Few things are more astonishing than a thin piece of paper or a set of digital numbers that can decide whether we eat today, whether a child gets medicine, or whether a society collapses. It is tempting to treat money as natural, like rainfall or gravity. But money is, in truth, something far stranger: a belief, a habit, a dance we all perform without entirely understanding why.

What is money, really? Someone who values individual liberty might tell you that money is freedom, a neutral medium that allows humans to express value and make choices. Someone focused on social power might argue that money is control, an instrument used to mask the exploitation of the many by the few. A banker might call it a tool. A monk might call it a temptation.

But there is another, quieter way to look at it. One that doesn’t shout “freedom!” or “oppression!” but whispers, “agreement.” We could say: money is not a thing, it’s a relationship. It doesn’t exist like a rock or a tree. It exists more like love, or law, or shame—real, yes, but made real only through people’s repeated acts of belief.

In this view, money is a symbol, floating above us like a cloud that we’ve agreed to pretend is solid. We build cities on this cloud, trade lives across it, go to war over it. It is powerful not because it is gold or paper, but because we say so.

And yet, that saying is not meaningless. It has weight. To walk into a shop and offer a credit card for food is not a delusion; it is a demonstration of collective faith. You believe that your card will work. The cashier believes the same. The bank believes you’re good for it. Everyone around you, without speaking, agrees to play along. And so the meal is yours.

This is why money is real, but constructed. We don’t dig it out of the earth like truth. We make it together, then forget we did. It is a kind of shared amnesia wrapped in daily transactions.

Some say this is dangerous. And they are right. For when we forget that money is a creation, we start treating it like a god. We sacrifice time, health, and relationships to it. We blame people for being poor, as if money were air and they had simply forgotten to breathe. We forget that behind every coin is a system of values, a culture, that gave it meaning in the first place.

Others say that the system should be abolished. Perhaps. But it is important to remember: even if capitalism were dismantled tomorrow, money in some form would almost certainly return. Why? Because humans need ways to store trust, to count obligations, to trade energy. We may no longer use cash, but we will still trade something—favors, food, information, influence.

The person who values individual liberty is right that freedom matters. People should be able to choose what they value. The person focused on social power is right that power matters. Not all choices are free. We can simply add: what we value is always constructed. Value does not exist out there in the world like a mineral waiting to be found. It exists between us, in relationships, stories, fears, and hope.

If money is a myth, it is one of the most successful myths humanity has ever told. But like all myths, it can become dangerous when we stop questioning it. The goal is not to destroy the myth, but to make it visible again, to see it as the fragile, human, invented thing it is.

We can then begin to ask better questions. Not “how much is it worth?” but “what kind of world does this kind of money create?” Not “how do we get richer?” but “what do we want to value together?”

For in the end, money is a mirror. It reflects what we choose to worship. If we look closely, we might see not just numbers or coins, but ourselves—hoping, bargaining, dreaming—and perhaps, choosing again.

Normative politics—those visions of what ought to be—have long animated revolutions, inspired movements, and offered moral compass when societies drift. Yet, as much as they provide clarity and purpose, normative politics also carry dangers. When ideals are mistaken for blueprints, or when visions become demands for purity, politics can lose its openness and turn into control. What begins as a promise can become a cage.

At its best, normative politics helps us imagine better futures. It names injustice, affirms dignity, and demands accountability. It draws lines when compromise becomes complicity. But at its worst, it freezes the world into moral binaries. It assumes that one worldview—however noble—is enough to govern a society made of plural experiences, contested truths, and unfinished stories.

One of the most persistent pitfalls of normative politics is moral overreach. The belief that because an idea is “good,” it must also be imposed. This easily slips into moral arrogance, where disagreement is not respected but pathologized. Dissenters are cast as enemies, not interlocutors. And what started as a struggle for justice becomes an obsession with conformity.

This is where power hides in idealism. For even the most righteous cause can be weaponized. Normative frameworks, once institutionalized, tend to centralize judgment. They create gatekeepers of truth, often punishing those who deviate—not because they are wrong, but because they threaten coherence. The political becomes moralized, and the moral becomes politicized, leaving little space for ambiguity, irony, or genuine disagreement.

