tsvetoslav shalev

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

– Howard Zinn

read out aloud

February 2025 is already in the rear-view mirror, fast fading from our collective memory—or so I suspect, given the uneventful undertone of my existence. Never mind the biology of our brains. Our pale blue dot continues its mirthless rounds around the great burning yolk, while any intelligent life out there seems intent on keeping out of sight. I feel the universe doesn’t really care to answer one of our most fundamental questions right now. No, instead, I suspect it wants to be left alone—and we seem ready and willing to oblige, too busy fighting wind turbines or dismantling any semblance of civility painstakingly built over decades. I promise I had something to eat before writing this. I did!

If you’ve kept up with my musings until now, you know I’m not one to complain about politics or societal issues at large. My train of thought mostly concerns itself with themes like unrequited love, awkwardness, lament, loss, impotence, confusion, filial piety, and time. It’s what got me into writing in the first place—the need to make sense of my own experiences and the feelings that, at times, threatened to completely overwhelm my sanity, my judgment, my perception of normality. I’m guilty of riding those black waves of crippling misery, nauseating anxiety, and loveless frustration, all for the sake of producing a sentence or two that sounded good to me. At first a youthful delinquent, failing to start a fire. Nowdays, a soulless leper king, proudly displaying festering putridity. As always, I leave such distinctions in your hands.

So yes, as a matter of principle, I shy away from publicly commenting on matters not pertaining to the self. After all, if we want to see change in the world around us, we ought to start with the world within first, right? Right. Well, I do feel the need to remind everyone that nothing is set in stone. In time, thanks to the dynamics of reality—the constant of change, the ebb and flow of ideas—we’ve achieved all that we see around us. No single ideology, no one true way, just sincere effort and sheer kindness—the most precious currency. Countless strangers’ lifetimes poured into the vast vats of human idealism. More often than not, to help those in need. Or so I like to believe. Otherwise, achieving anything meaningful—let alone lasting—would be almost impossible, surely.

And yet, here we are. The year is 2025, and the most popular ways of “thinking” seem to revolve around rewinding the clock—by force, if necessary. And my fellow primates cheer on such pointless undertakings, much to my dismay. Why are so many keen on turning a blind eye to what’s actually going on? Why is goodness out of fashion in the so-called mainstream? As I sit on the couch in my living room, in the noisy company of family, eagerly anticipating an official citizenship ceremony scheduled for March 21st (yay me!), a sense of normalcy reigns. That is, until I check anything on any “social” media platform (including sites best served in a private browser tab). I’m instantly dragged back into a maelstrom of digital noise—”content” created by humans, further exacerbated by bots—threatening to drown my inner peace in an ocean of cognitive bilge. Even to the digitally resistant among us, this toxicity is not entirely harmless.

So, what are we to do? Is confronting this absurdity with kindness, enough? How do we reach our fellow primates and convey the idea that simple explanations, though elegant and even pleasant, rarely align with the fluid complexity of truth? Once again, I have more questions than answers. Here’s but a glimpse at my very personal way of approaching these things:

• If a quick fix is offered to a complex problem, it’s merely a patch or a workaround—nothing reliable, let alone lasting.
• Like change, culture is in a constant state of flux; it’s alive and evolves with time.
• The past is eternally out of reach to us; goodness, on the other hand, is a conscious effort, present and future.
• I’m wary of leaders whose bad actions regular people justify as strokes of genius. No human being—no matter how smart—deserves that level of lenience. I’ll take a decent dummy over a megalomaniacal sociopath any day.
• We are too primitive to be entrusted with far-reaching influence over others, except for the sake of art.
• Governing is as much about listening as it is about talking. Since the former is sorely lacking, it’s safe to assume that the current state of politics is poisoning everything.
• Synthetic intelligence cannot improve our emotional capacity.
• If we are not kind to one another, nothing else will matter.

Or maybe, I am simply not living life to the fullest. Who knows?