I’m sorry.

Really, I am. I’m sorry that you’re knee-deep in this election, I’m sorry that there’s no backing out now without losing your integrity, and I’m sorry that despite all the helter-skelter, despite the forced smiles, the endless parading around, and the elaborate game of dress up, it’s not enough.

I’m sorry that after everything, you are still going to lose.

I know. I know. Last week I told you how to win the MSU election and so you stormed the MUSC with a wry grin, a heavy handshake, and a campaign with such intricacies that you were a scattershot of soundbits and paper-thin ideas. In some instances, your platform was so specific that it said nothing at all and other times it was so transparent that even you couldn’t see anything substantial about it.

But I also told you that in order to win you needed to lie, and you aren’t doing that exactly. This is not because you follow some grand moral compass or because doing so is simply beyond you; that would be a lie to say in and of itself. Instead in the beginning of all this, dear reader, the only thing that you have provided is the single truth hiding in between the breathes of your speeches, the boldface text of your campaign motto, and the white space of your pamphlets. It is this: one day you will lose. Luckily it happened now.

It may be hard to hear, but at least I’m telling you before the votes come in and you’re with all your friends and your nails are a scratch away from bloody sores and you can imagine yourself there in the MSU Presidential office and you can see all the good you’re doing and everyone seems so happy with you at the helm, and then the votes come in and you lost. Dead last. Congrats.

Truth is emancipating. It is liberating. And it is all you are, all you could have left behind after this madhouse. So be rid of the shackles by embracing these words: here is how to lose the MSU election.

First, don’t change anything. Keep doing you because you is not enough. No matter what you have done, will do, or plan to do, stereotypes will bleed into the debate. You’ll be seen as a white male propagating their privileged agenda, you’ll be described as an arrogant, self-righteous prick, and people will call you a militant feminist as if that were a bad thing. They’ll see you for religious preference. They’ll judge the sound of your voice. They’ll make decisions largely about the clothes you wear.

You’ll fight against it by supporting it: you’ll become anything but what you are - that person who has daily struggles connecting and reorganizing the flurry of lines that intersect your being. You don’t want to damage yourself by exposing your vulnerabilities, so you become a pretender, a momentary image crystallized in a suit, a tie, a dress. You’re a professional and you want everyone to know it, you most of all.

Yet you know that this behaviour is expected all the same, so you have no choice but to tow the line. Complacency works in your favour. In a way, you don’t want people to know that your breath smells in the morning, that your snore could wake Snorlax, or that you once peed your pants in grade five. You want to be relatable but not related; you want to be understandable but not completely understood.

And yet when you lose, you’ll be so awash in whom you pretended to be that you’ll forget who you are. All that will be left is the ghost of the policies that defined you, the slogans that spoke for you, and the colours that embodied you, rather than the other way around.

So please: forgot who you are in pursuit of what you want to be.

Besides, this divide between then and now, between the two people you see yourself being, is what a faceless mass wants. It is what we want. We want an image, rather than a person, and this will be your downfall. Don’t challenge it. Don’t try to change the dialogue to practicality and complexity. We crave the simple and reducible because we are that exactly. We’re a fickle mob with fickle needs; we are no more permanent than our four years here. Most of us just don’t care. We just want to get through the whole thing with our heads down and without rubbing too many elbows on our way in and out of the university’s revolving door.

But you won’t believe that in the electoral hype: the sounds, sights, and senses will confuse you, and you’ll oppose this acquiescence. You’ll give us more credit than we deserve and you’ll be torn apart as a result. Your accessibility will be clawed at again and again and again until we tear you apart. It’ll kill the person who you thought you were, sure, but hey, look at those organs, look at the colours, and look at all that blood.

Don’t worry, though. The MSU is the real loser. Its failings are why you lost in the end. You wanted to fix things. You needed to fix things. And your loss proves how broken things are. Now in your absence, the MSU is going to be in the same mess you wanted to change.

Serves us right, and I’m sorry for that too.

When you go fishing, you're never quiet sure what's going to bite. No matter how much you customize your rod, your tackle, or your technique, it is the fish that decides if it's going to take the bait or not. It doesn't care what you've done. Your intent is inconsequential. All that matters is that very moment, a sum of everything that has happened and that hasn't, an intersection of lived experiences from the fisherman's first time holding his child to the fish's blubbering around. It is an centimetre, a mere flick of the wrist, and yet in the tick-tock that seems too quick to even take notice of, anything can happen.

