An old, brief reflection: Germline gene editing currently poses considerable harms to social justice and equity. For justified use, our society needs to shift away from value-based judgements of disease. This issue is foremost to other considerations. Many other objections predicate arguments on hypothetical deleterious outcomes. These objections fail to consider the robust testing and data validation framework already in place, notwithstanding the rare instance of a bad actor. These are weaker arguments in part because they emphasize uncertainty and worst-case scenarios failing to conduct a thorough risk-benefit analysis. Conversely, the healthcare system and wider society currently face social inequity, inaccessibility of healthcare, and the sociocultural relationship between illness and disease. These issues raise concern over the use of germline gene editing technology for health and neuroenhancement. These goals are not inherently bad, but the costs of germline gene editing are not affordable for those who may need it most, considering the high rates of genetically-linked morbidities present in families of lower socioeconomic status (SES). Ignoring this fundamental issue perpetuates worse generational outcomes for low SES families. It posits that gene editing promotes genetic normativism since non-disease variant genes would be implicitly more desirable than mutated genes. These points are compelling, but not entirely persuasive. The core of this issue is the perception of illness begetting stigma surrounding a disease. Christopher Boorse calls for a distinction between illness (socially evaluative view of a disorder) and disease (the biological malfunctioning of some system). It is unclear that germline gene editing fundamentally promotes genetic normativity, wherein it does not attempt to make a “more normal” person. As Boorse states, the normal is the objective proper functioning of a thing in accordance with its design, and therefore disease interferes with this, and medicine ought to fix it. However, in the view of illness, gene editing assigns higher value to some gene variants and devalues the experiences of those living with disease. Clearly this is a social issue rooted in evaluative judgements of one’s quality of life. Germline gene editing could have considerable benefits. Take for instance single gene disorders like cystic fibrosis (CF), wherein changing a single letter in the genetic code could void dependence on healthcare, and provide mutation-carrying parents the ability to have a child free of CF. This change would save families and the healthcare system thousands on life-saving interventions for CF. Funds saved could be directed toward aiding those of lower SES who cannot afford often necessary treatments, especially in the private healthcare sector. For as long as society views disease through the lens of illness, the social injustice argument is persuasive. Benefits to germline gene editing do not clearly outweigh inequity, discrimination, and harassment against persons with genetic diseases that may result from a society where curing these diseases is an expensive choice. Such technology would need to be universally accessible regardless of the costs associated. Until societal views shift away from illness toward a non-judgemental/nonevaluative approach to disease, germline gene editing cannot successfully accomplish its premises without inciting considerable social harm.

An excerpt from a WIP:             How long as she been walking? How long does one ever walk, in the vast expanse of a space beyond reason and doubt, shaped of an imagined form only given to by the mind’s flow. It remains suspended in both a visual and lingual part of the mind both lending from lived experience and borrowing creative realism from the deepest reaches of our mind. This place is not yours nor mine, but a suspension of the echoes bound between the material and metaphysical. In a sense, it is not here, nor there, but indeed everywhere.             Her shoes kick up grains of dust with each dragging step across a web of irregular shapes between split ground. It is without texture, cracked in countless hexagons, rhombuses, and other earthy shapes, yet lacking an identifiable material. The chipped particulate vanishes as quickly as it appears, coating, but never increasing, it’s coverage of her neat, expensive shoes.  In the recesses of her mind, she recalls the great salt flats, those relatively featureless but expansive swaths of barren land. They always seemed so serenely isolated from the communal world bound by deadlines, expectations, obsessive productivity, and never-ending workloads assigned for the sake of being occupied. She often thought of how freeing that world would be, how it could provide an endless escape while keeping her grounded by the surrounding nature. In a world strife with the chaotic smashing of supermassive, tectonic plates across inhuman timescales, that we can view an immobile snapshot of a land is a gift. And yet, even those had distinguishing, material features, especially contrast to the current environment.             The landscape appears in her visual field as if she could reach out and feel it all, smell the saline air, hear the gentle sweeping breeze, feel the dull warmth of a blinding sun, however, these enriching sensations feel distant, as if extending from the recesses of her mind. This view remains his surest sign of existence, and yet it is only perceivable as far as his directing mind can conjure it. The landscape is formless with each ebb and flow of the mind, only returning to its conceivable form once consciously noted. Merely existing suggests great mental effort.             Despite her assumed effort, any fatigue is easily addressed by scaling back mental faculties. If sound becomes deafening, effort is refocused to sight. If deaf, slightly more exertion is given. The impermanence of the whole hints at the need for more practice, but to strive this far is no passable feat. Some aspects are still very crudely defined: her strides underly a featureless sky, one not blue, not white, not black, but blank. Of an intangible quality, as if looking upon it only draws confusion, like an idea of the mind, only sustained by directed creativity does it materialize, ever flowing, ever shapeless as the fluidity of our mind oscillates between thoughts.             