Another danger is performative idealism. When ideals become currency for validation, politics becomes more about posture than practice. Leaders proclaim justice while enacting exclusion. Movements cite love and solidarity but reproduce hierarchy internally. The words are right, but the structures remain untouched. In such a climate, people lose trust—not in ideals themselves, but in the sincerity of those who speak them.

Normative politics also risks inflexibility. By projecting a fixed vision of the good, it often resists adaptation. But life is unpredictable. Communities evolve. Pain surfaces in unexpected places. No single moral framework can preempt all the tensions that come from real, lived plurality. When politics refuses to adjust, it fractures under its own rigidity—or worse, it coerces people to fit a mold they never chose.

This is not a call to abandon ideals. It is a call to hold them differently. Instead of treating normative visions as final truths, we can see them as working hypotheses—guiding stars rather than destination points. They should orient us, but not imprison us. They should inspire dialogue, not end it.

Good normative politics leaves room for humility. It knows that no side holds all the answers. It seeks alignment, not domination. It treats the political not as a battlefield of moral triumph, but as a space of shared navigation—messy, uncertain, but necessary.

This also means recovering the relational nature of politics. Rather than asking only “What is the good?” we ask “How do we relate well, even amid disagreement?” This shift foregrounds processes over doctrines, practices over dogmas. It honors the fragile, ongoing work of building together.

To avoid the pitfalls of normative politics, we need less sanctimony and more curiosity. Less purity and more process. Fewer proclamations of truth and more invitations to explore it together.

After all, no ideal is worth pursuing if it requires the silencing of others. And no society is just if it forgets that every normative claim is also a political act, shaped by power, context, and history.

Let us continue to imagine. Let us dream of better. But let us also remain grounded—always aware that the moral high ground, if left unchecked, can become just another tower of control.

In every country, and especially in those marked by division, there is an urgent question we must ask: What are majority privileges? It is not a question meant to accuse, but to understand. Because wherever there is a dominant group, be it by ethnicity, religion, language, class, or even culture, there is also a pattern of unspoken advantage. And if we are to build a society that honors dignity and safety for all, we must learn to see the unseen privileges that shape the everyday lives of those in the majority.

Majority privilege is often quiet. It hides in language that doesn’t need translation, in rituals that are considered “normal,” in holidays that require no explanation. It is present in laws that assume certain ways of life and in institutions that mirror only one version of history. It is the comfort of seeing oneself reflected in the symbols of the nation: flags, anthems, textbooks, uniforms. It is walking into a room and assuming it was designed with you in mind.

These privileges are not always earned. They are inherited, extended, and repeated through habit more than intent. That is what makes them so powerful and so difficult to notice. When you are part of a majority, it is easy to confuse what is familiar with what is fair. But comfort is not the same as justice.

Democracy, in its deepest sense, is not simply the rule of the majority. It is the protection of all. It is the careful work of making sure that power, even when it flows from numbers, does not crush those who are fewer or different. The danger of ignoring this is what political thinkers have long warned against: the tyranny of the majority.

This tyranny is rarely dramatic. More often, it is slow and procedural. It happens when public policies reflect only one story, when laws reinforce a single worldview, when belonging depends on assimilation, and when dissent is painted as disloyalty. It is a tyranny not always of violence, but of silence: of muffled voices, of invisibility, of being told that your pain is an inconvenience to national unity.

The antidote is not to reverse the hierarchy, replacing one dominance with another. Nor is it to flatten society into sameness. The goal is subtler and braver: to build a society of shared dignity, where difference is not merely tolerated but respected, where no one is asked to shrink themselves to fit the mold of belonging.

This requires that we look at power not as a possession, but as a relation. It shifts with context, and so must our attention. In some rooms, someone’s voice is always louder. In others, someone is always first to be questioned. Understanding majority privilege means noticing how the floor tilts in our favor or against us, not to assign blame, but to reimagine balance.

A just society is one where agency is preserved. That is, where every person, regardless of background, has the ability to speak, to act, to refuse, and to belong without begging. Agency is not about getting what one wants, but about being taken seriously, having choices that matter, and being able to shape the world one inhabits.