Recently I have felt this fleeting control. Having written an article entitled, "Feminism without women," I was surprised at some of the backlash to it. Not because there was backlash. To have a response is great. It allows the possibility to dissect my ignorance, create a further smattering of discussion, and hopefully move together on a collected issue. This, I believe, is what the article is about. "We need each other to fight against the world we've created by first tearing it apart."

But in some isolated pockets, this is not happening. Instead attacks on my person and various straw-man fallacies (at least form the writer's perspective) have been created. I read in places that I was displaying my oppressive dominance in writing the article when in reality I was strapped for volunteers. I read that I was lauding men's experiences over females when I was doing nothing of the sort. I was told that I part of the problem, that I was the problem, and that I am one.  And I also read that I was foolish, reprehensible, and probably stupid.

These reactions may be inevitable, so know that I'm not complaining. I'm sure that even this writing will cause some to nod to my idiocy. I know that somedays I do it too.

And know that in having to clarify my points, I may have failed as a writer. Yet I was hurt, disappointed, and wished that I was included in the broader discussion rather than just a magnified subject of it. This is not because I was integral to the discussion, but because if I'm not part of it, the dividing lines only grow larger and ignorance - my own and those arguing against me - only deepens.

But as I was letting the sadness get the better of me, drafting up counter arguments, and trying to find a way to clarify my points, I was reminded of a time when I was six and I was given my first bag of jellybeans. It says all I can ever do about an opinion on an opinion on an opinion. Here is that story:

It was impossible: the whole of the universe found its way in my palm. Of course, I didn’t know it then; I was six so such ignorance can be excused. Basic things eluded me. I didn’t know about ozonolysis. I didn’t realize the harms in trans fats. Hell, some days I couldn’t even urinate outside the seams of my pants.

But there it was after everything: the universe – a roaring red rolling onto a unblemished white, a vacuous black without the slighest glimmer, a blue, green, yellow and purple that could only be the fruits of the Big Bang, and it tittered and tottered as I tottered and tittered.

It was a gift from my grandfather. He smiled. He told me that here in these jellybeans was everything I'd need to know about the world and those in it.

I found it hard to believe, but not unbelievable. In a way, he was right – I knew I was hungry after all. Jellybeans would be all I needed, all I wanted. And bite-by-bite, a little piece of everything would become mine.

So in the comfort of my room with no responsibilities besides those that I invented and imagined, I ate and I ate and I ate in that order. My hands were a sticky rainbow paste and my digits were an abstract mess of food colouring and sugar.

Just as I was about to slurp my fourteenth droplet of paradise, my sister stomped in. “What are you doing?”

“Eating jellybeans.” I said.

“I see that. But you know you shouldn’t eat the white ones.”

“Why not?”

“They’re unhealthy. Something something about chemicals. Grandma told me.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, so I wouldn’t eat them anymore.”

“Thanks, sis.”

With a turn, she was gone. My hand dove in the plastic bag again, yet there wasn't the sense of glee anymore. A generous handful procured a couple of white jellybeans. I picked them out carefully, and placed them in a tissue beside my bed. They looked as they did five minutes ago but they weren’t the same. They were harmful, chemically-latent, death pills. Most of all, they weren’t mine anymore. I didn’t want them.

I continued onto the green pieces. A bit different taste than the white, I admitted, but delicious nonetheless.

A knock, a voice, my father. “Son – why is there a napkin here?”

“Sister told me that the whites were bad for me.”

“Son – you’re wasting them, you know. What did I tell you about wasting food?”

“Not much.”

“Exactly. Because you’re not supposed to do it. There’s nothing else to say.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Eat those slowly. Don’t spoil your dinner.”

“I won’t.”

Doors went a’slamming, feet went a’ scurrying, and I was alone in my room again. I looked back to the white jellybeans. They were the same as before, yet somehow after the door closed and a new ocean of candy swam in my hand, they were entirely different once again. Even their weight felt as though it had changed.

One popped in my mouth, another soon followed. As I was savoring the third, my Mom walked in. “Kacper?”

“Yes, Mom.” My lips stuck together with the wet sugar.

“What did I tell you about eating jellybeans?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Well I don’t want you eating them at all.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“Oh, okay.”

