Thoughts from the Shire 

Thoughts from a wee Hobbit trying to escape clown world.

The worst part? WCIS doesn’t just sit quietly in the background—it shapes how you act. It pushes you to work harder, yes, but it also drags out some ugly habits. When you don’t know something, instead of asking questions like everyone else, you bluff. You fake it because admitting ignorance feels like exposing yourself. And if someone c…

Working Class Imposter Syndrome

But here’s the trap: the system is built to swallow you whole. Tech platforms love engagement—doesn’t matter if you’re cheering or booing. Every post, every like, every rant? It’s all just data, feeding the machine, lining someone’s pockets. Your rebellion? Monetised. Your outrage? It becomes Edgy Content.

Jacques Ellul had a thing or two…

Spike the Guns of the Enemy? Or Use Their Weapons Against Them?

Football fans are often seen as knuckle-dragging barbarians—and yes, footballers can be overpaid prima donnas. The sport can be cultish, people take it far too seriously, and it's often used as a distraction (bread and circus, I know) from real-world issues, this is all true, and all too frustrating. But none of that changes the fact tha…

Of Storms, Sportsmanship, and the Social Function of Football

Military life had already exposed me to the rougher edges of the world, but even that didn’t prepare me for what I encountered. This was a country already ranked among the three poorest in Asia, but the year before my visit, a devastating cyclone had made the poor even poorer.

I don’t want to dwell on the sheer desolation of what I saw. T…

My time in one of the poorest places on earth

“The danger is not in the revolution itself but in the sacralization of revolution, the belief that it is holy, inevitable, and righteous.”

Ellul’s critique here is both theological and political. He warns that when revolutions take on a religious fervour, they become immune to critique and prone to fanaticism.

Autopsy of Revolution: Jacques Ellul's Dissection of Uprising and Change

The largest freshwater lough in Western Europe, absolute beaut!!

“Modern man believes he is free because he can choose between hundreds of products, yet he is enslaved by the very system that offers those choices.”

Technology doesn’t enslave through force. It enslaves through dependency. We adopt new tools for convenience, only to find that we can’t live without them. And once we’re dependent, the system controls us—not through coercion, but through necessity.

Jacques Ellul - The Technological Society