To live in the antic­i­pa­tion of ‘col­lapse’ is a priv­i­lege of those with­in the impe­r­i­al core. The truth is, the thing you fear will hap­pen to our coun­try is the thing that much of the colonised world has been going through for cen­turies: the era­sure of life, con­quest, destruc­tion, soci­etal decay, vio­lence, civ­il unrest, famine, star­va­tion, war. This is noth­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly unique.

Every time with my writ­ings, whether for my own pub­li­ca­tions, for oth­er out­lets I sub­mit to, or even infor­mal writ­ings, peo­ple always keep telling me to either “present a solu­tion” or that it’s our duty to “cre­ate hope” and to not con­tribute to “doomerism” and “apa­thy”. “Hope” this, “hope” that — well, fuck you, and fuck “hope”.

Hope, hope, hope. With­out look­ing despair dead in the fuck­ing eyes, how in the world are we sup­posed to even know what we should be hop­ing for, and on what our hopes should be found­ed on? I think hope­maxxers fail to realise that the peo­ple who feel hope­less and help­less feel that way not because they’re apa­thet­ic and don’t care, but in fact because they do care. Apa­thy is more like “dude, you’re being alarmist, every­thing’s going to be fine, I’m not polit­i­cal any­way”. Not that I’m a total doomer though, and I cer­tain­ly am not a nihilist (🤢🤮) or a cyn­i­cal pes­simist or ‘real­ist’. I’d say cau­tious opti­mist… and right now, I’m feel­ing very, very, very cau­tious!!

Soci­eties suc­ceed and soci­eties col­lapse. Some peo­ple, when they’re first out of the womb, open their eyes into a world that is already falling apart or has fall­en apart. Think of the Rohingya peo­ple, Pales­tini­ans, the major­i­ty of the Africans, and so on — they are already liv­ing in the “col­lapse” and “apoc­a­lypse” we’re so jit­tery about… for decades, cen­turies even. To think that some­thing some­how is going to mag­i­cal­ly save us from that real­i­ty when most of us are bare­ly active, unit­ed, or even have the priv­i­lege to spend time on these things… to think that we will mag­i­cal­ly avoid the fate of the places we’ve wit­nessed on our screens is just arro­gance.

Cri­sis is the only moment peo­ple will spring to action, and even then, it won’t be per­fect

There’s no sin­gu­lar win­dow of time or cri­sis that will impact our soci­ety. There will be many — some mas­sive, some vio­lent, some silent, some brief, some pro­tract­ed — think about things like the 2004 Tsuna­mi, the 2008 glob­al finan­cial cri­sis, or the pan­dem­ic in 2020 — many such crises are bound to hap­pen in the future, and each time, changes (whether mate­r­i­al, per­son­al, ide­o­log­i­cal, polit­i­cal, or oth­er­wise) become some­thing we’re com­pelled to make. That super­sedes the ‘the­o­ret­i­cal’ and the ‘prac­ti­cal’ and the ‘pos­i­tivist’ and the ‘inter­pre­tivist’ ways of antic­i­pat­ing things. Strife is like the weath­er: beyond the present moment, it is unpre­dictable.

Whether we can seize those win­dows of time (or would even be appro­pri­ate­ly organ­ised by then) as a com­mu­ni­ty to steer our soci­ety in a bet­ter direc­tion or whether it will be tak­en advan­tage of by the local and inter­na­tion­al elites is some­thing I don’t know. Who knows? Who knows how peo­ple will act like when their lives are real­ly, tru­ly threat­ened? I mean, I don’t even know how I would react.

And let’s address the ele­phant in the room with the entire­ty of our stu­pid coun­try.

Every­one fuck­ing hates each oth­er. Face that real­i­ty and look at it dead in the god­damn eyes.

Every polit­i­cal par­ty fuck­ing hates each oth­er. Every NGO has beef with oth­er sim­i­lar NGOs. Every cor­po­ra­tion is com­pet­ing against the oth­er cor­po­ra­tion (but then again, that’s by design, huh?). Every island hates peo­ple from oth­er islands. Every friend cir­cle has some beef with anoth­er friend cir­cle. Much of the activism scene is chock-full of peo­ple beef­ing with each oth­er. And not only that, you can’t throw a fuck­ing rock around here with­out hit­ting a bazil­lion abusers, a dog, and some­one relat­ed to Qasim or some­thing. There are peo­ple who could­n’t stuff their pee-pees and hoo-has in their pants to save their fuck­ing lives. There are peo­ple who gos­sip and beef and smear like it’s their part-time job. There are peo­ple whose entire per­son­al­i­ties are just being abu­sive shit­heads. There are peo­ple who get off of can­celling and doxxing (*ahem* Kurusi­fix­ion).

I’m sick and tired of this place.

I did­n’t start writ­ing these to be liked or for some big noble goal, I start­ed writ­ing these to keep myself sane. Yes, I’m a self­ish per­son. The only rea­son I ever even both­er with engag­ing with these things is because I hope one day, we will get to a point where no one is strug­gling and com­pet­ing to sur­vive and polit­i­cal games are no more and every­one has basic rights guar­an­teed. Why? Because then, final­ly, you peo­ple will leave me the fuck alone, and I can final­ly just waste my time idk study­ing how stars work or invent­ing some­thing or writ­ing FICTION with­out feel­ing guilty for “not doing any­thing to prevent/mitigate a col­laps­ing soci­ety”.

What, did you think I was doing this out of the kind­ness of my heart?

Any­way, giv­en the state of how things are right now, the only time when peo­ple will tru­ly act is when they are com­pelled to by cri­sis, and cri­sis is inevitable. Of course I’m going to stay here when it does, all my fam­i­ly mem­bers are stuck here, all my friends are stuck here, and my cats are stuck here. I’m not resort-lev­el or polit­i­cal-lev­el priv­i­leged, but I’m priv­i­leged enough to be able to afford fuck­ing off some­where else, rent­ing some stu­pid apart­ment, and get­ting a “liv­able” job (pet­ty bour­geoisie to labour aris­toc­ra­cy pipeline or sth lol), but I’d rather stay here where I at least have a roof over my head and peo­ple I know who look like me and talk my lan­guage. If the world is going to shit, then I’d rather be clos­est to every­one I feel famil­iar with, and I’d rather spend that time help­ing them sur­vive and get through this.