Late­ly, i’m remind­ed of that one writ­ing – mal­dives: per­verse plea­sures — and how it spoke about a gen­er­al lack of recre­ation in the mal­dives and the mor­bid out­comes there­of: peo­ple end up find­ing enter­tain­ment in the most obscene things.

“the island offered so lit­tle in terms of recre­ation­al options, that cit­i­zens were forced to derive what lit­tle morsels of enter­tain­ment they could from (lit­er­al­ly) watch­ing garbage pile up.

And that’s in Malé, the cap­i­tal city. The rest of the coun­try prob­a­bly has even less to do.”

this is true. in ret­ro­spect, I realised there’s so much fur­ther we could go with this.

the over­sight here was the fail­ure to con­sid­er that mdp too (despite their decep­tive ‘birakaan­u­laa majaa kurun’ slo­gan) had the same inter­ests in and con­tri­bu­tion to the devel­op­ment and main­te­nance of the social struc­ture that led us to this vicious fuck­ing mess. it’s not just a ppm/pnc/gayy­oom prob­lem — they’re all com­plic­it, they always have been and still are.

almost 10 years after this writ­ing, noth­ing has changed. you could even argue things are much worse today.

the hor­ror of liv­ing in this coun­try and its cul­ture of bul­ly­ing, melo­dra­mat­ics, physical/sexual/emotional vio­lence, and a wide­spread dis­dain for love, com­pas­sion, or con­sent has only grown cru­eller and crud­er.

but late­ly, i’ve been think­ing more in terms of per­son­al expe­ri­ence and less so with sci­en­tif­ic or empir­i­cal view.

liv­ing here is hell.

and i say that as some­one born into the priv­i­lege of being the child of an sme busi­ness own­er. priv­i­leged enough to be insu­lat­ed from most of the dis­com­forts and strug­gles of cap­i­tal­ism, but not priv­i­leged enough to afford run­ning away, and cer­tain­ly not enough to avoid the suf­fer­ing that comes from liv­ing here. still, i’m lucky in com­par­i­son.

even for me, this place is hell — i can’t even imag­ine what it’s like for those with less priv­i­leges.

in ret­ro­spect, at least on a per­son­al lev­el, i think i’m start­ing to make sense of this city and coun­try.

there’s noth­ing much to do. recre­ation, sports, leisure — these things are under­fund­ed.

even for the things that do exist, most peo­ple are too busy strug­gling to pay bills, and can’t usu­al­ly even afford to kick back and enjoy things most of the time.

every­one’s crammed togeth­er, and there bare­ly is any space to real­ly do any­thing with­out annoy­ing some­one else or intrud­ing on their per­son­al space.

the days are get­ting hot­ter, the city’s infra­struc­ture can’t with­stand things like rain any­more, food, fuel, and bills are get­ting more expen­sive, rent is ris­ing, the indus­try elites and politi­cians get rich­er while the rest gets poor­er…

…and on top of this impend­ing eco­nom­ic col­lapse and eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty, every­one is bored, even the elites. we’re all bored as fuck. so bored. crash-out bored.

but then, some of the bul­ly­ing, dra­mat­ics, and vio­lence begins to make sense too. what else is there to do?

peo­ple fall into dif­fer­ent (and oth­er­wise cheap) instant-grat­i­fi­ca­tion cop­ing mech­a­nisms — sub­stance abuse, gam­ing, binge-watch­ing, doom-scrolling, goon­ing, yearn­ing, what­ev­er??? — as a com­pound­ing result of bore­dom, inequal­i­ty, and suf­fer­ing.

who’s to say that exter­nal­ly vio­lent cop­ing mech­a­nisms aren’t a result of this too?

per­haps there’s a vis­cer­al fun in bul­ly­ing some kid to tears before they harm them­selves. maybe there’s some mor­bid joy in meet­ing up to only con­stant­ly talk shit about ran­dom peo­ple or find rea­sons to hate and deride them. i guess there’s some­thing grat­i­fy­ing about even going online hurl­ing abuse and death threats at some­one you men­tal­ly jus­ti­fy as “okay to hurt” (i.e., man­u­fac­tur­ing con­sent) for what­ev­er rea­son on twit­ter or some­thing.

i don’t know.

does dog­pil­ing some­one online or harass­ing them in the streets invoke a sense of pow­er?

is the wide­spread sex­u­al vio­lence towards strangers, peo­ple you know, and part­ners a way of reclaim­ing a sense of con­trol in a soci­ety that makes you feel help­less?

is beat­ing some­one up, incit­ing mob vio­lence, get­ting some­one beat up by the cops, or get­ting some­one locked up some­thing that instils excite­ment?

does tor­tur­ing and killing defence­less ani­mals make peo­ple feel big and pow­er­ful?

do cops feel good when they beat and tor­ture pris­on­ers to death or pep­per spray and bru­talise ran­dom pro­tes­tors?

is spread­ing chaos, hatred, and vio­lence in the name of par­ty pol­i­tics fun?

do adults feel an embold­ened sense of author­i­ty when they harm, berate, or abuse chil­dren?

to what extent does the inter­sec­tion of bore­dom, help­less inequal­i­ty, and suf­fer­ing play a role in these things here?

are these ways peo­ple sim­ply try to regain a sense of con­trol when they feel help­less?

all i know is that i’m so damned tired of most of you peo­ple and your bull­shit.

i’m usu­al­ly the hap­pi­est when i’m asleep, because then, i’m not con­scious.

god damn stu­p­idass coun­try. this is a cir­cus that forces us all into becom­ing clowns. such is cap­i­tal­ist real­ism, i guess. i won­der how long it’ll take before i too suc­cumb to clown­ery — or maybe i already have? idk.

the lack of trau­ma-informed care struc­ture (and, con­se­quent­ly, peo­ple just repeat­ing gen­er­a­tional or rela­tion­al trau­ma cycles left and right), the ram­pant inequal­i­ty, the games these politi­cians and resort elites play with each oth­er, the utter hell that is liv­ing in these cities, the eco­nom­ic death-spi­ral we’re on…

…I blame these for mak­ing our lives lit­er­al hell and turn­ing us into demons in the process.