Humanity is Controversial
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Inspired by Shirine Saad’s Essay,
“Artists are Dying. We Must Dismantle the Cultural Industrial Complex”
I’ve submerged my consciousness in a sea of self-help content where the individual is centered above all else. Yes, much begins at the self, but I worry this fixation is also a strategy of separation. That we are being slowly stripped of the solidarity we need by the promise of individual glory.
We celebrate, for example, the new job while standing beside injustice, like the houseless person who simply wants to be acknowledged.
This isn’t a rejection of joy or its power to catalyze momentum. It’s an acknowledgment of the cognitive dissonance that feels increasingly unavoidable.
So much of what we witness traces back to a familiar logic: survival of the fittest. We claim human superiority over animals, yet forget they are our counterparts. Superiority, that word echoes. Most -isms can be traced back to it.
Today’s Absurdity, Toxicity, and Fragility
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The Consequences of Self-Claimed Superiors Who Focus on Individualism
We are human; we have all been selfish. But something shifts when those with power choose selfishness knowing others will suffer. That pattern is not abstract, it is familiar. I’ve seen it in my personal and professional life. Again and again, it traces back to the same posture: self-appointed superiority.
These individuals justify harm as necessary for progress while conducting shady operations. Even more disheartening is how often something good becomes corrupted, when ease, detachment, and self-preservation override responsibility.
Most of us recognize what’s happening. Yet cognitive dissonance keeps us still. Someone witnesses harm and says nothing, not because they don’t know, but because it feels safer not to act. The bystander effect isn’t accidental; it’s conditioned. Scarcity thinking teaches us to protect ourselves first, to keep the job, to avoid risk, to survive.
And so we reproduce the very systems we critique.
“We become victims of nepotism, discrimination, retaliation, and ‘blacklisting,’ fueled by supremacist ‘leaders’ and ‘influencers,’ juries, and strategic alliances. The scarcity mindset damages our relationships and mutinies. Caught up in the grind to produce more with less, conflict is tackled with betrayal and systemic abuse instead of honest dialogue and repair. In our interactions, we perpetuate capitalist, military languages and mindsets rather than imagining and shaping a way out. The structures we uphold steal our ideas and labor while condemning our demands.”
Life is complex. This is not about shame. I struggle here too. But it is an invitation, to be braver, especially now, especially for those with positional power.
Because 2026 feels off. The weight of injustice is compounding. I hold deep respect for those doing the work, and still feel frustration at how deeply mistrust is embedded in our systems, how it can feel easier to disengage than to challenge, easier to get away with harm than to do what is right.
Have you ever…
Hoped your savings alone would qualify you for housing?
Been forced into bureaucratic obstacles for something that should be accessible?
Applied for opportunity in a place you don’t yet have access to?
If so, you’ve felt how mistrust compounds difficulty.
We often say that in turbulent times, people turn to the arts. I believe that. But what happens when the cultural ecosystem is also compromised?
We celebrate figures without accountability. We accept funding entangled with harm. This is not a denial of growth or second chances, I believe deeply in both, but accountability rarely reaches those with the most power. Often, that power is concentrated in the same hands.
So we face the familiar question: do we reject tainted resources, or attempt to repurpose them for good? Regardless, “the arts are funded by the military, prison, fossil fuel and medical industrial complexes, by financial and real estate networks that amplify gentrification, and adjacent philanthropic groups complicit in racial and gender violence, police brutality, and genocide.”
Meanwhile, artists, like many undervalued groups, are asked to survive within systems that devalue their labor, displace their lives, and restrict their freedom. They are underpaid, excluded, surveilled, censored, and harmed, yet still expected to produce, to inspire, to lead.
We are pushed back into the same paradigm: survival of the fittest.
Trickle-down economics doesn’t work, but trickle-down oppression does.
I wish more self-claimed superiors would balance inner and outer work. That they would recognize how self-obsession isolates rather than sustains. True wealth is collective, where success is expansive, not extractive.
We cannot control others. But we can influence. And influence requires courage, the kind that persists whether or not anyone is watching. Like when Esperanza Spalding left Harvard rather than compromise her values. I’ve acted in alignment with my values and lost relationships because of it. That is a cost. But justice is not contingent on consensus, it’s a commitment we carry regardless.
As my cousin once told me, there are smart people on all sides. That’s what makes this harder. Harm is not always enacted by ignorance, it can be enacted by those who know better and choose safety anyway. Even those committed to justice can default to caution, to comfort, to control.
So the questions remain: can we transform what is harmful into something generative? Or does power inevitably protect itself? What do we do?
We begin with honesty: we are human, imperfect, and capable of harm. Growth requires willingness, to reflect, to unlearn, to change.
Do the inner work. Your internal world shapes what you reproduce externally.
Stay rooted in community (family, friends, collaborators). Speak, even when it’s uncomfortable. Your voice carries influence.
Create. Creativity, like joy, is resistance. It disrupts speed, extraction, and disconnection. It insists on presence, on imagination, on possibility.
Join movements. Sustain them. Consistency will look different across seasons of life, but it matters.
True change asks more of us: humility, responsibility, fearlessness, radical honesty, and a deep commitment to collective liberation.
Be brave. This is not a moment, it’s a practice.
“We want it all, we want it fucking all, where all is a list for everyone to make.”
- Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel
