Image Credit: Tama66/Pixabay By Augustine Wasef We live in a culture that is ridden with analogy. Considering the wealth of the cultural canon, finding metaphor is not a particularly difficult task. And yet humanity has this collective tendency to revert to Greek mythology as a rosetta stone for translating abstract thought into something more tangible. Between American Prometheus and The Odyssey the ubiquity is indisputable. The question lingers: Why give meaning to a demo

Image Credit: Eugene Golovesov By Augustine Wasef “A” self is a nexus, a chemical coincidence and a physiological trance a convergence of spiritual adoration and chemical terror Still the eternal nomad without a metaphysical compass nude in self examination If we are not naive it is not some intrinsic truth or some internal direction Why then is lucidity so preachy is confidence a precursor to understanding or merely an external facade Surely we have the internal cl

By Augustine Wasef Image Credit: Iban Lopez Luna/Petapixel The issue of European colonialism in Africa has a periodic nature. Decades after initial independence, colonialism has shifted away from an explicit institution to become an informal web of trade deals and dubious military intervention. In order to better understand the situation Inflection Magazine interviewed Priscillia Tuiet, a UCLA graduate student who has questioned the concept of identity and French neocoloniali

Image credit: Eugene Golovesov/unsplash By Augustine Wasef Recused by internal reclamation, We do not believe in your senescence. You are self propelled in obsolescence And do we not accept your resignation. Unlike flies attracted to a fatal light, We do not prostrate towards your master, Just like your Promethean disaster, Venturing to an eschatological plight. This algorithmic conflict may be tilted And its binary outcome premeditated, Our identity has been confisc

By Augustine Wasef In elementary school I actively detested one insufferable boy, from his blatant misogyny to his decade-old celebrity gossip, he was an absolute pain. Honestly, I probably was the exact degree of insufferable to him. My visual memory is somewhat akin to a cathode ray tube, so I don’t know exactly what I did. All I know is that my behavior wasn’t appropriate or proportional. For years I mentally defended myself with a handful of monotonous arguments usually a

By Augustine Wasef / Regardless of perspective, we appear to be experiencing a tipping point in the shifting concept of moral objectivity. It seems unthinkable to have self evident fact in a polarized world whose cultural boundaries are predicated on personal ideology. But the ever growing sense of moral unease comes close to being one. We are tempted to categorize this dysphoric effect as a deviation from the familiar rhythm of history. If history repeats, what are we repea

By Augustine Wasef In 1985 the musician Sting objected to the Cold War by asking the question: Do Russians love their children too? Forty years later, I ask Americans the same. For thousands of years we have tried to codify ethics into mathematical utilitarianism, as if we could find a formula for innate desire. The underlying issue is that human ethics fundamentally require a kind of logical inversion. It is not sane to enter a warzone only to deliver aid. We do it anyway.

Image Credit: Evie S. By Augustine Wasef Medieval civilizations didn’t have an escape from the irresistible gravitational influence of materialism. Everything either existed physically or not at all. Light however is distinctly immaterial. Even from a subatomic basis, light is built with an inherently different structure than matter. Gothic cathedrals are built around this fundamental notion. Constructed around an ethereal visual landscape pierced by stained glass, they gave

Image credit: Unsplash/Mahdi Bafanda By Augustine Wasef A feather fell through my psyche like a lead brick. No imaginary ether propelled it forward, no ancient spell, and no spiritual awakening worthy of attention. And yet it punctuated the sonic landscape with a deafening cry. All else went dark. We all feel despair. The words of a ancient Catholic chant “what we have done and what we have failed to do” illuminate this feeling with such a mathematical precision. We have all

The most agonizing events a person experiences can fundamentally change their psyche. Arguably, the most traumatic event in human history created a sense of divine judgment that has carried into the modern era. It reshaped the meaning of being human. Roughly fifteen thousand years ago humans were scarred by a tragedy that was etched into the collective mind and ruminations of the subconscious: the sea level dramatically rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Over generat

By Augustine Wasef The Iliad begins awkwardly lacking the sense of ambition that permeates its equals. It ends just as uncomfortably with Funeral Games. But between those two syncopated notes is one of the most remarkable books in human history. Homer takes unparalleled pleasure in the prevailing rhythms of life and the deviations of those beats. Its lofty sense of moral ambiguity limits the focus of our blinding contemporary moral absolutes. The Iliad dictates a notion th