But agency without safety is fragile. And safety without agency is suffocating. The two must walk together. True political friendship begins here, not in agreement, but in mutual regard. It means we listen not to convert but to understand. It means we hold space for others without demanding they disappear into our expectations.

Political friendship asks something rare in our time: that we care not only for the people who resemble us, but also for those who challenge our assumptions. It asks that we stay loyal to those not like us, not out of guilt or fear, but because the common good is never common if it excludes.

In a divided country, these ideas may sound idealistic. But perhaps they are the most practical things we can reach for. Because where division runs deep, so must the commitment to fairness. And where there is fear, there must also be room for courage: not the courage of dominance, but the courage of humility.

So let us ask: What privileges do I carry without realizing? What histories have I inherited without questioning? Who remains unseen in the spaces I move through with ease?

These are not accusations. They are invitations: to become gentler with power, to become more precise in our ideas of justice, and to become more generous in our vision of who belongs in the story of “us.”

Only then can we begin to build something that lasts: not merely a system of rules, but a culture of dignity. A way of living together that honors agency, that defends safety, and that holds the door open for political friendship to grow.

We live in a world haunted by two truths: that groups give us strength, and that groups can become prisons. For many communities scarred by colonial rule, racism, or the erasure of their language and customs, collective rights can offer a way to recover lost trust and dignity. Yet the moment we turn identity into rigid law, we risk building new cages even as we tear down old ones. To honor shared history without fossilizing it, to protect the vulnerable without creating new tyrants, we must learn to treat group rights as evolving tools for justice, not as permanent fixtures.

Why, then, do groups need special rights? Think of language itself. When a mother tongue is silenced, a way of seeing the world is lost. By protecting languages and sacred places, societies can help communities rebuild what colonizers once destroyed. In New Zealand, returning land to the Māori did more than restore acres; it returned a people’s voice and gave them the chance to care for their own stories. In Canada’s far north, the Inuit now help design school lessons and manage wildlife, blending ancient rhythms with new concerns. These measures are not about favoritism. They are corrective steps, aiming to restore what was taken by force or neglect.

Yet every corrective tool carries a risk of overreach. Rights meant to heal can harden into dogma. When leaders claim to speak for an entire community, they may silence those who question tradition—young people who blend old songs with new rhythms, women who seek equality within cultural rituals, or LGBTQ members who wish to live fully. When culture becomes a museum piece, frozen in time, it ceases to nourish the living. And when legal categories fix people into narrow boxes, individuals may feel forced to perform a single identity in order to keep their hard‑won protections.

These dangers lead us to the idea that group rights should breathe. They must be provisional, like scaffolding around a new building. If rights are never reviewed, they calcify. In some parts of Botswana, for example, indigenous land agreements come up for negotiation every ten years. This gives communities a chance to adapt as their needs change. Elsewhere, cultural councils prove their fairness by ensuring that women, youth, and city dwellers all have a say—preventing power from gathering in the hands of a few elders. And wherever possible, people must be free to step away from a group label without losing basic protections, so that personal choice is never sacrificed to collective identity.

Another key to breathing rights is to recognize that belonging is a journey, not a birthright. Blood alone cannot define a person’s connection to a tradition. In Hawaii, for instance, homestead rights extend to everyone who traces half their ancestry to the islands, acknowledging that heritage often blends across generations. In Catalonia, teaching children in the local tongue does not ban other languages. Instead it opens the door to true bilingualism, allowing every student to move freely between worlds. And when the ancient tattoos of the Māori are etched with modern tools, they carry old stories into new skins, reminding us that culture must evolve to stay alive.

Philosophers have long wrestled with these questions of justice. Jean‑Jacques Rousseau spoke of the “general will,” the common desire for a good life that differs from the mere sum of private wishes. John Rawls imagined a society designed behind a veil of ignorance, where no one knows their rank or role, so that the rules chosen would be fair to all. Their insights remind us that group rights must serve the many, not entrench the few.