Time is relative. she cannot recall definitively how long it took to develop a tangible sense of being, only that now, to remain occupied, she walks, land forming alongside her and disappearing all the same. It is both a burden of stress and relinquishment of pain. The indescribable space that ceded to her current domain was leagues worse, and only fueled her desire to maintain something. Anything. Everything. What was and what will be didn’t seem to matter back then, but now… now, walking provides an anchor to the current world, and reminds her of one distantly passed. She senses it is one never to be returned to, only dreamed of in feverish and flawed recollections of a melancholic soul. Those emotions don’t feel biochemically fueled anymore, almost as if their essence only remains, a psychosocial definition devoid of a direct connection to the body. It isn’t a feeling. It is a being.             For someone who spends their life focusing on destinations, achievements, and the like, wandering an aimless journey is a curse. Old sayings claimed the journey was the purpose, but she believed a purposeless journey leads to desultory and unhelpful terminus. And that, in her eyes, was the greatest injustice one could obsess over. She did after all spend the better part of her life in the confines of a classroom promising a great future. That future as she learned was predicated on abjuring all her life’s energy to a great cause beyond her current meaning. After all, society thrives on having aims, prioritizing goals, making sacrifices in the process, finding a scapegoat. In times of peace and war, two dualistic state of humanity, there exists nonetheless a struggle for meaning and purpose. In war, it may consist of a valiant win over an opponent, or a visionary future of prosperity, or a subjection of some “other”—no differently in times of peace civilization finds groups to subjugate for an entrenched “greater good”. Anything to further the peace, is popularized, ironically often requiring great conflict. In the end it’s all fervour of some sort. And by God is it exhausting. Each step feels heavy. Breathing used to require great effort, but it starting to become second nature, like she was beginning to reform her cerebellum by pure thought. So too she will walk with ease, run in great stride, and perhaps jump great lengths. Flying has always sounded interesting. Sound—what did her voice sound like? In the far reaches of her mind, she can sense a once great appreciation for sound—especially that of great choirs intertwined with instruments of wind and string. Melody provided comfort and purpose in times of excruciating silence. Even a distant humdrum outside her apartment window helped distract unwanted thoughts and create new, gentle curiosities about the world surrounding her. It wasn’t always that she wanted to escape from certain thoughts, just that there was constantly something new to explore, so why linger on unpleasant feelings, uncomfortable topics? Life is about living, not reflecting, she thought, reflecting on her life, and while seeing a lone door, several yards in the distance. The now suddenly materialized door flutters transparent as the sense of shock washes over her. Controlling her initial confusion, the object slowly becomes stably opaque. Why, here of all places, would someone put a door ? She continues toward it, step after step still feeling labored, slowly noticing more details on her approach. It is about eight feet tall, has hinges on the right side and a rounded doorhandle on the left. It is white with two parallel rectangular indentations running horizontally down either side of the broad face, ending before the handle, and continuing thereafter down to the bottom of the door. At the level of the handle where there would normally be a latch, nothing protrudes from the frame. Why the handle then? What’s stopping it from blowing in the wind like a weathervane? Now only feet from the door, she glances quizzically. Where normally invoking a door would require great effort, this seems to now concretely remain the center of her focus. She takes a few steps to the side of the door, observing the same appearance on the opposite side. There appears no latch connected to either handle. What’s the point then? In her previous life, perhaps she ought not open the door and avoid the fraught nature of taking any action. This same fear lead her down a passive life’s journey, drifting from one obvious opportunity to the next, not really taking strides toward anything permanent. In many ways she was “successful”, enjoyed a good life with good people, but at all times it left distant. She was locked in a house of her own creation, peering through a muddled window at the wind flowing outside. All she ever had to do, and never could, was walk through the door and feel the breeze. Fingers already gently pressed on the knob, she slowly retracted her hand. She believed she was a woman of cautious fortitude, one who could withstand much of life’s unexpected circumstances. In her castle of comfortable isolation, she was independent. But in this same castle, she could never move, never travel, never see much of life’s wonder. This hadn’t bothered her though, or so she thought, ever since she was a child. Her room was her respite from the world, filled from floor to ceiling with books, toys, painting supplies and products of her burgeoning creativity, stacked on sagging wood-grain shelves. It served as a display of spiritual immortality, and more realistically, sound dampening for the reality lurking beyond her door. Her retreat was as much peaceful as it could be protective. Whether substances or the subject of the government’s many imposed regulations and tax laws, or simply forgetting to pick up milk, a fight was always to be had. So she sat in her castle, hearing but not daring to glean at the no-man’s land lying amidst the halls outside the bounds of her walls. And yet, back then, so too came a time for her to decide. Unfortunately, indecision is an omnipresent option. And it cast itself like a plague over her sensibilities. She could have left her house. She could have contacted authorities. She could have lived with friends, sought professional council, traveled, or stayed, interfering, risking herself and her father’s wellbeing… and this vast array of possible futures weighed her down to the point of fatigue. So, she remained immobile. Never opening doors. Hell, why not. Just this once. Her hand returned to the knob, fingers outstretched. With a grasp, turn, and push, a silent latch clink echoed in her mind as the door hinged open, surrendering to her resolve. As she stepped forth, a kind wind nipped her heels as if to equalize the pressure on two sides separated by an endless, missing barrier in space. Her mind cleared. And through it she fell into the expanse. More to come.

