I miss heading out to my favourite bar for a lazy afternoon of drinking Guinness and reading whatever the heck I want, while nibbling on some luncheon [meat] chips, and having a burger/steak. Apart from the difference in the environment as compared to reading at home, I think that one of the reasons why I look forward to it is due to the need to dress up before heading out.
In these days of quiet solitude at home, ``dressing up before heading out'' is kind of a big deal. It is a change from the familiar to the less-than-familiar [now], an act of transformation that reminds one of a world that still exists outside, a world that, while I am on a sabbatical in the middle of a pandemic, I have been actively staying away from. It is a means of reconnecting with that society every now and then to ensure that when the day of the end of my sabbatical arrives, I am less likely to commit faux pas despite my general disdain in the way my part of society is run.
``Dressing up'' is important. There are many active choices involved, from what shirt to wear (polo T-shirt, regular printless T-shirt, buttoned shirt, or ``muscle'' shirt), what pants to wear (dress pants, or jeans), and what shoes to wear (hiking boots, or dress shoes). These active choices and the excitement of seeing other people (friends or strangers---it matters little) do help improve the mood, no matter what mood it was. One of the ways to combat depression, as described by pop-psych articles, is to just get into a routine, starting small, and slowly building it up so that there is some other purpose in one's life other than facing the bleakness of how society will eventually crash out from its capitalistic trap where only the rich lead happy lives while the rest of us are ground into dust from the trap of working to death without necessarily receiving a pay and personal time that allows us self-actualisation.
And just because I mention a reference to a coping mechanism here is no declaration that I am depressed---ain't diagnosed, ain't depressed. Feeling down---yes, but not to the point where it can be called ``depression''; saying so would be a disservice to those who truly are suffering from depression itself.
And we all know how well SIN city deals with mental health issues [in schools]. They outsource it away to untrained peers, if that article is to be believed. I am not saying that the method proposed is completely useless; there is some merit in that it allows folks to vent a little bit more, which is great in this highly repressed SIN city. However, this risks the echo chamber effect when peers of highly controlled environments (i.e. schools) start discussing together about their issues without different perspectives being made available. More importantly, if the situation arises that someone needs professional help (i.e. it is more than just a ``today's a bad day 小明'' situation), this peer support system as described does not seem to provide a fast path to getting that professional help.
Disarming the stigma of seeking mental health professionals should be the goal, with these peer support systems being supportive in nature, as is building a better funded/manned mental health professional infrastructure.
But I heavily digress.
SIN city is repressed in many ways. Us denizens of SIN city have emotions like every other person out there, but unlike every other person out there, we don't really learn how to express them, and relatedly, how to manage them. This doesn't just apply to our thoughts on government policies---it also refers to people at personal levels. That apathy that is claimed to be a defining character trait in SIN city is a manifestation of these repressed feelings, as is the disdain displayed against people who are willing to stand up for their thoughts/emotions, with them being called as ``troublemakers'' by everyone around. This repression is masked under the guise of ``meritocracy'' as practised by the self-declared technocratic mode of operation.
In short, SIN city has long since lost its humanity in the bid to beat the world in numbers for whatever metric that they care about.
I think that only the most ambitious who have chosen to sacrifice their humanity for riches can survive in SIN city---the rest of us are doomed to being shafted by all the institutions that are said to be created for our benefit. If that is truly the case, then perhaps it would really be worth it to go elsewhere.
But the question then becomes, go where?
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