At its best, group rights become a mirror of our readiness to share power. They mend broken trust by giving those left out a real seat at the table. But they can just as easily become new weapons of exclusion if they allow some voices to shout louder than others. We can test their worth by asking simple questions: Do these rights help people feel more free? Can a young poet honor her grandmother’s tongue while writing in slang? Can a village protect its forest without driving away outsiders who also dream of one green world?

Ultimately, group rights should be tools, not tombs. They should serve our messy, glorious task of becoming human together. They need review, renewal, and the humility to change. Only then can they repair old wounds without creating new scars—and only then can we find the balance between belonging and freedom that makes community worth its name.

History is not what happened. History is what we say happened. And in that distinction lies a quiet revolution of thought — one that invites us not to take the past as a monument, but as a living argument. To read history, truly read it, is not to memorize dates and kings, but to listen to voices, silences, and the craft of remembering itself.

We live in a world built on historical claims: of ownership, of victory, of loss. Borders exist because of historical events. Flags fly because of historical memory. And yet, curiously, few of us are taught to read history with the same care we might read a poem — with doubt, curiosity, interpretation, and above all, humility.

The comforting myth is that history is a line — neat, chronological, moving from cavemen to smart cities. But history is more like a mosaic that someone keeps rearranging depending on where they're standing. To read history critically is to reject the idea that there is one true, fixed meaning. The past does not lie still. It shifts each time a new storyteller tells it. History is influenced by constant negotiations. Empires once celebrated are now mourned. Revolutions once condemned are now romanticized. The "truth" of yesterday becomes the controversy of today.
This does not mean we abandon history to chaos or lies. It means we approach it as a practice, not a possession. We ask: Who is telling the story? For whom? What is left out? What is the cost of remembering it this way?

Let us talk about identity. States and nations often speak of themselves as if they were born fully formed. “We have always been this people, speaking this language, living on this land.” But such claims, though poetic, are strategic. They use history to harden the fluidity of culture into a shield or a sword. To read history wisely is to recognize that identity is a story we choose to tell about ourselves — sometimes for survival, sometimes for domination, often both. Cultures evolve, blend, borrow. Heroes are constructed to inspire; villains to warn. No one is purely one thing, ever. This doesn't mean we should condemn taking pride in heritage at all times. It means we should wear it lightly — like a robe, not a cage. We might ask: How have others lived here before us? How might our identity include them, too?

Every history book is "full of absences". The servant in the background of the painting. The woman whose name is forgotten. The child who died before records were kept. The fields, once full, now buried under concrete. The communities erased with no monuments to remember them. Reading history, then, is not only about what is said, but about who is missing. A critical reading listens to the margins. It asks, What didn’t make it into the archive? Whose memories were too inconvenient to preserve? Sometimes, we are the ones forgotten. Other times, we are the ones doing the forgetting.

The devil is in the detail and the power is there. There is a curious detail about many historical texts. They are often written to flatter the powerful. Victories are glorious, laws are wise, and the leaders are brave. But in the "footnotes", it seems not much so. In the economic policies, the logistical decisions, the betrayals dressed as diplomacy, the truth hums quietly. To read history well is to notice where power hides. To recognize how cronyism and elitism dresses up as legacy, how domination claims the language of civilization. Not to breed cynicism, but to nurture discernment. Power rarely introduces itself as power. It arrives wrapped in principle and decorated with tradition. To read history critically is to ask: How did power get here? Whom did it serve? And how does it ask to be remembered?

Now, how do we read it? We might also read history not only to analyze, but to compassionate and to learn. There is something intimate in realizing that people in every century struggled with doubt, heartbreak, greed, beauty, and failure. The philosopher in exile, the teenage soldier, the widowed mother of five — they all lived in the same emotional landscapes we do. History, when read very well, is a mirror of our fragility and strengths. It reminds us that the present is not the culmination of progress, but another moment of becoming. And this humbles us. We may even begin to forgive ourselves and each other. We may do so more easily by knowing that none of us were given clean beginnings.

Reading can be an act of ethical imagination. In the end, to read history critically is not to deny the past, but to treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Not as a final word, but as a conversation. Not as an rigid inheritance, but as a responsibility. We do not study history to relive it. We study it to ask what we must now choose, what burdens we carry forward, and what stories we might write differently for those who come after us.

