An emotional state that is associated with mild to severe levels of discomfort!

Usually I start some of my blog posts by saying I haven’t written for a long time, meaning usually few weeks or months. this time IT’S BEEN 4 YEARS. I knew that I should have posted something, just to keep the momentum going and maybe at some point I take writing a little more seriously, but that too didn’t happen.

It took a moment of embarrassment with some colleagues that I still can’t shake the awkwardness off my head, to get me to put these words together. Dear reader, this is my amends for drinking too much. And as a personal therapeutic exercise. I will try to argue for myself here what I failed to explain during a nice dinner with colleagues.

There are two reasons scientific conferences are exciting – the networking opportunities, and the free stuff. Dinners are epic, because most of the time drinks are free. And your boy here loves to feel nice, more so around people feeling nice themselves.

This conference however, was a bit different because I was not planning on attending, nor had I prepared well to present my work. I probably gave the worst outlook on myself and the faculty I belong to. But this is not really consequential, bad presentations happen, everyone forgets about it eventually, usually with a nice frosty beer in the sun. Comes the dinner, everyone was feeling nice. Great food, great company, great vibes, great discussions. Adding to all that, local colleagues were extremely polite and accommodating – as they respect their international counterparts and maintain most of the discussions in English, a detail I grew fond of and deeply appreciate.

Then, for some reason, I found myself trying to explain an awkward idea. Why I’m an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. An idea I had a few years ago when I was high, laying on the grass of one of the hills blessing the town I live in and staring at a clear sky. It was on that stupid hill, in that stupid situation, when I started contemplating my stance regarding this subject.

I looked into my own thoughts and saw a horrible reality, a world that’s only getting worse and a grim prospect for the average human being – intellectually, socially, physically. At that time, it seemed to me that this reality is unnatural, it feels exaggerated and artificially maintained by some kind of a power structure that feeds from the vulnerability of ordinary people.

Unlike my father, and his father before him, my financial situation and life outlook in general is not getting any better, but rather worse with every passing day and event. The ones that life is getting better for are the ones already in positions of power. By now this idea is so mainstream I bet whoever reads this is already thinking of Jeff Bezos. There are so many others like uncle Jeff – representing a social class that is extremely influential politically and powerful financially. Uncle Jeff is simply the exaggerated version. The only reason life is getting better for this social class is that their starting point, their status quo, is already too powerful – they can manage to bend the rules for themselves.

This social class acts as the gatekeepers to power, the one conserving the status quo and challenging any attempt of change, the one that has power, and the one that gives it to others when it chooses to. Remember when Elon Musk bought Trump his election with nearly 200 million dollars? For this social class, rules that apply to ordinary people do not apply to them. Remember that the president of the US – among many others – was a frequent visitor to Epstein’s pedophilia island? This is to say, with such reality and power hierarchy, there’s no path for ordinary people to have a potentially better life prospect. Because the reason their life is miserable, is others having it way too good. I would even argue that this imbalance between social classes is the reason for most of the suffering in this world. This evil that peaks as capital and politics entangle, eventually transforms itself into anarchy where political power is held hostage by whoever has the most numbers in the bank. A metamorphosis that maybe cannot be tamed through elections and peace.

This status quo does not only account for class struggles financially and politically, it’s also a struggle around social constructs and progress. This is the example of the civil rights movements in the US, when racists and white supremacists in power simply suppressed financially, politically – and probably through other channels as well – the black population of the United States. A population that was challenging the status quo represented by the alliance between racism, politics, and money conserving their position of power. They only conceded after years of struggles, of mobilisation, of marches, of challenges that destroyed lives, of violence that took some, and sacrifices that led to a new social convention where black lives do matter compared to the starting point.

However, these dynamics are generalisable not just to racial and ethnic minorities, but also to gender, immigrants, etc. This means redirecting the social panic from the actual issues of the inequality between social classes and the hierarchy of power it enables. Turning the debate around identity politics and other pseudo ideologies instead. Turning the real struggle of different groups of people into a virtue signaling exercise that reduces into a rainbow flag instead of a court decision. I remember in 2016, the democratic primary had two serious candidates. Bernie Sanders was saying we need to tackle social inequalities and hold the top 1% accountable and tax them more aggressively to improve the likelihood of most people. Hilary Clinton was saying, even if we hold the banks accountable, would that fix racism and homophobia? This contrast here is just to showcase the pillars of my arguments. I’m challenging those that are causing the social inequalities; the same dynamics that cause this power imbalance between different social groups in terms of political and financial influence, are also the same controlling social conventions and constructs. Challenging political and financial power by construction will lead to challenging the social conventions.

When I look at myself I feel that I align more with the struggles than with the power. I feel that part of my struggles is caused by the same alliance that oppresses people anywhere in the world. The same alliance that is now oppressing working class people, white and blue collars alike, as politics is losing its meaning and becomes a tool of the most rich for conserving their own reality. To me any class or group of people that challenge this structure, including the conventional social constructs and conventions, is my ally. And that definitely includes the LGBTQ+ community.

Burn the old gods, and the new ones. And if part of the price to pay for that is to accept people chopping off their dicks, and growing ones somehow, so be it.