0052 MONDAY August 26th, 2024 Excerpt: Existing is easy, living is hard. Harder yet is choosing to exit. For all the joys we experience, equal if not greater torment. So few equalities in this world, it just is. I cannot crack this shell, I want the interior to seep. I want what I've earned, and nothing's what I'm owed. I find peace only in sleep, made invisible among sheep. How cruel for a stomach to crave what the brain cannot fathom what hands cannot grasp what the heard cannot muster and moreover having not tried to draw lines a foot higher. Everyday feels more laborious soon to be each minute and seconds, only a second. Soon pleasure outweighs work, and yet it all feels like labor. What will become a regret next? There seems nothing unquestioned. No certainties for me, no joy to be. Does any guarantee exist? Should I wipe expectations? No, all pointless drivel. The point is to find balance, to be comfortable with the opposite. The point is not to spiral. The point is overcoming weakness. The point is being free from crutches. The point is to grow the fuck up. Stop digging that little pity hole. I cannot find that arbitrary balance of self hate and love. Even in admitting I cannot, I recognize the false pretenses. Its all bullshit. Everyone has advice, no answers. There are no answers. There are no ends but the final curtain pull. Everything is but a means. We're all racing to the tip of the spear, but we'll near never reach the point. Am I cursed to repeat the same life until I learn some lesson? It's not that I don't understand. It's just that I don't like the answers. DFWYNLM #175

I feel the crushing weight of responsibility, the dread of consistent failure, and the overall ineptitude to turn it all around, to pivot, to find anything. I don't know if this emptiness is new, or merely an exacerbated symptom of circumstance. Few cheap joys are taken in the process of living, and such abundant hope in the prospect of release. Aside from the passing thoughts of being a husk of my former self's dreams and ambitions, I find a recurring thought in my absurd search for a purpose in this desert, the question: am I simply the role of the tragedy to develop the stories of those around me? The thought invades and roots itself in my mind, that I have no true agency or further construction in this world, but rather a simple final defining act will simultaneously establish and conclude my role in this 24 year long fight has produced? This is prima facie ridiculous, but in this absurdity where searches for meaning are numerous and answers ever so nonexistent, who is to call such life accusations nonsense? It contrasts so vivid and wildly with my biologically burned and psychologically trained (?) desire to live into a respectable age, to tire endlessly building a life I may reflect on fondly--to love and to have lost, to be a father and bring the joys of the future into being, to be free, to be impactful, to convince myself it all isn't simply in vain--how do you re-engineer a machine set on self-destruction? How do you rip apart computer code without a blue screen? How do you sanitize your hands while leaving behind and alive all the good bugs? Perhaps I've spent so much time peering outwards I've neglected my core. I can say few things with certainty, and so that I say all the more doubtful. I fear for only emulating thought, only erecting a facade of reflection. I once feared the depths of the dark. But now I know my fear is in never again feeling passion or joy in anything. To be gifted with a bountiful life truly is unsettling, because at the center of it all, my mind turns: why? Fear is no mind killer. Fear holds the hand and stays the feet. Despair, dread, regret--only this invigoration of the deadly past can drag anyone under. There are no answers, no right and wrong, only grey. The world is grey. DFWYNLM # 173

Excerpt from "2324 SATURDAY April 17th, 2021": Not from here. Come, kill me in a dream. Release the shackles binding me here--this place has outgrown me. Quick--before I disappear in this bed of roses--the forceps will do just fine. Make do with it--a thorn should remain at the side, let it keep my purpose and give transient goals until larger spikes come. Smog fills the periphery. You can see the mold on me, as an acid rain of 1000 days washes our impurities. The damp frame of life wilts, being crushed under the weight of its view. The weaver, a greedy peerer, she peers at what could be, away from the chains of a life fit without it. For she waves, no steps taken in a year's time, a mere inch of movement--a break from chains--losing her roots, too soon she would rot away. Having already jumped, the hard plastic bubble wrap falls out of the pocket: a cause, a curse, a cure, a sentence to mindlessness. Oh, she'd talked for days, but interacted with no one. In that moment, a reflection in front of her. A face unrecognized, but possessed nonetheless. 