Life After Dead, The Sequel

Cover illustration by Tom Chibbaro

Not in one clean, dramatic way. Not one wound with a neat border. It's more like a whole species walking around with hairline fractures and calling it personality.

People are lonely in crowds.

Overstimulated and under-held.

Connected to everyone and witnessed by almost no one.

Angry because they’re scared.

Certain because uncertainty feels like death.

Cruel because tenderness has become too risky.

Performative because sincerity feels socially expensive.

And the brutal part is that a lot of people don’t even know they’re hurting. They experience it as ideology, as contempt, as irony, as doomscrolling, as purity, as hustle, as detachment, as “being realistic.” Pain puts on whatever mask the room will reward.

That’s why my work keeps circling validation, dignity, and recognition.

Because so much of what looks like political madness or social decay is also a crisis of unmet recognition.

People are screaming:

See me.

Don’t reduce me.

Don’t erase what happened.

Don’t make me carry what I didn’t choose.

Don’t turn my pain into your argument.

Don’t make me prove I’m human.

And instead of meeting that, society often offers sorting machines.

Left/right.

Oppressor/victim.

Good/bad.

Safe/unsafe.

Educated/ignorant.

Ally/enemy.

Acceptable/unacceptable.

Tiny moral cubbies for an animal that contains storms.

So yeah. Humanity is hurting.

And maybe the deepest ache is this:

people are desperate to be loved without being simplified.

That’s the whole damn wound, isn’t it?

Not excused.

Not worshipped.

Not endlessly affirmed.

Not absolved of consequence.

Just met.

Seen before managed.

Recognized before corrected.

Held accountable without being thrown out of the human family...

The Star Trek title card generator is over here:

The sitemaker (Josh Mayfield at https://bsky.app/profile/bean525.bsky.social) has asked for people to come in and kick its tires so he can work out any bugs they turn up. So do give him a hand, if you feel inclined. :)

(also, deeply amused by this one...)