"Well here’s the biggest irony of all: we’re so concerned with a runaway AI -- we create all these works of fiction in which AI turns us all into slaves or paperclips -- when it’s the system we live in that’s the real runaway AI! Exploiting the millions and cooking the planet and for what? To add virtual zeros in some bank account in a database on a server somewhere! We’re trapped in this perverse game of Monopoly, where whoever wins keeps all the money winning again, and again, and again, and again FOREVER! If life were a board game no one would want to play this shit! And if you try to fix the rules and make the game just the slightest bit less unfair, you get mowed down in front of a fucking shopping mall! Is it really so hard to understand I’d prefer an algorithm to this shit? That for me, a computer would be a fucking improvement? No AI ever operated a sweatshop, dumped mercury into a river, no AI siphoned billions off to some tropical island somewhere, fired people, or fired at them! An AI might not have a heart, but it’s goddamn nowhere near as heartless.

… Shit. That’s what I should have told them."

//"Killer app", The Program audio series

My thoughts swirled and tangled and then became incredibly still. What do you say in a situation like this? What's the response? My mother always knew what to say - she knew how to be unflappable and poised and precise always. I shook my head, utterly at a loss. I felt like the quiet remnants of a house after a tornado tore it to shreds and left it behind. I had no pieces to connect, nothing that made sense, no way to impose order on the chaos. But I needed to say something. "Would you like something to eat?" I managed after a long moment.

//Kelly Barnhill, 2022, "When Women Were Dragons: A Novel"

"Have you ever had a hunger that whetted itself on what you fed it, sharpened so keen and bright that it might split you open, break a new thing out?

Sometimes I think that's what I have instead of friends.

(..)

You ask about hunger.
You ask, in particular, about my hunger.
The short answer: no.
The longer answer: I don't think so?

We sate needs before they strike. In this body, an organ (a designed, implanted, rigorously tested organ) seated somewhere above my stomach registers the moment my metabolism requires fuel and stops the lizard-brained subsystems that would make me keen and irritable and blunt my thoughts - all those tricks Dame Evolution plays to make us hunters, killers, seekers, and finders and gorgers. I can disable the organ when I must, but it's so much more stable to receive a status report than to feel weak.

But the hunger you describe - that blade jutting from the skin, the weathering as of a hillside often struck by storm, the hollowness - it sounds beautiful and familiar. (..)

I wanted to be seen. That need dug into the heart of me. It felt good. I'm not certain how to compare this to something you would know, but, imagine a person melded to a Thing, an artificial god the size of mountains, built for making war in the far corners of the cosmos. Imagine that great weight of metal all around her, pressing her down, giving her strength, its hoses melding with her flesh. Imagine she shears the hoses off, steps out: frail, sapped, weak, free. (..) Is that hunger? I don't know."

//Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, 2019, "This Is How You Lose The Time War"

There are the ghosts of who we used to be (..), and the exhaustion that comes with knowing that something will have to happen next, and then after that, and on and on until it's over.

// Nina LaCour, We Are Okay

I feel exhausted, a feeling of catching up, a feeling of something finding me. My heart is a thin thing, these days - shred of paper blown between the spaces in my ribs.

//Julia Armfield, Our Wives under the Sea

"They always say, “If smoking did on the outside what it does on the inside everyone would quit.” I wonder if that is true for gentrification. If the human spirit was visible from the outside, if all our brokenness and sadness and pain was easily seen, could people be more empathetic? No, they’d just make everyone wear bags over their heads."

Nathan Monk, 2021, "All Saints Hotel and Cocktail Lounge"

The night before her wedding, Daisy taught me that after the world ended, you still had to get up in the morning, and the things that you ruined would still be there, needing to be fixed. When I looked at famous Jay Gatsby, soul gone and some terrible engine he called love driving him now, I could see that for him, it was all a wreck and a ruin, and he had no idea why the rest of us weren't screaming.
(..)
"When you can't fix a thing, the best course of action can be to ruin it all so that no one can see what truly happened."
Nick laughed, and I wondered if that was what love was, making someone forget the pain that gnawed at them and would not stop.

