On Loneliness, War, Identity, and Seeing Ourselves
The Male Loneliness Epidemic Suits War
If you can convince young men that they are nothing, they will eventually believe their lives are worth nothing.
And when that belief settles in, war becomes appealing.
Degrade young boys long enough and they will search desperately for something—anything—that makes them feel strong. When conflict comes, they’ll be first on the team sheet. Finally, something to prove themselves. Something that feels like purpose. Brotherhood. Strength. Power.
If you already feel dead inside, what is dying for a cause?
In our free time, many of us play games where we kill. We watch matches where we win or lose from the sidelines, spectating until it’s our turn. But war is not a game. It won’t feel fun when you look at the soldier next to you — once your classmate, once your friend — and realise you were both just lonely boys searching for meaning.
Community built through shared vulnerability can be beautiful. But convincing young men that their vulnerability is weakness — and that killing is strength — is tragic.
Why can’t we see it for what it is?
I love my mum. My dad. My siblings. My grandparents. My future children. I love you. I love me. I love us.
So maybe the rebellion is this:
Put the phone down.
Put the gun down.
Go outside.
Meet someone new.
Do we really want to fight? Or do they want us to?
See yourself.
Regimes, Empires, and the Illusion of Progress
There is good. There is bad. There is ugly. There is wealth and poverty and resources that determine value. There are lies and there are truths.
Every empire ends. Every tyranny collapses. Every dictatorship falls. But too often, the end of one regime is simply the birth of another. We celebrate the fall of “bad,” expecting “good,” only to watch new power take the same shape.
We lose faith briefly — then we get distracted.
Politics becomes spectacle. Resistance becomes branding. Outrage becomes content.
We argue about tariffs, globalism, migration, trade. We’re told policies are for the good of the nation — but are they for the good of humanity? Or the preservation of power?
We complain about immigration while benefiting from the cheap labour that props up our economy. Many migrants come not to invade culture, but to escape exploitation. In parts of Europe, undocumented workers live in inhumane conditions so we can buy cheaper food. Children mine the minerals that power the phones we protest on.
We tap, scroll, comment — all on devices built from invisible suffering.
And instead of confronting systems that exploit the vulnerable, we turn on the vulnerable themselves.
Why?
Migrants often come because English is their second language — a legacy of empire. That isn’t invasion. It’s history echoing back. It’s a complicated compliment to a culture that once expanded outward and now draws people in.
Colonialism shaped a multicultural world. We can’t undo that reality by pretending it isn’t here. So what do we do — double down on division? Or recognise that displacement anywhere will eventually reach us too?
See yourself in them.
Identity and Imperfection
I’m British. I’m Turkish. I’m Sri Lankan. I’m Sinhalese. I’m Irish.
Parts of me are proud. Parts of me struggle. That’s the truth of identity — it’s layered, imperfect, complicated.
Humanity is imperfect. Nations are imperfect. There are no perfect people. Some do better than others. Some do worse. But perfection is a myth used to justify harm.
We cling to identity like armour:
Because I am this, I must think that.
Because I am this, I must hate that.
Because I am this, I should defend this at all costs.
Why can’t we just be proud to be?
The odds of existence are extraordinary. We’re born randomly on a spinning rock in a vast universe — and that accident of geography shapes how we think, vote, worship, and fight.
What if we started there instead?
An Ice Cream Man
I’m an ice cream man.
I didn’t excel in school. There are reasons, but they don’t matter much now. What mattered was watching my dad drive his van, earning enough to keep our family afloat. We loved each other. That was enough.
So I wanted to do the same.
I don’t care about fame. I don’t worship money. But I understand survival. It’s harder now. Everything is expensive. I had to leave the area I call home because I couldn’t afford it anymore.
You don’t notice systems failing until they touch you personally. By then, it’s often too late.
My family afforded life there for years. Why not now?
Public becomes private. Community becomes commodity. Homes become investments. We get priced out of the places that shaped us — then blamed for not keeping up.
The irony? We criticise immigrants for displacement while slowly being displaced ourselves.