The bag was practically glued to my fingers. She had to tear them away. “You don’t know what’s good for you yet, Kacper.” She patted my head. “And that just isn’t my opinion; it's the truth.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright. You were just doing what you knew, little as that may be.” Her soft hands combed my mushroom cut.

"It wasn't enough?"

"No." Her fingers stopped on my scalp. “Want something else to eat?”

“It’s okay. I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Okay.” She looked at me hard in the eye and walked out with a final pat. The jellybeans jingled to the sound of her step.

If the happiest moment of one’s life is meant to be a jubilating climax, it’s fitting that mine occurred on the Eiffel Tower. Though the clichéd moment has often spurred inspiration for countless mimic lovers and over-inflated romantics, I neither felt love nor some overarching unity on the Parisian metallic beast. I instead gazed as millions of others had before and millions of others would in the future at a sprawling landscape peopled with artists and doctors, lawyers and criminals, politicians and savages, and I felt so perfectly alone. I was one among many, a centimeter against a ruler, a nobody in a world of nobodies. I wasn’t liberated; I was chained, restricted, and limited. I was shackled. And by realizing this, I was anything but.

This, though, means little at all by itself for it is not the revelation that is appreciated, but rather the volatile journey, with its valleys and troughs, its unexpected chances and wasted preparations, that are praised and cherished. There on the Eiffel Tower I was not a singularity, I was not a moment. I was the resultant outcome of everything that brought me there, from the food I ate to the girls I kissed to the classes I took and to those I didn’t. In all, I was all, and that is why I was happy.

Up until that point, I was regimented into the routine of everyday. I focused mainly on schedules and rescheduling until I found the pulse of small problems and made them astronomical. Nine o’clock, I woke up. By ten, I was working. By six, eating. Eight, reading. Eleven, washing. Twelve, sleeping, then repeating in that order.

Europe was meant to change this rhythmic burden of everyday. When I started planning for the trip, my expectations were informed by the myths of culture and idealism. In Paris, in Berlin, in Amsterdam, I was to find the ideal life, one sustained by the darkest coffee and the cheapest wine and the beautifully ruffled yet perfectly maintained haircuts and clothes. Cities would glint their forgotten raindrops in ancient archways and only I, when gazing up into the bricks that grew into skyless spires, would sense the permanence of this place. Like a stream rippled by a skipping rock, the very throb of the Gothic architecture and the cobbled streets would become personal to me.

In a way, they did. From eight in the morning until two the next day, I, along with a fellow student and Silhouette editor, Cooper Long, travelled the various cities with our plans abandoned. When we arrived first in Amsterdam, we got lost in the first fifteen minutes. And this trend of mindless wanderlust, one which my previously cloistered, protected and nurtured livelihood never underwent, inevitably continued wherever we went.

As a result, I became Kacper fully: an unfiltered, unmitigated, confused boy imitating a man imitating a parrot imitating others. I saw through my falsities, my need for control and reigns, and I let go of all that I pretended to be. I think that person was left somewhere in Amsterdam where the rain drips on and where I was startled by my own voice in the darkness.

But this newfound light was not Paris, and these moments were not my happiest. Such a responsibility of an all-consuming joy instead belonged to the endless night sky wishing that the sun would rise.

It did, and I woke up and the day wore on and the night came again only to end sometime when the curtain was raised, teeth were washed, and I was back home, or somewhere, or both.

Before then, I was on top of the world, or Paris’s part of it, and I was laughing. I think that’s why I was happy. Because in Paris, I learned that the ideal human is a traveler exploring the unknown. There at the top of France, I was that human, but so was everyone else, and for the first time in my short, short life, that meant something. I didn’t have to be unique. I just had to belong. All of us were under the same Heaven waiting for the clouds to part.

From above, it is said that everyone looks like ants, but from below, so do those who tower above us. I try to think about this now and again because it provides more than a momentary happiness. Though it sounds ridiculous, it allows me to see beyond the glumly cantankerous and the stratospheric troubles that seem to surround me and everyone else in a mysterious, intricate plan. In fact, it let me forgo that nebulous plan altogether. Now I am happy to live with uncertainty, with not knowing. To me, and to the person I have become since the romantics of Europe, that is knowing enough already.

Image c/o Terrazzo on Flickr

I’ve never been a fan of Buzzfeed. Given that the form resembles a second grader colouring out of the lines, the writing feels scattered and trivializing. Complex ideas are captured by gifs of Harry Potter, guitar-playing cats, and simple analogies. Though their is undeniable accessibility - anyone can read the boldface verbal pyrotechnics and digest the quick snippets of life -the issues are presented as though they require little to no thought. There is no critical engagement and the statements, very much like this one, are just generic snapshots. At best, it’s an introduction of an essay without the body paragraphs; at worst, it’s an analysis of Honey Boo Boo’s mother’s stance on Obama Care.

But some believe it's not all that bad. They tell me that I wouldn’t have been blessed to know of Honey Boo Boo in the first place without Buzzfeed. It reaches its audience and it does so consistently. Though I feel it as nothing more than a capitalization on the most animalistic impulses of immediate satisfaction, the reason why I dislike it is exactly why it’s popular, which perhaps, says how foolish I am in the end.

But not any longer, see? If Buzzfeed is the future of journalism, here is the article of the future: an opinion about an opinion on an opinion. Simple, right? I thought so. I’m sure Honey Boo Boo’s mother would agree.

So these are the top thirteen things wrong with opinion pieces and those who compose them.

1.They’re an opinion, amirite????

 

 

 

 

Argument over. Me - 1. Opinions - 0.

2. There are not enough cats in them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This makes up for any opinion ever. Even, maybe, this one.

3. Newspapers, and the sections in them like opinions, are a dead form.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s an opinions editor trying to make their piece interesting to his audience who stands unmoved.

4. There are too many issues to consider in just one article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An opinion's editor motto.

5. The world is never black and white, despite what the electronic ink says. And most articles just volley back and forth endlessly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instead of arguing violently, let's just follow this kid's example.

6. Journalism is the art printing something to go out of date only to print some more that goes out of date later. 

 

 

 

 

Here we see the print cycle of journalism.

7. Any one can have an opinion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even Doge can. Also he is wearing socks. Some opinion editors don't.

8. Opinion editors are just people trying to save fish from drowning, whatever that means.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we find an opinion's editor making his point.

9. They also kick children

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An opinion editor dishing his investigative dirt and then tasting it too. Great inquiry skills.

10. And scare them too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This child just read an opinion's piece.

11. They end almost arbitrarily even though there is always a continual discussion on the matters discussed, and this falsified finished suggests that they are all knowing, all revolutionary when really their two-cents is hardly worth rounding up to a dollar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most of our thoughts about opinionated articles.

12. They shamelessly dance around as objective journalism while they are just the  limited, personal interpretations, analysis, and misconceptions of one person distilled and contained to a scattershot of some 700-words.

 

 

 

 

 

Here's me trying to understand what I just wrote.

13. Want to know what’s wrong with an opinions article? Read one. Luckily, you just did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for nothing.

'Buzzfeed' image c/o Scott Beales / Laughing Squid on Flickr.

Ladies, hold on to your knickers. Things are going to get messy for what follows in a pudding-like consistency is an argument for feminism without women.

Listen. I recognize I’m a male – a white one at that – and anything I say will be a shameful parade of my possibly oppressive, certainly privileged status. I will never understand the plights, the struggles, or the difficulties that riddle women daily. Please understand, though, that I’m not speaking for you or your individual experiences that I can never know. I will not make a blanket statement as if I know you. Instead in this entire piece, I’m speaking for me and speaking to what white, privileged males like myself can do in a culture that has run amok with political correctedness and blatant hypocrisies, and that fosters invisible modes of dominance and false conceptions of normality that are fads on the order of a yo-yo.

Follow me for a second. Far too often has feminism been isolated to one gender, one lifestyle, one personal form of identification: a woman. It is dressed up as a battle about women for women by women. It concerns women’s rights, women’s issues, and women’s equality. Men are not part of this system; they have caused it. They created this mess of a patriarchy. They are the problem. They are the dicks in every sense of the word.

For the most part, this is undeniable. Historical paradigms of oppression can almost always be reduced down to a few rich, white men cat-fighting about anything and everything. Yet I diametrically oppose the thought of separation, whether it is in the processes that led to feminism or those that still fuel it. Such thinking has only led to the shambled together society we find ourselves in now.

More importantly, however, is that restricting feminism to females inadvertently supports the same injustices it is trying to quell. By denying men as some part of the solution, the construction of feminism is alienating one section of the population. In pursuit of equality, it cannot be unequal. Building a basic assumption of feminism does exactly this, and worse yet, it gives men a reason to decry it as poppycock, an issue that is not important to them because it is not about them. Once steadfast and widespread, men no longer question their gender or its dominance, and the inequality spins on and on and on.

