them.

    I’ve been through the wringer of the impossibly intolerant game of feelings. To those with such an affliction as mine, one of unrequited limerance and attachment, not to fret. It shall pass, like all things in this god-forsaken planet.

    My ailment has left me out-of-action, although shrouded by the ever-present crushing pressure of everything else.

    So … what now?

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    This is the most important question to ever be posed to anyone.

    The world and the inner systems of the universal clock are objective and certainly not abstract. Time is the one thing constantly in limited supply.

    Time.

    Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years.

    Whether you believe it or not, you are in complete control of very little in this cynical cycle. You may control your mind, your reactions and what you choose to surround yourself with.

    Why, oh why, do some of us subject ourselves to the surroundings ingrained in my mind, wired to keep us closed up, painfully sewn up and silenced. Mind manipulated and thoughts tangled and intertwined, no matter the decade of therapy needed to acknowledge this fact.

    It is a well known fact that our psychology changes each second, each millisecond, each moment. New connections fire, develop, intertwine. You constantly shift, change and turn with the motions of our oceans. Do not resist. Those who do not swim with the tide will surely drown under the waves.

    Remember, friends.

    Time.

    Time.

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    It’s constantly trickling, an invisible time keeper, keeping track on their abacus, deciding and ticking closer, and closer, and closer.

    This is true – and no amount of religious affiliation or spiritual enlightenment will change this concrete illness. Whether today, whether tomorrow or never. The time comes for us all.

    What shall you do with your finite time, when one does not know how much time we have left?

    Do the purpose for which you were born to do, love.

    Live.

    In fact, I implore you to seek within your dirty heart’s desires and pursue all you wish. Realistically, no power in this universe can stop you from pursuing your heart’s most twisted wants. And yes, this may result in you losing everything you wanted – but it may open the door for you to see what you need.

    In my circumstance, the world bombards me with pessimism, and the feeling of Hades himself grasping my weak ankles and dragging me down to my rightful underworld is hard to escape. As such, I have subjected myself to the slow descent.

    I have no drachma to my simple name, but I wish to see the River Stixx.

  • The World Culture

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    An introspective look into the state of ‘World Culture’ today.

    As a human in my early 20s, venturing out into the world as my frontal cortex develops, I cannot help but mourn the loss of what I used to believe was freedom. The freedom of financial responsibility goes hand-in-hand with the inefficient and downright unethical work culture we have enslaved ourselves in.

    Make money to generate money to chase money to have money to spend money.

    To surrender yourself to true happiness, you must first surrender everything you’ve been groomed into wanting. A stable house, a stable job, a stable income. You will thus be equipped with all the tools necessary for an unfulfilled and unhappy life.

    Of course, I am not discounting those of us who relish the mundane, or those less fortunate than us, whose daily life consists of a constant state of fight-or-flight, where survival is paramount, where even the simplest of pleasures may appear as paradise.

    I believe we should study the latter example. Why is it that to achieve a fulfilled life, we have to succumb to the ingrained lie that more is better, and to waste our days generating income is more worthwhile than truly living?

    At their simplest, humans are animals. In the same way that an ant or a water buffalo spends their ’24 hours in a day’, we humans resolve ourselves to sit behind a desk for, sometimes, more than 8 hours a day. Blue collar, white collar and all in between are under a spell of disillusionment.

  • In Memoriam of Sympathy

    The consequences of capitalism and the corporate machine on the Modern Day sympathetic system

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    I don’t believe that as a species, we are evolving anymore. At least, not for the better.

    The concept of mental health and generic sympathy has become something of either legend or hysteria. Nine-to-five systems that have swept over the planet at a faster rate than light, it seems, have brainwashed and corroded our views of society and compassion.

    Did you know that compassion-focused therapy (CFT) is a growing phenomenon at the effects it’s had on people’s mental health. It has been found that “CFT decreases the level of self‐criticism and increases the ability to experience soothing“1. I wonder why?

    I didn’t have to wonder for very long. Using simple deduction skills, which seems to be a trait that is seemingly in increasing decline, the answer is exceedingly clear.

    Stressed? Just work from home, right?