The Project: See Yourself
I once started a project where homeless individuals created artwork, sold at a price based on what they needed at that moment. It felt beautiful. But I realised something uncomfortable.
Why does everything good have to become monetised?
Why can’t we simply document suffering, tell stories, and restore identity without turning it into product?
“See Yourself” isn’t about profit. It’s about recognition. Portraits. Interviews. Shared identity. Showing that the person struggling most is still you — just under different circumstances.
We are quick to write people off. Especially young men lost to algorithms, isolation, and online radicalisation. I don’t defend harmful ideologies. But I empathise with the loneliness beneath them.
Algorithms feed weakness with false strength. They normalise cruelty as confidence. And if we simply mock or abandon those young men, we push them further toward the only communities that accept them.
We need alternatives. Not condemnation — conversation.
The Illusion of Resistance
Modern culture is full of what wrestling calls “kayfabe” — the illusion of reality. We watch performances of resistance while the profits flow back into the systems we claim to oppose.
We stream. We cheer. We post. We feel like we’ve participated in change.
But performance isn’t progress.
Real progress costs something.
If celebrities are unaware of how power operates, we must inform them. If they are aware and silent, we must challenge them. Influence without responsibility becomes complicity.
Class Over Division
We blame downwards because it’s easier.
Immigrants. The poor. The “other.”
But corporate greed exploits all of us. Wealth inequality displaces patriots as easily as migrants. Public ownership shrinks while private power grows. We grow poorer. Life grows more expensive.
And still we’re told to look sideways — never upward.
Identity politics keeps us divided. Class consciousness unites us.
We are not enemies because of race, religion, or birthplace. We are people surviving in systems that prioritise profit over life.
Globalism, Free Trade, and the Tariff Illusion
Let’s talk about globalism and free trade.
On paper, free trade sounds like progress. Borders softened. Goods flowing freely. Prices lower. Convenience everywhere. And yes — it has made life cheaper for many of us in wealthy countries.
But cheaper for who? And at whose cost?
Free trade often means production moves to wherever labour is cheapest and regulation is weakest. It means exploitation becomes geographically distant enough that we don’t have to see it.
In certain areas of southern Spain, undocumented migrants work in agriculture under inhumane conditions — living in makeshift camps, earning next to nothing, producing fruit and vegetables that end up neatly stacked in British supermarkets. The low price tag feels like efficiency. It’s actually suffering, outsourced.
Free trade doesn’t eliminate exploitation. It relocates it.
And so when tariffs are introduced — when leaders speak about protecting national industry, opposing globalism, standing up to economic giants — it sounds like resistance. It sounds like someone finally challenging a broken system.
Tariffs can oppose free trade. They can slow the race to the bottom. They can prioritise domestic production.
But intention matters.
If tariffs are used to reduce exploitation globally, to raise standards, to protect workers everywhere — that’s progress.
If tariffs are used simply to shift control inward — to bring exploitation home, to strengthen one nation at the expense of another, to consolidate political power — then we haven’t ended the problem. We’ve just nationalised it.
It isn’t anti-exploitation. It’s competitive exploitation.
Opposing globalism is not automatically moral. Supporting free trade is not automatically immoral. The question is: who benefits?
Because migrants are not the cause of economic pressure — they are evidence of it.
They are symptoms of a global system that concentrates wealth at the top, destabilises regions through intervention, extraction, and trade imbalance, then acts surprised when people move in search of stability.
You cannot drain resources from a place for decades, profit from its labour, reshape its political landscape, and then be outraged when its people follow the trail of opportunity back to you.
Movement is human. Migration is older than borders.
What’s newer is the scale of inequality that forces it.
Free trade allows corporations to cross borders freely. Capital flows instantly. Goods move effortlessly. But people? People are criminalised for doing the same thing capital does daily — searching for better returns.
And when they arrive, they are blamed for the consequences of policies they never designed.
We say they strain public services.
We say they take jobs.
We say they change communities.
But look closer.
Who underfunded those services?
Who suppressed wages for decades?
Who privatised housing and inflated rents?
Who benefits when workers compete instead of unite?
It’s honesty about how we got here.