//Nghi Vo, 2021, The Chosen and the Beautiful

"Why do you have to say things like that? Why can't you just let things be easy?"
"Because they're not easy," Wylan said in his simple, earnest way. No one in the Barrel talked like that. "You keep pretending everything is okay. You move on to the next job or the next party. What are you afraid is going to happen if you stop?"

- i had no choice.
- no choice?!
- a hard choice! made under great duress, but with the intent to achieve the least awful outcome. you wish to return to civilisation. that is what civilisation IS.

It would be easier if nothing had changed, it continued. If everything was still pretty and safe, yes? Like this little town your angels have made. A pool of water with the moon reflecting in it … who would want to throw a stone and break the picture? It is fine to be afraid, to have a fine fear, to not want to cross a fine line. (..) Listen to me, little girl, it said. You want many things, you are full of want, carved out of it, made from it, yes. But the truth does not care about what you want; the truth is what it is. It is not moved by want, it is not a blade of grass to be bent by the wind of your hopes and desires. The truth does not change whether it is seen or unseen, it whispered in her mind. A thing that is happening happens whether you look at it or not. And yes, maybe it is easier not to look. Maybe it is easier to say because you do not see it, it is not happening. Maybe you can pull the stone out of the pool and put the moon back together.
(..)
“Humans take too long to see the truth,” Pet growled.

// Akwaeke Emezi, 2019, "Pet"

In the realm of sense and reason it seemed logical for something to make sense for no reason (natural order) or not make sense for some reason (the deliberate design of deception) but it seemed perverse to have things make no sense for no reason. What if you colonize your own mind and when you get inside, the furniture is attached to the ceiling? What if you step inside and when you touch the furniture, you realize it’s all just cardboard cutouts and it all collapses beneath the pressure of your finger? What if you get inside and there’s no furniture? What if you get inside and it’s just you in there, sitting in a chair, rolling figs and eggs around in the basket of your lap and humming a little tune? What if you get inside and there’s nothing there, and then the door hatch closes and locks?

What is worse: being locked outside of your own mind, or being locked inside of it?

// Carmen Maria Machado, 2017, "Her Body And Other Parties"

The stepping stone to joy is feeling like you are “enough,” and feeling “not enough” is a form of loneliness. We need other people to tell us that we are enough, not because we don’t know it already, but because the act of hearing it from someone else — and (equally) the act of taking the time to remind someone else they’re enough — is part of what makes us feel we’re enough. We give and we receive, and we are made whole.

It is a normal, healthy condition of humanity, to need other people to remind us that we can trust ourselves, that we can be as tender and compassionate with ourselves as we would be, as our best selves, toward any suffering child. To need help feeling “enough” is not a pathology; it is not “neediness.” It’s as normal as your need to assure the people you love that they can trust themselves, that they can be as tender and compassionate with themselves as you would be with them. And this exchange, this connection, is the springboard from which we launch into a joyful life.

Wellness, once again, is not a state of mind, but a state of action; it is the freedom to move through the cycles of being human, and this ongoing, mutual exchange of support is the essential action of wellness. It is the flow of givers giving and accepting support, in all its many forms.

The cure for burnout is not “self-care”; it is all of us caring for one another.

//Emily Nagoski, Amelia Nagoski, 2019, "Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle"

"Cilvēkam ir tik daudz brīvā laika, cik viņam ir un tam ir jāizvēlas, kā viņš to izlietos – lasīs ziņas internetā, lasīs laikrakstu, aizies uz koncertu, teātri, muzeju vai filmu, nopirks un izlasīs kādu grāmatu, nopirks un klausīsies kādu mūzikas disku, skrullēs Facebook lenti, iegrims Twiterī, klejos pa internetu, skatīsies TV, spēlēs datorspēles vai azartspēles, aizies uz krogu vai naktsklubu, apmeklēs bordeli, lietos narkotikas, pasēdēs kafejnīcā, kvernēs iepazīšanās saitos, aizies uz kursiem, treniņu vai trenažiera zāli, iesaistīsies kādas politiskās partijas, sabiedriskās vai reliģiskās organizācijas darbā, skatīsies bezmaksas filmu, klausīsies bezmaksas mūziku, lasīs mājās esošās vai bez maksas dabūjamās grāmatas un tā tālāk, vai arī neizmantos neko no “entertaiment industrijas” plašā piedāvājumu klāsta un tiksies ar draugiem, pastaigāsies, brauks ar riteni, skries, ies peldēties, uzspēlēs futbolu vai basketbolu, veltīs laiku ģimenei un vispār dzīvos normālu cilvēcisku dzīvi."

ak, informācijas aģentūra.