But this is wrong. If men are the problem, they are also needed as some of the first steps in a long-form solution. If men have torn the world asunder, they need to be there for the repair. In fact, they, alongside the flurry of hollering and hooting women from all of gender classifications, sexual orientations and racial identifies, need to try to lead the whole damn thing.

This might be sexist for me to say, but to battle sexism, one must first be sexist. It seems silly and arrogant to suggest, but this is an old truth: to defeat the enemy, one must know them first.

Think about feminism’s various strides. Though the irrefutable persistence of women everywhere have propelled and focused the various movements both in mainstream and smaller, local clusters, it is a few men that have helped catalyze the change that millions of women dreamed of. If men are in charge, it often takes them to cause and want the shift in paradigms. Otherwise, the first gear never moves and the whole machine doesn’t run.

I know, I know: the sentence seems like yet another man taking yet another success from women. But it is not, at least not at the the most initial stages of a movement where it takes the prime-movers to ensure sustainable, lasting change.

While this may not ostensibly be the case any longer – women are found in high corporate positions, they can often choose how they are represented in media, they have sometimes empowered their bodies and sexuality – it does not deny the importance of the claim. Allyship is not enough. We all need to fight. We all need to strive for excellence. And by accepting men as possible forces to advocate and facilitate female issues, rather than isolate them as perpetuators, one does not deny the issues importance or trivialize the concerns. In fact, the opposite occurs. Only by working together through education and dialogue can all become better.

When I suggest feminism without women, I am not talking about fe-men-ism or anything like that; I am talking about feminism for the rest of us.

I’m not speaking about the white, educated perspective; that is hogwash that has since served its time. Instead I’m talking about a Polish immigrant house mom working two jobs to feed her twin boys. I am talking about a ninety-year old Nigerian who is trying to buy a gender-neutral toy for her grandchild. I am talking about the four year old who has been told she can’t play with the boys.

But I am also talking about the boys and men everywhere who have woman dear to their lives, who are trying to help carve a way for their force, success, and experiences, and who get out of the way when its needed.

So know that this is not a white, male talking about feminism as though he understands the various, nuanced waves of suffering by millions of people. He never can. He never will.

But he is here to listen and hopefully offer a statement for us all: we cannot allow complacency to sit in. We do not need just women. That is not enough. We need men, children, elders, people of colour, of any orientation, of all faith systems and anything in between, from saints to sinners, politicians to garbage men, me to you. Because more than any one person, we need each other to fight against the world we’ve created by first tearing it apart.

Graphic by Ben Barrett-Forrest / Multimedia Editor

Though I’m not a fan of his work or the messy celebrity circle jerk that goes on during the Golden Globes, the empty mouthed criticism that has marred Woody Allen’s lifetime achievement award is undeserved. Don’t get me wrong. The allegations of sexual assault on a minor, particularly his adopted daughter, are a very real concern and warrant the utmost admonishment and scrupulous attention. But what is at stake here is not Woody or his combined experiences or his personal failings, but art itself.

Let me step back. Art is a product of humanity’s ingenuity. It is the combination of thought, sound, love, breath creating life, life creating breath.

What is more is that good artists, as Oscar Wilde said, exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. I believe this stands true for Woody Allen. Although his life is important and the minutiae of his experiences are worthy of scrutiny in both good and bad lenses, his personal background does not comprise the whole of his being. This is especially true in his art. He is not fantastic because he is a New Yorker. He does not resonate with me because he has seen some of the places I’ve seen. Nor is he a bad person because he may have voted for Bush, though it would certainly make his judgement questionable (if alleged sexual assault wasn't a big enough indicator).

Neither the personal bad nor good ruin one another. They are isolated compartments. He, and the art he creates, is worthy of merit because despite it all, despite his vulnerabilities, his possible evils, and his warped idiosyncrasies, he kept on living, kept on feeling, kept on directing.

This does not excuse his alleged act of molestation nor does it make it right. Nor, too, does the fact that there is a celebration of the possible perpetrator instead of the victim - the one who was really hurt - go unnoticed. Rather receiving this award is a testament that he was able to transform the pain of his life into beauty through his work. Rather than be a resultant process of his problems, rather than allow them to dictate his lifestyle, he moved beyond his darkness.

