The High Ate Us

As I go through my feed I see the girl I was at 20. The fiercest fire that burned within me. I needed to change the world so badly.

As someone who has had a marginal identity my whole life, activism felt like something to lean into. But I fear I was a little performative with it.

But what I hate most, is how I've decided to just stop. Stopped caring about the world beyond my own.

Yes, I still do try my hardest to make decisions that don't negatively impact others. I'm trying my best to shop as consciously as possible by buying less frequent (which is incredibly difficult for a fashionista).

I stopped because I was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by how injustice always seems to triumph over good. Or, innocence rather.

The realest and saddest realisation I came to is how power works. I realised that I am or was disempowered. And so are many people.

If I want to help people around me I need to get power, make the money and then help.

But more than that, I’ve been trying to read more. Or just read, in general, because I’ve been trying to use social media less (a battle I am having a hard time winning).

While my reading is fluent, and my pronunciation is close to flawless, I often find myself reading and not actually understanding the content. It reminds me of when I had to cite journal articles for my academic papers. Trying to grasp the meaning of what the scholars are getting at with their big English and verbosity.

I’ve been seeing this discussion all over my TikTok feed about how history is taught in a certain way to push a certain narrative. Rhetoric, if you will.

So I’m currently trying to learn more about architecture. The history, to help me understand what is being signified when one alludes to a building as Mid-Century modern.

In that spiral, I’ve learnt that the Cradle of Civilisation is Mesopotamia. And obviously, as I always wonder. What is civilisation? Who decides what civilisation is?

So let me define and unpack the idea of civilisation (in western thought). Civilisation according to the Oxford Dictionary is “the stage of human social and cultural development and organization that is considered most advanced”.

These advancements are determined most specifically by scholarly advancement. Through cultural, scientific, technological, economic growth or development.

But there is also a set criteria on how scholarship is classified as such. For the West, it is through epistemologies and certificates to show that one has indeed gone through the rigorous and systematic process of schooling.

So for the global south cultures, where learning does not follow the same set of principles. Or as a matter of fact, has been deprived of the ability to develop and immortalise their epistemologies in writing. The knowledge systems and architecture are not regarded as examples of great civilisation.

And to link this back to architecture. Our cyclical structures, and sustainable material such as mud and thatch are seen as primitive. Which then effectively excludes us from being seen as civilised.

You are allowed to be more than one thing in life. The same way you are able to exist in multiple forms in the lives of others, you are allowed to become all that you’ve ever dreamed of.

Stop measuring success and talent by how much you can make from it, rather by how much you can learn, inspire and grow from it.

We regard the past so much because so much of what happened then, manifests presently in such different form.

Poverty and greed has existed since the dawn of time.

Capitalism then, unnamed, existed as asset acquisition, whether through cattle or surplus farming with the intention of commercialisation.

Wrong ! The decline in social activism breaks my heart.

We’re meant to work towards a better society that caters to all. For a gini coefficient that resembles freedom and equality of and for the people.