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    I find it laughable that the concept of exceptional stress directly resulting in negative mental health is still a mystery to some people. I would provide a cite, but I fear that I do not want to attract the wrong sort…

    The concept of ‘working from home’ (WFH) was a revolutionary concept popularised during the Covid19 Pandemic. A way to assert similar control through the concept of ‘away’ status’ on Teams and Slack, or whatever alternative spyware that should be considered malware, by my standards.

    In the midst of a global pandemic, a world-wide issue which resulted in horrible effects to mental health, deaths and health anxiety across the masses, we remained glued in. In the face of global tragedy, the debate of whether to take a lunch break or not was still a dilemma in those of the WFH variety. In a situation that required more sympathy than ever before, I believe we as a species have failed exponentially. If Covid19 was the legendary day of reckoning, mentioned in countless Holy Books, I believe those us of left alive have just been subjected to hell.

    How bad is it, really?

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    I sincerely believe we have found ourselves on the not-so-favourable side of the coin flip. To pause and take a look around at the state of society as a whole, the political landscape, global geo-politics, the shambolic state of international law and a complete disregard to the needs of the many over the few.

    In short – yes. We are in hell.

    In my opinion, that is.

    But it doesn’t have to be this way, not at all, not even a little bit.

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    1. Vidal J, Soldevilla JM. Effect of compassion-focused therapy on self-criticism and self-soothing: A meta-analysis. Br J Clin Psychol. 2023 Mar;62(1):70-81. doi: 10.1111/bjc.12394. Epub 2022 Sep 29. PMID: 36172899; PMCID: PMC10087030. ↩︎
  • A Fight Against our Interest

    A Fight Against our Interest

    A brief comment on our nation

    Propaganda and paranoia go hand-in-hand when discussing the increasing disruption of the UK political scene in the year of 2025.

    Whether you want to contribute this effect to the parade of harmful pseudo-racist propaganda in the news, paraded by our lowly MPs, or due to a lack of a meaningful political education that spans across our, now, mediocre nation.

    “Stop the boats” they scream, through their silk curtains, as they lead the push of the disproportionate working-class, marching their colourful union jack banners to the doors of asylum hotels, or waltz to the entrance of our courts, to prey on another despicable crime, enacted by one ‘of them’.

    If only, instead of glaring side-to-side, blaming our working-class brothers and sisters, we instead look up. I plead, as I have many times, to push out the migraine-inducing noise of those who are not our friends. Those who are not our equals. The day you see those who walk along side the likes of Jacob Reese-Moggs volunteer your local soup kitchen, is the day I will give up this line of argument.

    It is impossible to ignore the strain of our resources in this country. It is impossible to ignore the 14.3 million people living under the poverty line. It is impossible to ignore the, more than, 354,000 people, including 161,500 children experiencing homelessness at this very moment. It is impossible to ignore around 7.4 million people waiting for hospital treatment, under the current state of our great NHS system.

    To fight the problems at hand, it does no good to fight each other. Drop your pitchforks and blow out your torches, for the fight isn’t in front of you. It’s above you.

    The infamous likes of Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson – both pioneers in the downfall of the general level of intellect in our country. Perhaps not the downfall, but the means to highlight all that has failed us. Once, a nation of sublime diversity, rich with cultures and customs. We have fallen, down beneath the depths, drawn to our lowest instincts as a human race. We now all operate on flight-or-flight mode – brother against brother, sister against sister. We all bleed red – and the upper-class don’t wish to get their polished brogues dirty.

    We fight their fight, but it is not one of valour. It is fascism, disguised as nationalism. 384,000 brave souls died to protect our nation against the totalitarian rule, one of a particular sinister nature. Blame those who are different, blame those who struggle, blame those who are not like us.

    It is my dearest hope that this message will be heard, but alas, I can already hear the intransigent tones of the far-right moguls who slander and stifle the precious ‘free speech’ that they so vehemently wish to protect. Free speech is no longer free, it’s reserved for those who wield the power.

    I cannot fathom how low we have fallen. Disgrace, upon disgrace befalls our House of Commons. Rather comical how an institution meant to raise the ‘commoners’, has forsaken it’s namesake. Filled with the self-absorbed partisan drone that has plundered our nation’s soul, and sent it spiralling.

    Remember what you are fighting for, and remember who the real enemy is.