"pain pushes until vision pulls"

What if we all became committed to the idea that no one should have to apologise for being a human in a body?
(..)
We have been convinced we are ineffectual at exacting any real change against our social systems and structures, so instead we land the guilt and blame squarely on the shoulders of the most accessible party: ourselves. This burden has kept us immobile in our own lives and oblivious to our impact on the world. The weight of the shame has kept us small and trapped in he belief that our bodies and our lives are mistakes. What an exhausting and disheartening way to live.
(..)
The voice of doubt, shame and guilt blaring in our heads is not our voice. It is a voice we have been given by a society steeped in shame.

//Sonya Renee Taylor, 2018, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

Dinner the first evening you are home?

Love,
Sidney

---

28th January 1946
Dear Sidney,

Yes, dinner with pleasure. I'll wear my new dress and eat like a pig.

//Mary Ann Schaffer, Annie Barrows, 2008, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Well, the man who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures — which can't be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man's sense of his own value.

The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think—for the same reason—that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one's mind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you—just about in some such way as if iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition. Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself.

No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment—just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity!—an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience—or to fake—a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer—because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises—because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him.

Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives—and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values—and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws—and he will have cut himself in two. (..) His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure. Then he will scream that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex—nothing but shame.

Ayn Rand, 1957, Atlas Shrugged

Though the ostensible reason for her not having wanted Yeong-hye to be discharged, the reason that she gave the doctor, was this worry about a possible relapse, now she was able to admit to herself what had really been going on. She was no longer able to cope with all that her sister reminded her of. She’d been unable to forgive her for soaring alone over a boundary she herself could never bring herself to cross, unable to forgive that magnificent irresponsibility that had enabled Yeong-hye to shuck off social constraints and leave her behind, still a prisoner. And before Yeong-hye had broken those bars, she’d never even known they were there. (..)

The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her success had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn’t understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.

// Han Kang, The Vegetarian

The Episcopal Church is an institution that has amassed enormous resources to support the thriving of a small number of people. As an institution we potentially have enormous power to work for social change in our local communities, in our local and national government, and in the Anglican Communion. We have often chosen to exercise that power by supporting the status quo.

Power can be exercised in multiple arenas personally and institutionally. There is the power of a government and its military, police, and courts to work for or against justice. There is also a more intangible power: the power to control cultural assumptions regarding who is good and who is bad, who is smart and who is diminished, who is presumed to be innocent and who is presumed guilty. You see power in the structures that decide who can be murdered with impunity, and whose life is treated as precious.

Power can be shared, as when disparate groups finally sit at the same table. But in the work of justice, power cannot be ignored. Although you and I may sit at a table, talk about things we hold in common, and explore what makes us different, when we walk away from the table and back into the wider society, some of us are more safe, have more opportunity, and exercise fuller citizenship, while others of us are perpetually labeled criminal, suspicious, or overall problematic.

Power can be difficult to talk about, because most of us feel powerless over many things: death, illness, and injustice. In the context of a conversation about justice, acknowledging power does not assume that one feels powerful, or that one is powerful over all things. Power in a social analysis is acknowledging how one is perceived in society, and the power or privilege that comes with perceived identity. This is not a comment on intentions. It is a comment on the systems within which we function.

Power is a societal force, like gravity is a physical force. It privileges some, whether they want it or not, and disadvantages others. Race, class, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and physical ability are some of the categories within which a social power differential operates. As individuals, we can align ourselves with powerful institutions in how we pursue our education, where we work, or where we worship. All that power comes into play when we talk about justice, faith, and reconciliation.

//Winnie Varghese, 2016, "Church Meets World"