With lights, camera, and action, he achieved greatness even if he himself wasn’t, and isn't, great.

Photo c/o ThomasThomas on Flickr.

 

Sing the anthem. Raise the flag. Do, uh, a salute or whatever.

Because in a week’s time, McMaster will be host to pageantry a year in the making. With shades of incandescent green and eyesore yellow, MUSC will look less like a dirty zoo and more like a colourful, dirty zoo. Election campaigns will parade into classes in order to win the votes of people who don’t know an election is going on, who couldn’t name the current president of the MSU, and who are wondering if they are in the right class in the first place. Cheers will hiccup across campus, songs will blare, and the world will revolve around the halls of McMaster, if only for a few people.

But in between the screams and badgering, the prodding to vote for one candidate over another, some of you won't share the buzz on campus. You'll instead feel like you are but a piece on an indiscriminate checkers board, a vote who is drowning in competing ideas, and though you are you, you alone is not important enough.

Let’s do something about that gnawing apathy. Let’s make you fight against it all by becoming it all: Let’s run for the MSU Presidentials together.

I know, I know. Why would you want to do that? You don’t know jack shit about jack shit, talking to people turns you into an unsettling, sweaty mess, and besides, look at you: you’re a meat-wagon wrapped in unwashed sweatpants, a mustard-stained t-shirt, and your hair is a knot even a Scout hasn’t seen.

But that’s the point: you often convince yourself you’re a loser already – the blemish of mustard is your proof – and the first way to sweep the Presidentials is knowing that it takes losing in order to win. Luckily, you’re already half way there.

Next is your platform, or more importantly, the lack thereof. In a few weeks time, no one will care what you say. There will be no accountability or follow-up. You’ll win, you’ll spend a year waffling around, and boom, just as you’re about to pick a pen because someone shuffled outside your office door, you’ll be off doing something else with your resume padded nicely.

So promise only the very absurd. Promise big, grand things. Promise gold, qualify that you meant silver, and give nothing but dirt.

The next step is simple: smile everywhere. The shower? Smile. A photograph? Smile. Pooping? Smile. You need to convince everyone that with pearly whites that look like heaven’s Pearl Gates, you’re happy, even and perhaps especially, when you shit.

I’ll admit that your face will find itself constipated more often than not, and you might not be able to find reasons to grin. You’re unhappy after all; that’s why you’re going to be knee-deep in this election in the first place – you want to change things to make them better for yourself and others, you want people to depend on you, and you want to belong to something greater than yourself.

Yet these elections will wear you out. You’ll be exhausted. And with all the people around you vying for your attention, with all the banners and speeches and impossible demands, you’ll feel lonely even though you might not be alone.

But this emptiness in a world that seems so full of life is not trivial because the next step in winning these MSU elections is being able to lie. Throughout the snafu, you’ll need to string together mendacities that convince others and yourself most of all. People will say, “Your campaign colour is blue; isn’t that depressing.” And you’ll reply, “Is it?” They’ll say, “It is.” You’ll say, “Isn’t the world gray, though? Aren’t things never black and white?” And the person will clap and you’ll be victorious in a few weeks and then you’ll think back and remind yourself that you don’t actually know if things are black or white. You were lying. You are lying. You have become a lie.

Remember, though, that you’re going to be the next MSU president. It’s a sacrifice in order to help, right? You’re willing to forgo truth if it means that others can have it eventually. You’re a hero. A god damn saint. And in the next year, you’ll be our leader.

So here’s my, uh, salute or whatever we do here, President.

Photo: last year's presidential pub night. c/o Myles Frances, The Silhouette

I've been assaulting you for a week now, but despite all I have written, I'm just a collection of sentences. Some would say you do not know me; you instead know what I have presented to you. But I don't think this is exactly correct because my personage bleeds through this electronic ink. I buzz in the words, hum along with the sentences. My experiences ooze through the text, and here in a simple clause you can find the funniest joke I've heard mixed with the worst, the first meal I ever made by myself, and a night in Amsterdam best forgot. There I am in the comma, and in the period too. In this very paragraph, you can find my life story distilled down to a time and space between words.

It’s a mouthful I know but every day, every hour, and every second, it’s true: one can look at my present portrait - the outward depiction of who I am - built up one word at a time and see an intersection of various lines that are no more distinct than a fart in the wind. I just hope I stink less and taste better.