'Who is this? Why do they fear me, approaching slowly?' She thought, for a moment, the person--or thing--was familiar, a face seen. Closer. Close. So close. Inches--no, centimeters now. Featureless, gray, mute. ... Darkness. Not a blackness, nor a dim room, but rather what the blind see devoid of an otherwise present sense. She thought, 'A human experience?' Not quite, and not the first, and far from the last. A suspension of perception. What happens to the mind in lieu of all other input? The sole sense becomes all, the sense of self, realization of individuality, an entity disconnected now, for previously to take advantage of all else--a pitiful and ungrateful bunch really. No more pain. And yet the memories persist. Regret. You're not here, nor there, nor wherever. You are. Existence for the sake of itself is an unnecessary redundancy, so why do I? You're getting the hang of it now, but there is nothing to question, for there is no answer. So... I just 'be'? No questions. So... No, you'll slowly deteriorate, just as you did there, here, and where. Soon the mind will dissipate and feed back into the entropy you unknowingly usurped. DFWYNLM #145 Furthermore, "0016 THURSDAY April 29th, 2021": Time spent, nights wept, crossed values; the mind wanders, heart weakening, and atrophy setting in. No more pain, a dull ache. Let it settle, no more pain. Mind is less, sound is slowly leaving. Where was the childish delight in these things? Shortness of attention, attentive to none, feelings of self survive, relations draw distant. No more pain, no more fear. No less sane, but end comes near. And so I relapse in fear, I repulse at the thought of anything being in colour, take it away, the spirit of it all must go, let not the soul remain, for it craves too much for the body to handle. Blood boils, flesh rends, muscle tears; in the moment, it fights bricks and mortar, it cries of faint glory but does no climbing. The feral will scratch until fingers bleed, it screeches for what it cannot see, but is forced to watch; this wretch is jealousy, envy, loneliness, soulache, self-sabotage, denial, inferiority, impatience, unwillingness; this is the beast, a cancer of the soul, destroyer of wills and gatekeeper of progress. Asset denial is of its top priority. Fighting it can be done, surely, but with an evasive excalibur not seen nor yet discovered. A mere illusion until witnessed. Meanwhile, the beast ravages on. Havoc done cannot be undone. Time rendered inaccessible. Investments razed. Best to forge on and refocus elsewhere, but the beast lies stubborn and ablaze, ecstatic and unsatisfied in its castle of ruin. Truth is, it remains in hope of changing its ways. That in enough time, scars will be forgiven, settlements rebuilt, and habits changed without winds of motion and movement. A heavy miasma of blind naivety hangs round its head, drawn from neck to ceiling. Along a plank it walks, precariously perched between 'have' and 'have-not'. Be it wealth of the mind. or lessons taught for others. A small boy glances forward, and an elderly man glances back. At the end of it all, how complacent are we with our own death? Planted beneath our spine, which seeds are bamboo, and which is vine? What is the threshold for being alive and not merely living? What passes first, the body or the intrinsically linked mind? How did a shelter, self-built, become to be a prison? You see, these thoughts are self destructive, but they feed it, they appease the beast aflame, despite making trying times desolate matters. This pity pit has room for one, but others may donate a spade. And in this blind naivety, you thought escaping the environment could change the context, but this state of affairs has always been constructed by the self, and construed through the looking glass, made of the same grit blinding your eyes after a long night of weeping paroxysm. A single solace along the knife's edge, the glint of a barrel in moonlight, a swinging shadow of twine, still wings sprouting in freefall, a prescription finished in an instant, numbness, a flooding darkness, flashes of what blind people see, and a finale of DFWYNLM #147 Reflections Somber thoughts can creep up on us unexpectedly and pray on our psyche at the most vulnerable of times. When I wrote these entries, I was on the precipice of a transitory period of my life, reflecting on what had been a very eventful four years of an undergraduate degree. I had a plan going forward, excited at its prospect, but nonetheless enveloped in the feeling that I could have done so much more. In hindsight, much of the inadequacy I feel alongside young adults in general is that of comparison, in the flawed virtue of subjecting the same judgement paradigm to yourself as of others. But this is a great liability; it can be an informant to our aspirations but also a bottomless pit. It's sort of like what your guardian figures may have told you: pick your friends wisely, surround yourself with the right crowd, don't get caught up in the wrong groups. etc. etc. The difference is, of course, in the ease of falling to aspirational greed, altogether biting off more than one can chew at a given moment. In childhood, there really are countless possibilities moving forward. In truth, this paradigm never changes. Sure, barriers do morph with decisions we make, or uncontrollable life situations, but this remains an incontrovertible fact. Any given possibility can be met with countless counter-possibilities, and counter-counter-possibilities. And this begins to touch upon why comparison is a flawed practice, but one we cannot help enacting and participating in through daily life. That is not to say we should render all comparative processes dubious, but rather shape them to better examine the true aspects of one's life, through a lens of compassion and understanding. The importance of examining the differential complexities of one's life to the next should not be understated. We all come into this world of the same worth but on different footing, and through it we retain the same worth but nevertheless must find our own path. University and other environments similar to it cultivate this feeling: of always struggling, moving forward and grasping at any prospect of fulfilment. It's a rat race--for many, it churns out variable expectations and results. You're enrolled alongside your classmates in a unified progression toward graduation, and yet enthralled