It’s acknowledging that comfort built on invisible suffering is not stability — it’s delay.
It’s recognising that a system that requires winners and losers on a global scale will eventually turn inward and create them locally too.
Because it already has.
It’s the young man who feels purposeless.
It’s the family priced out of their hometown.
It’s the migrant in a tent in Spain.
It’s the worker in England blamed for economic decline.
Different faces. Same structure.
When we argue about migration without talking about capital, we’re missing the point. When we argue about tariffs without talking about labour rights, we’re missing the point. When we argue about nationalism without talking about who actually owns the nation’s wealth, we’re missing the point.
The point is power.
Who holds it.
Who protects it.
Who profits from it.
And who is told to fight each other while it concentrates further.
Because it’s easier to mobilise lonely young men with identity than to mobilise working people with class consciousness. It’s easier to stir cultural fear than to explain economic extraction. It’s easier to shout about borders than to question billionaires.
But if we strip it back — really strip it back — most people want the same things:
Safety.
Purpose.
Dignity.
Community.
A future for their children that is better than their past.
That’s not radical. That’s human.
And none of those things require someone else to suffer.
We’ve been convinced that prosperity is competitive. That if someone arrives, there’s less for us. That if another country rises, we fall. That strength means dominance.
But what if strength meant cooperation?
What if pride meant integrity?
What if leadership meant service?
What if being “proud to be” wasn’t about nationality, but about humanity?
Because the odds of any of us existing at all are astronomical. Born somewhere by chance, shaped by circumstance, convinced that accident equals superiority.
It doesn’t.
It equals responsibility.
Responsibility to question narratives.
Responsibility to reject dehumanisation.
Responsibility to refuse to be weaponised against one another.
If free trade exploits, reform it.
If tariffs empower exploitation domestically, challenge them.
If leaders manipulate identity for power, expose them.
But don’t lose sight of the human being in front of you.
The migrant is not your enemy.
The struggling young man is not your enemy.
Even the person you argue with online is not your enemy.
A system that thrives on division is.
And systems change when people do.
So see yourself — not as British, Turkish, Sri Lankan, Irish, migrant, native, left, right — but as human.
Proud not to dominate.
Not to exclude.
Not to conquer.
Proud to be.
And if enough of us start there, the rest becomes possible.
A Generation Interrupted
My generation lost formative years to a pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, and constant political instability. Some returned to normal. Others saw too much to pretend anymore.
We’ve watched atrocities unfold in real time. We’ve seen corruption exposed. We’ve seen leaders disappoint again and again.
Faith in institutions is fragile.
But when I step outside and speak to someone face to face — even someone I’ve argued with online — hope returns.
I don’t have faith in governments.
I have faith in people.
Not perfect people. Just people trying.
What Does It Mean to Be?
As a child, I struggled in school because I didn’t understand the purpose of what I was learning. What was I contributing to? Good? Bad? I couldn’t tell. So I disengaged.
Later, alone, I discovered curiosity on my own terms — through a device both incredible and unethical. The phone is addictive, manipulative — but powerful. It can divide. It can also connect.
The question is not whether tools are good or bad.
The question is: who are we becoming while using them?
Proud to Be
Being proud to be doesn’t mean blind nationalism. It doesn’t mean ignoring injustice. It means recognising the miracle of existence and choosing not to waste it hating those equally alive.
It means opposing tyranny, extremism, and exploitation — wherever they appear.
It means seeing that leaders who operate through secrecy, blackmail, greed, or division do not represent us — no matter the flag they wave.
It means understanding that if we want good only for ourselves, it isn’t truly good.
We are poorer. More divided. More distracted. And yet more connected than ever.
The system benefits when young men feel worthless. When migrants are scapegoated. When communities fracture. When resistance becomes entertainment.
But systems only survive through participation.
So withdraw it.
See yourself in each other.
Support local.
Speak honestly.
Choose conversation over contempt.
Choose class solidarity over identity warfare.
Be proud — not of domination, not of exclusion — but of being.
Because the lesson isn’t to be British, or Turkish, or Sri Lankan, or Irish.
The lesson is to be human.
See yourself.