More often, though, my smell lingers in between the naked spaces of my letters. I seem indulgent, self-serving even. I mean – look how much I’m referencing myself already. Besides isn’t writing narcissism at its highest, a conjectural statement of self-assessed worth as though whatever I am clattering away on the keyboard is deserving of being read?

I don’t think so. As far as I know, dear reader, we have never met and I am just a bundle of letters strung together on the music of a page. As far as you know, I may be an old man, and carved into my cheekbones is the happiest day of my life and in my smile weighs the saddest night. My knees shake because I have spent much of life working and my lips crack because I have lived by a factory, a factory that has coughed out fumes that have battered my hair into a sandy gray and etched canyons for wrinkles into my forehead. I have the greenest-blue-hazel eyes you have ever seen. I am a brother, a friend, a lover, a sinner, a saint, a teacher, a student, the bravest person and a coward all at the same. I move. I shake. I do, laugh, and feel. I wear hand-knitted sweaters.

Or maybe I’m a young girl stuck battling the millions of indirect battles against a patriarchy I cannot fully defeat - at least not alone. My face may be contorted into a smug look, not out of spite, but because the conflicts seem endless. I’ve given up on makeup and my hair swells atop of my head. There’s an elastic band somewhere in there; I’ve given up looking for it. There are more important things to do. There always will be more important things to do.

Or maybe I’m just Kacper: a boy pretending to be a man pretending to be a boy. Maybe I’m just a student stuck toiling around day to day, promising myself this will be the year; it’s gotta’ be the year. And maybe I just have a fitting name because more often than not, one can find me thinking about the ghost of my past and wishing I could talk to him, make him laugh and tell him everything will be alright in the end, whenever that is.

But the point is that I don't know you either, reader. Together we are unknown and that's important. All I have to show for myself is this page and all you have are my words and both of us are left with the ink-people born from its conception. What my intent was doesn't matter. The only important fact is that we're wadding through the universe of this piece with its happiness and sadness, its chaos and serenity, its evils, its goods, and everything in between, word by word by word, and we're doing it together. Because here I am waiting for you to read this sentence, prodding you on to make it to the next, and in between now and then, we get to know each other.

I won’t leave you dawdling with description anymore; I’ll tell you who I am, a question most people forget in the scrum of daily existence. Listen: Kacper is an intersection of personas, minds, states, feelings, ideas, thoughts, conversations, actions, sports teams, foods I liked, people I have hated, people who have hated me, books I’ve read, lessons I’ve learned, chairs I’ve sat on, friends I’ve made and lost, jokes I’ve remembered and forgotten, kisses I’ve planted and received, a mother’s wish, a father’s project, a brother’s mirror, a sister’s envy, a girlfriend’s love, an ex-girlfriend’s distrust, and a whole bunch of things I cannot recall now. To have the audacity to sum it up, I am a clusterfuck.

I have rarely taken a good picture.

More often than not, one can find me with a smile that hangs like a broken swing set, a lazy eye that would scare a zombie, or a disarray of hair that even a natural disaster wouldn’t be able to produce. Even when I was ejected into the world at what was supposed to be my climax of cuteness, the photographs show I looked more like a dolphin whose nose was battered in than a human being. My skin is salmon pink. My eyelids are unformed. And I’m sure that all the other babies, now grown and living happily, still wake up screaming when they think about me lying next to them in an incubator.

Though I have good reason – and perhaps a duty – not to participate, I have not been immune to the selfie bug. Far too many times I’ve found myself at the helm of the camera with my arm hyperextended away from my body. Whether it is in Paris or in Hamilton, Amsterdam or Peterborough, Toronto or Warsaw, I’ve taken my camera and posed for, well, me.

In second year while on a European backpacking trip with a friend, this was no different. In the Red Light district, I flashed myself. In Berlin, I broke down walls with my imposed portraits. In front of the Mona Lisa, I was hiding a smile that would woo Leonardo da Vinci. In each self-directed photoshoot, I was happy. Here I was alongside the world – and I had the pictures to prove it.

Yet months later when I was showing these pictures to a colleague, I was told that selfies such as mine were inherently narcissistic. I was not partaking in the splendor of whatever I was looking at; I was ruining it by being with it and more importantly, getting in its the way.