by the constant competition of it all. Education is, in my opinion, a constant sprint forward. It can be incredibly invaluable, but the spell cast on us to chase after the penultimate moment of fulfillment--that being graduation--is oft a gateway to another chase. This isn't a bad thing--it does however distract from and dilute the quality of existence in the moment, for the moment. I cherish the many memories I've made through my education, and weep for those I've lost, but feel grateful nonetheless for that they've happened. And through life, I have come to understand that these memories must be held close, especially in times of strife. Education is, by its nature, cyclical strife: each year we begin anew with the first day of classes, and end with a slurry of exams. It's hard, a true testament to mental fortitude, but also to that of one's own unique set of skills and situation. Our performance is not guided by our internal motivation and intellect alone, but a cumulation of our personalities, liabilities, surroundings, dependents, and every other aspect of our lives. Education does not exist in a vacuum, nor should the evaluations of which we take part. I was fortunate to see the many ways in which excellent educators took students' unique situations into account, and saw how students could engage with helpful resources suited to their respective situation (for example, evaluation deferrals, regrading requests, etc.), but this rule does not always hold true. I too saw the apathy some instructors showed toward their students. This "toughen up" mentality is common in many fields of academia, and professions for that matter--it reflects a long lived culture of "hazing". Wherein, the previous generation had it bad, so they think the following generation too should experience the same magnitude of struggle, if not worse. One may argue this reflects the past 200,000 or so years of evolution, such that the fit gets fitter and the second fiddle gets, well, fiddled, but I'd like to think we're sensible enough to know that apathy is not the solution. Under most circumstances, it selects for likeminded individuals who enable this behavior and end up furthering it in time. It also tramples over just as worthy, just as valuable human lives. Likewise, however, complete enabling of inaction and inability can be dangerous. Most could formulate an excuse for inaction, and in most cases, it is certainly legitimate. But allowing any such excuse under any circumstance is not clearly helpful for either party. At worst it allows for lackluster performance and eventually senescence, and at best it can provide much needed support and healing. Clearly, the solution lies across this axis: the former being practical apathy, the latter embodying total empathy. Educational practice, and perhaps life's relations in general, lie along this axis. Balancing practical apathy and total empathy (PA/TE for simplicity) is a delicate practice. It requires an astute observer who may very well know or guess accurately at the ability of one to perform under pressure. Feel too indifferent, and one may crack. Be too understanding, and one may underdeliver. Education and teaching requires such a balance of encouragement and understanding. It should never be a case of one over the other. Both must always be present. Certainly though, putting this to practice across few students (say, a small tutoring group of 2-5 people) seems reasonable. And certainly it is. The challenge arises when applying this principle to widespread use. Take for instance, university classrooms sometimes reaching above 1000 students. How is an instructor to individually reason with and understand each student's situation? The onus does fall on the student to raise some concern, or make one aware of her situation, but likewise, great responsibility is put on the professor to enable her students to broach such concerns in a safe and accessible manner, and to be heard out fairly without bias. Both parties must engage, state their cases, and adjudicate as seen fit. Even still, there is some err in the amount of power awarded to instructors to delegate the outcome of these situations. This is where the PA/TE axis comes into play, and where instructors ought to align themselves accordingly. It is an arbitrary axis and surely not one which affords the absolute right answer in all situations, but does describe a means for envisioning or weighing how one might consider engaging a challenging situation. It has been my experience this axis is learned, refined, and fine-tuned with experience and engagement with students of diverse and varied backgrounds in all sorts of complex situations. This is where the core tenets of empathy, objectivity, and morality are involved and executed by the responsibility of the individual. Furthermore, the ability and humility to admit mistake is paramount to our learning and personal tuning of this axis. The struggle of education is not to be mistakeless, but to learn from them and of them, and perhaps in learning, to make more complicated and challenging mistakes--such that the lessons of yesterday's mistakes are the principles of tomorrow's success. But this is all somewhat beside the point. It is perhaps shortsighted to say that most things are determined by chance, but genuinely, the randomness of which we have access to opportunity, are given resources, even borne into certain localities with all their benefits and drawbacks, really is decided by nothing at all. In this way we truly don't ever determine our set starting conditions, but can forever affect where we ought to go. It is this precise fact that it seems many admissions processes seem to fall short of realizing. I was fortunate to be surrounded by genuinely helpful and well-meaning individuals--this seems to be the norm for some, albeit not all schools--so I never quite felt this sense of competition. It is only ever made apparent as one applies for jobs and postgraduate education. Even some volunteer positions within school are subject to quite extraneous review process, where any candidate is an excellent one, and the question then arises of who is truly most deserving. One arbitrary or circumstantial characteristic then takes hold over the next, and that line of bias and interpretation is the basis of decisions dictating the next years, sometimes decades of someone's life. It's a stressful decision to make, especially when that decision may be regretted in time. Personally, grappling with regret has been a tough emotion to surpass. With endless possibilities ahead of me and only one track of choices made behind me, of course nothing will ever be 100% satisfactory, if there are hundreds of other ways to go about achieving a goal. But it only speaks to the incompleteness of life, and perhaps the alternatives opened through rejection, and reinvigoration of one's wills. Loss, failure, and rejection can all be the motivative spark for things otherwise not possible under "perfect" conditions. This type of distress turned eustress is exactly what we can achieve given the right guidance and self-ascribed patience and understanding. The longing for death is a controversial and perhaps romanticized notion. More than ever, today we are reminded on all corners of the internet that everyone around us is winning in some way. If you, for example, knew 365 people, who each reached a life's milestone once a year and posted publicly about it, then on average you'd see one person post per day about some rightly celebrated achievement. But the inadvertent result is one where we feel everyone is winning all the time, and we only 1/365 as often. This, alongside the "hustle culture" and many other productivity movements emphasize these feelings of never doing enough, being enough, or achieving enough. It's certainly a suffocating load to be forced under, and isn't so easily addressed by even taking action in one's own life. Because nobody accomplishes yearly what 365 other equally motivated individuals do altogether. And so it follows that such an absurd task bears too heavy on one's mind, so why bother chasing after hopeless fantasies of success? True, many do find success and don't become caught up in the disillusionment of impossible feats of will, rather investing in sensible tasks or projects. It is a true tragedy, however, to see bright, precocious individuals overburden themselves with their own externally sourced expectations without allowing the patience and understanding of scope to focus on what is realistic. Guidance and assistance goes a long way, and that's where educators and other mentor figures really impact future generations. It goes past the classroom. It isn't a lesson, it is a structured haven of predictability in a world otherwise devoid of it. Four walls and a set of rules--stick to them, and you'll excel. Don't worry about the chaotic nature of the outdoors. Truthfully, this is a good starting point but falls short of preparing one for the real world, which is nothing but chaotic, and often not wholly governed by rules. It is a thing we stumble through and hope to make sense of years after the fact, if at all. So why strike it out and throw everything away? The answer clearly varies from person to person, but a unifying factor may be feeling overburdened and never achieving a fraction of the potential that we and others set out for ourself. The struggle of moving through academia does somewhat remind me of the Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. In brief, Sisyphus is being punished by the gods for what is essentially dissent and espousal of political scandals (spicy indeed). His punishment entails pushing a boulder up a mountain, but as he reaches the top, the boulder rolls back down, and he is forced to restart. In the novel, Camus essentially posits that Sisyphus, faced with an ever repeating menial task, must despite all else be happy. In that the process of struggling toward a goal, seeking it out and maintaining hope in the process does in some way provide fulfilment and with it, happiness. It is reminiscent of the campy "oh, maybe the real x was the x we made along the way" in that the journey is more enlightening than the final goal itself. This is a commonly repeated motif in film and literature. But especially for the average careers-person, specifically focusing on the academic, there seems to be an addiction to struggle and the challenge of overcoming it. The true challenge arises when the struggle becomes too much, or manifests in unpredicted ways, and yet addiction remains. How might Sisyphus react if, with every step he took, he slid two more back? Camus might argue that he would rejoice at the opportunity for a new challenge. But such is more difficult and perhaps less common in practice. It is indeed the right mindset to be in (that is, never faltering with failure, struggle, disapproval or otherwise), but given so many respond oppositely, how can we curb this guttural response to absolutely throw everything away at the sight of an even slipperier slope? Camus argues in favour of acknowledging and cognitively embracing the absurdity of it all. The "Just World Hypothesis" is indeed a fallacy. Bad things happen to good people, and vice versa, often without reason--trying to find some deeper meaning to it all is in some