Zero-Sum politics in a world of sacrificial districts

In The Hunger Games, twenty-four children are forced to kill each other while the elites applaud. It was sold as dystopian fiction. The trouble is, it is looking more like current affairs with every passing news cycle. The real world, too, is structured like a zero-sum game—where one person’s gain must be another’s loss. There are no mutual wins here, only trade-offs, casualties, and very profitable illusions. This article contends that global power operates not unlike the Capitol’s arena: a ritualised battleground in which marginalised regions—Gaza, the Congo, Yemen, Ukraine—are sacrificed to maintain the illusion of order and the comfort of hegemony. The names change. The rules do not. ...

July 22, 2025 · 6 min

Trickster logic: Sacred saboteurs and modern mischief

The trickster is no ordinary troublemaker. They are the necessary saboteur, the holy vandal, the one who pries open order just enough to let chaos breathe. Found in every corner of the world and across every era, the trickster is an ancient archetype dressed in local clothes — part comedian, part rebel, part divine disruption. They don’t simply play tricks; they expose the trick of the world itself. From the scheming spider Anansi to the gender-bending Loki, from Coyote’s dusty trails to Hermes’ winged heists, the trickster thrives in the cracks of civilisation — those uncomfortable in-between spaces where certainties collapse and new meanings ferment. If priests bless the structure and kings enforce it, the trickster questions the terms of the deal. They aren’t against the rules. They just want to know who wrote them and whether the ink is dry. ...

July 4, 2025 · 5 min