Recently, I’ve heard a lot of similar arguments. As a generation, we’ve supposedly become infatuated with our own reflection. We try to magnify ourselves. Our lives take on this importance because it can be captured and spread. Our styles, our ideas, our entire being can be cherished in a moment. And before when no one would notice what we were saying or what we looked like, now they can. Now, everyone can.

But selfies are not meant as praise. They are instead a much bigger problem of this generation, a generation which has been force fed what to think, feel, and dream. We have no culture of our own making, and so we grab on to everything. We do not have a Catcher and the Rye or a Slaughter House Five to get us through. We do not have the Beatles. We have world views reduced to 140 characters. We have brilliantly manipulated bands and singers convincing us that they love us. We have television shows that numb us and tell us to rush home and watch an imitation of life on a flickering screen.

We have desperate attempts at connecting to the world in hopes of belonging one day, and instead we have seen all its horrors. Everyday we have observed war after war with no end. We see atrocity and complexity all around us. We see frustration. We see pain. We see a life that is beyond our control, that can’t be controlled, that never will be controlled.

And the moment we try to capture ourselves in the chaos to have one thing solid in a world that is changing faster than we can grasp, that doesn’t seem in our grasp in the first place, we are told we are being egotistical.

“That’s where the word came from, you know? Selfie is just shorthand for selfish.”

What my friend failed to understand is that selfies, at least so far as I see it, isn’t so much about me, me, me as it is look, look, look where I’ve been, what I’m doing, and where I might be going. It is a hope to connect with others and where they have been. London? I’ve been there too. Hamilton? Pssh – I live there, see?

It is a hope that – as Kurt Vonnegut said – together we can get through this, whatever this may be, but first you need to get to know me. And here, look, I've already done the busy work. There I am at the bottom of this page. I hope I look friendly enough (did I say I look bad in pictures yet?) because I’m sure you are nice enough for the both of us, dear reader.

Please don’t take this as an anti consumerist or capitalist diatribe. It isn’t. It is a realization that in a global market, we have been bought, packaged and stored.

Like the coffee, the Starbucks on campus leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I get it, though. I really do. Starbucks won the MSU’s financial auction for the space previously occupied by Williams. And I get it too that you like Starbucks and they’re just pandering to the student’s interest in promoting a supposedly high-quality brand.

But I ask if you’ve had Democracy coffee? Or what about Johnny’s? Café Domestique? My Dog Joe? Radius? There are hundreds of options in Hamilton and instead here we have a company telling us that we need to buy buy buy what everyone else is drinking.

It’s like a cult – we’re brainwashed while sipping our caffeinated Kool-Aid.

Maybe it’s the ebb of eventuality, though. We slurp our Venti Pumpkin Spice Latté drowning in cleverly crafted Taylor Swift-like pop-monstrosities with our soon-to-be paperweight iPhones while warming ourselves in American Eagles shirts and Hollister pants. This is the product of a global village – the sweet apex of human civilization where all can be equal because we are all equally advertised to.

But it is less of a village and more of a besieged four-by-four prison cell. We cannot escape. We are constantly barraged by what to think and what to say. Even what to drink – coffee – becomes an elect choice of status, and in the scrum of day-to-day, when we are trying to carve out who we are and what that means to us, we are sold our individuality by becoming a commodity ourselves.

But I don’t want to believe this. I think we can do better. I think we can be bold, like a coffee is supposed to be.

As students, we’re meant to deconstruct rather than conform. Challenging paradigms and forms are the spirit of education. Questions need to be asked, instead of blindly accepting what is being shoved down our throats. If we do not inquire, we become fodder for any charlatan who comes along and tells us that this is the new way to think.

In our case, we have an institution telling us that they sold out to the highest bidder in order to make a buck or two, and that the human right indiscretions are secondary to capital, and you’re just a bunch of students four years in the making, an amorphous blob of people whose indistinctness is solidified by corporate moulds. You are fungible. You are mutable. And you will change – look at these advertisements, look at this brand, and look at the world passing you by bit by bit by bit as we try to fit your square peg of an existence into this round hole of a lifestyle choice.

Maybe that’s dramatic, and maybe by placing Starbucks into the campus, the higher-ups are just trying to normalize us to the undead-existence beyond these walls where we drink over-priced coffee at such highfalutin establishments.

But when we are all the same, when we are spoonfed our likes and dislikes, and when we have no choice in the matter, I’d rather let the beans roast and the coffee go cold.