cases, counter-intuitive and at best, pointless. That isn't to say we should avoid reflection on past actions completely--rather that we can control some things, but the vast majority of it all is random and not up to our discernment. Earlier last year, I got pooped on by a bird during a picnic. It seems illogical to extrapolate that the bird excreted on me as a punishment, or that it was a means of proving my status as a "bad person" that deserves it. All I was left to do is ponder at the random, comical absurdity of it, and laugh. Sure, it provided a mild inconvenience, but it was hilarious. This is exactly the type of acknowledgement Camus argues we need to develop with absurdity. It may provide inconvenience, but we must largely remain appreciative of it all. Scornful appreciation. So the very root of the issue one faces at "a single solace along the knife's edge, the glint of a barrel in moonlight, a swinging shadow of twine, still wings sprouting in freefall, a prescription finished in an instant, numbness, a flooding darkness..." is the negatives of an addiction, and the following catastrophic reaction to the underlying absurdity and unpredictability of it all. We are educated in and surrounded by environments embodying predictability, and yet end up facing a life subject to randomness. This sobering realization is what graduates often wrangle and must quickly take hold of moving into the workforce. Learning theory is good, but it only provides a framework we must manipulate and adjust to fit its actualization. As educators, I think it is crucial to convey the unpredictability of the world while maintaining some responsibility for one's actions, to a reasonable extent--placed somewhere along the PA/TE axis. It is crucial we advocate for a positive relationship between struggle and self-worth, in that students know they have supports available, and their failures have no bearing over their innate worth as people and life-long learners. I think, then, there ought to be some sort of cultural revolution redefining the relationship between professional success and one's self worth. That in one's failures still deserves one's own respect, empathy, and kindness. Furthermore, that we may look more fondly on our past mistakes knowing they could improve our future actions. We are, by definition, an iterative species at the level of generations and daily life. We are constantly trying to figure ourselves out--it's no wonder we might falter from time to time, or get confused, or discouraged. We are human, and that is good, and that is okay. We are part of the absurdity that one must embrace. The point of all of this is: the "suck" makes us stronger. We ought to embrace our failures, and turn to others for support and guidance when needed. We ought to chose to live, and we ought to teach to the best of our abilities, that struggle is rewarding regardless of the outcome, and that our past mistakes are not tied to our self worth. We ought to want to become better, and that's why we ought to chose life. Talk Suicide Canada: 1-833-456-4566 If you or anyone you know if struggling with suicide, please seek help. You are forever worthy of life and living.

Except from "0015 WEDNESDAY October 13th, 2021" And here I come to realize, my life of comfortable status-quo is one of my own creation--a bland mantlepiece I must own up to. For I have known this for long, but equally so denied it. The concept of stagnancy Everything in life involves some degree of risk and sacrifice. Complacency and acceptance of a current situation as the immutable final destination is, ironically, a risky endeavor. One that instills a sense of comfort smothering all forms of dread possible from the sudden realization of overflowing, stagnant and deathly waters. The water is warm, why ever adjust the faucet? The issue is one of murky water, cloudy with solutes and providing no real nutritional advantage. The choice is actually quite clear and not clearly refuted, but understandably practiced and on a level we are all familiar with yet mostly chose to ignore. In a biological sense, humans are hardwired toward comfort, safety, and energy-conservation. This isn't an innately shameful thing and should not be overextended to be understood as being immobile, inactive, or even more generally as aging. If understood in terms of time, we are in no way stagnant--we are forever aging. This could be better understood as an accumulation of memories and experiences contributing to the development of self, inner morality, and subjective beliefs. Understood in the latter way, stagnation describes a lack of development or refinement, whether in favourable or unfavourable directions. It would be impossible, say, for a moral or immoral being exerting some force on the world to be stagnant. The 'rotting' of sorts takes hold when any actor denies herself the right to development in any moral or physical direction. In this way, learning (including but not limited to life experiences and education) and by extension, interactivity, is the antithesis of stagnation, and in it we should place great importance for the purpose of furthering our sense of mental and physical being. In this way, any action taken that we consciously engage in and subsequently allow to mold our perceptions about the world, smothers stagnation. For example, when we engage in a political debate with a colleague, we purvey the possibility for collective learning and refinement of ideas for both parties (after all, it is probably a truism to say that holding a certain belief requires proper and fair understanding of the opposition--confidence in one's opinion is derived from mutual understanding and the patience and respect for careful dialogue surrounding it). We do a service against stagnation of the other by way of introducing ideas or points novel to the individual we engage. The action is well initiated if taken with good intention. However, in listening to our colleague, we largely disservice ourselves by opening our ears but shutting our auditory nerves. Stagnation is a refusal to change, engage in alternative thinking, or generally reject without consideration any points made. In learning, we may indeed strengthen our confidence in our own subjective beliefs, but regardless provide our colleague with the respect, patience, and consideration to be heard out even on points with which we may vehemently disagree. This is obviously the nature of good mannered discourse--and in it, I find stagnation to be avoided. Perhaps this is all common sense, but look to most of today's popular political debates and you may find it all but common. Why does the concept of stagnation matter? For the most critical, the question persists of why avoiding stagnation matters, and what impetus compels us to avoid it. I think stagnation has a strong connection to morality that justifies interactivity. Let us consider the following line of thought: Morality can broadly be considered as doing something good, usually with implications connecting other individuals or their interests. Moral actions can be understood as bringing good intentions into existence through their execution. Acting morally serves to do good to the world around us. Meaningfully moral actions necessarily interact in some way with living things around us, specifically, other humans. Moral actions contribute to a greater body of human experience--the greater good. We, as humans, have a moral obligation (Peter Singer gives perhaps the strictest of definitions) to do good for others. Learning contributes to the refinement of a moral axis--without it, we struggle to establish a mental picture of morality from birth to death--although some studies do suggest we are born with a tendency toward moral goodness. Stagnancy refers to the conscious choice to reject learning, development, or refinement of one's character and actions, which inevitably affects how we interact with the world and the people in it. As humans existing in a space closely interlaced with other humans, based around human interaction, we ought to be moral and avoid stagnation. In this way, stagnation applied to morality undermines it. It is important to consider the idea of stagnancy in our own lives insofar as it is reasonable to expect interactivity. Perhaps, in this way, absolute stagnancy can be more specifically defined as the complete resistance, or rejecting engagement and consideration of the forces around us--trying to exist in an orbital with no charge or inertia, where all other actors exhibit some form of these two qualities, in constant flux of differential velocities and accelerations. Let us consider the case of those who cannot, for a sickness of body and/or mind, interact with the world around them. Specifically, I will consider the medically brain dead as being severely impaired with interacting with the world around them. A brain dead individual has a minimal if not zero chance of ever presenting again as their previous self. These individuals, in being tended for by family and healthcare professionals, are acting as a moral agent, even in complete inaction and lack of a forthcoming mind. They are contributing to the development of opinions, professional practice, and refinement of knowledge. I don't want to discount the complexity of feelings family or caregivers tending for an unresponsive patient have--rather, to emphasize that even the evoking of an emotional or cognitive response in those surrounding us contributes to a moral axis, beliefs, and subjective human experience--magnetizing them--exerting some force regardless of intentionality. We should never avoid feeling--rather, we should strive to be at peace and understanding with them. To return to the idea of an atom: these patients still have some degree of charge even if not consciously guided. In this way we can come to understand that we can all be agents of learning, or anti-stagnation. It is specifically in our interactivity that we take the form of a moral agent. Here the notion starts to become more clear: undermining all human relations is interactivity--cause and effect. Those with positive effects (which may vary greatly on situation and personal preference) comprise moral actions. Stagnation rejects interactivity, and by doing so, presents itself as a immoral choice. It is important to distinguish that this differs from amorality--that being a lack of conscious, moral choice--for example, an actor who to the best of our knowledge does not have some conscious system of morals to base their decisions on. Such may be the case of a predator to its prey; there is no moral wrongness nor righteousness in one animal killing another for survival. It is clear that our integration into a society of well-meaning individuals is crucial to this idea. I have maintained and wish to keep the notion that stagnancy is the dissolution of self. It, like the majority of reality, exists on an continuum--it is at all times hard to be anything absolutely, moral, immoral, active or stagnant--but some actions are certainly more moral than others, and likewise act more than they stagnate. I am no master of renewal and development, but it is an amicable goal to work towards. And perhaps maintaining that sense of hope is sufficient to stave off those murky waters--such is the chase for refinement of one's body and mind.