Elon J Lerlow

The choice between indvidual freedom and "the common good" is a false dichotomy.  There is no necessary opposition between an individual's interests and the interests of the community.  However, we live with a system that often forces us to apparently make a "choice" of deciding between the individual and community or family.  Examples are when we decide to emigrate, or sacrificing everything reaching for a dream, which invariably fails to materialise.  This illusion of choice is nurtured by a ruling class and their media who benefit from purporting the fallacy that the individual should work hard for themselves, that greed is good, and that good things will come to those who wait (and work hard in the meantime).  In this way, we become like Drogo at the Bastiani Fortress, trapped by the expectation that something will happen, that never does (1).     Conversely, it seems obvious that what's good for us all is good for you and I as individua...

Due to the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests in recent weeks I have been watching old speeches by James Baldwin, reading letters by Martin Luther King, learning about Fred Hampton, I've begun reading a book by Angela Davis, I've read books and watched documentaries about Malcolm X, and I'm currently reading the excellent book How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America by Manning Marable; I've watched the documentaries 13th and LA 92 on Netflix; and, of course, I've seen the footage on social media of the BLM protesters, and the rather excellent journalism from Vice News (whose work must be the outstanding journalistic achievement to emerge from these protests). BLM activists have asked us (as non-blacks) to 'listen and learn', and I'm certainly doing my best in that regard. One thing I have learned was something that Malcolm X made so brilliantly clear, that capitalism has made Black Americans hate thems...

A classic novel turned upside-down and inside-out: Normal People is just another cliché of classic romantic novels, of which Pride and Prejudice is probably the most obvious; a genre which has been repeated and imitated to death, and NP is another installment - well, readers of certain synopses might mistakenly think so.        The first page produces an immediate sense that "this is different"; the tension in a situation we have just entered (but that is familiar to us all), the eroticism, the anxiety (paradoxically, after they have received such good exam results - but the dreaded Leaving Cert is coming up), Connell's awkwardness; in short, it feels real.  If one was to compare it to P&P for its similar plot - and various sources have (8, 18) - one could also compare the realism of the characters of both novels; the accuracy and simplicity of the description and dialogue.        NP , like other great works of art, is a con...