I was recently watching some media review video and felt my stomach turning at the way some things were described. There was this consistent refrain of describing an idea, plot point, or relationship in terms of some sort of "negative trope". Most of these seemed to be derived from a lot of the "group-power obsessions" we see in modern discourse.

Thinking about this, I started to realize that I also like things better, find them more interesting, and understand them in more nuanced and multi-faceted ways when I explicitly do NOT think in these terms.

Arguably, my real life is now so miserable since I either think in these terms or am afraid that others do. I can't be "authentic" since I am too busy trying to figure out how to be "proper" by some unstable definition determined by an even less stable person.

So, I have found that I am decidedly "less human" when thinking in these terms. Also, and this is what really frustrates me about the modern world, this isn't my natural way of thinking. I am deeply upset that the modern world has made me a worse person by demanding that I always see through this filter since, as a result, I see less of the complex humanity of those around me (not to mention myself).

Part of the problem is that these talking points are delivered with a sort of faux-intellectual coldness which makes them sound almost like serious analysis. However, they are not analysis, but simple pattern-matching, that coldness is the lack of humanity, that certainty is the blindness of ignorance.

I miss when we could still be human. Hell, I miss when I still had a chance of being human.

The saying I have had for years applies well in this situation: "Tell me your story, not your politics."

I don't know how the reconstruction will happen, when it will happen, or even if it can happen (there is no promise that humanity will be a success story). All I know is that I won't live to see it. I just wish I knew what I could collect and where I could store what might be of use at that later date,
...Nights