Been thinking about a few things recently I've been experiencing what I can only describe as a fight against complacency. Complacency with the way the world is, the way the country is, the way I am. Complacency might not be the right word so I want to sketch out the scenario: For as long as I've been politically conscious I have told myself that I need to devote my time and energy to some society-building endeavour. Whether you frame it as a social justice problem or a sustainability problem, it appears to me that the world is fucked (reality check - is this just student angst?) and that there's a lot to make noise about. But it's hard - ever more I feel the crushing weight of the world's problems are not something I can carry indefinitely. It's certainly not good from a mental health perspective. Do I pick some particular small thing and focus on it? Not sure. At the least I know that it's all too easy to show the veneer of caring - it's very simple to point out injustice but more difficult to really hear it as a clarion call. So that's the one side of the coin: whilst unsure about how to traverse it, I feel some sense of duty here (Calvinist tendencies...) to the rest of humanity, because we only really have humanity in a shared way. On the other hand, it seems that a good number of people don't share that view, enough so to make me incredibly despondent (cf. Trump retweets) - in essence whether it's worth it to try and bring everyone into communion when I would consider a lot of them to be assholes. This thread kind of touches on that in some way. I don't want to get into the question of "how do you deal with the people you don't agree with" here though. Suffice to say that this force pushes me more into the individualistic direction of avoiding the difficult issues and just trying to live my best life. In many ways I think I have seen others wrestling with a similar feeling, maybe also described as "guilt". On face value these might not seem like a dichotomy, and probably in a rational sense they aren't. But for me, I think I need to have some kind of "philosophical" backing for the overarching decisions that I make in my life - what direction to pursue. Coming back to the complacency, I feel that I have to choose whether to head in the ascetic, humanist direction or what could very well be a great white picket fence first world life that is complicit but never directly so. My "bias" obviously shows but the point is that complacency only pushes you in one direction, and so the choice is how to respond to it. This is all the more relevant of late as I have been presented with a wonderful opportunity to start my PhD next year with EU funding and a range of bells and whistles that make it a really great proposition. Trouble is that this would be a pretty huge commitment to a life (or at least the next few years) that could be dramatically improved upon from the white picket fence perspective if I cut my project off and just hand it in as a Masters. I actually started writing this comment a few weeks ago so in this particular case I think I have made up my mind. There were a number of things adding to the calculus though. What I do know is that I haven't dissolved the contradiction in my mind yet, and so it will inevitably crop up again once I'm faced with the next big decision. Has anybody here forded a similar kind of dilemma before? I'd really love to hear how you dealt with it... ___ Some bonus anecdotes: One of the areas on Table Mountain is called Echo Valley. I've only been there a few times but it has to be one of the most hauntingly beautiful places. I don't have a photo but turns out there is actualy Street View up there... https://goo.gl/maps/WQ8aftRW77k Keep going and along the way down and you are greeted with this: Reason I mention it is because it is somewhere where the "Pale Blue Dot" field is particularly strong - nothing else in the world really seems to be terribly important against that backdrop. There's a Xhosa phrase: sixole kanjani? When will we find peace? So I know there are times and places where people can find it transiently, and maybe you can build your life around those. But is it really worth it when not it's not "us" but "me" finding it... Cheers De Waal