So the next time you open a history book, pause before you dive in. Ask: Whose world is this? What truths were chosen? And how might I, as a reader, do justice not to the facts, but to the human complexity behind them?

The state (usually a nation state) is often imagined as a fixed, bounded, and self-justifying entity as if its authority emerges from some inherent essence, a timeless legitimacy, or a divine mandate. But through a critical lens, such assumptions crumble. The state is not a natural or inevitable structure as it insists. It is a system, constructed over time, contingent on context, shaped by contestation, and maintained by flows of inputs and outputs. It is not what it claims to be, but what it does, and how it is perceived, negotiated, and challenged.

Understanding the state as a system of extraction and distribution allows us to deconstruct its power while demanding accountability. It allows us to look beyond its claims to legality or tradition and ask deeper questions: Who gives to the state? Who benefits from the state? What justifies the exchanges we are asked to accept?

Every state, no matter how democratic or authoritarian, relies on inputs. The resources may be material, symbolic, and emotional. State extracts or receives these  resources from the people and communities within its reach.

• Resources and Taxes: The most visible form of inputs including wealth, land, and labors. They are extracted in the name of development or protection.
  
• Loyalty and Legitimacy: A subtler form of power. People are asked to accept the state's authority, often through rituals, myths, flags, elections, or coercive threats.
• Compliance and Order: The everyday submission to regulations, borders, identification, and bureaucratic routines — often accepted not because they are just, but because resistance is costly.
• Security and Surveillance: People are required to expose themselves to state scrutiny for the promise of protection. This is a trade often made under duress.
  

None of these inputs are morally neutral or naturally owed. They are negotiated claims, often backed by force, fear, or ideological persuasion.

Let's talk about outputs. States justify their existence by pointing to the goods, services, and protections they offer. These are supposed to be the returns for the inputs taken. They include:

• Security: Protection from violence, both external and internal. This is often the state’s strongest claim to legitimacy — the monopoly of force in exchange for peace.
• Infrastructure and Services: Roads, education, health, communication — sometimes delivered efficiently, often unevenly or selectively.
• Legal Recognition: Citizenship, rights, documentation — the tools to participate in formal life.
• Symbolic Unity: A sense of belonging, nationhood, identity — often excluding those who do not fit dominant narratives.

Yet in practice, these outputs are not distributed equally. Entire regions or communities may give inputs without receiving remarkable benefits. Marginalized groups often find themselves systematically excluded — over-policed but under-protected, taxed but under-served, loyal but unrecognized.

This imbalance is the heart of political discontent. When the inputs extracted from people do not translate into dignity, security, rights, or care, the state reveals itself not as a neutral arbiter but as a hierarchical apparatus, serving particular interests while marginalizing others. For the powerful, the state becomes an amplifier of wealth and control. For the vulnerable, it is a gatekeeper, an enforcer, or even an occupier. The asymmetry between input and output is not a design flaw — it is often a reflection of political hierarchies embedded in the state system.

Because the state is a system — and not a rigid essence — it can be contested, reshaped, and resisted. Its inputs can be withheld. Its outputs can be demanded. Its structure can be made more transparent, participatory, and just.

Let us reject the idea that the Nation State is the only possible way. Instead, it asks communities to imagine alternative systems: federations, networks, councils, cooperatives, or more creative ones. The crucial point is the models should make the power more accountable. The input and output are aligned with mutual respect and negotiated legitimacy.

This also means taking seriously the plurality of political heritage. Different peoples may have different roots and various communities might need different relationships to political authority. Uniformity under a centralized nation state may not be the answer. We must design systems of governance that allow local autonomy, cultural dignity, and horizontal coordination, rather than enforcing homogenized rule.

In this way, to see the state as a system is to liberate our imagination. It is to stop worshipping the state and start evaluating it. It is for asking whether it truly serves the people who sustain it. It is to embrace skepticism towards power and to defend the Common Good. The state, in this view, is rather a machine than destiny. It is a system that is powerful, complex, often extractive — but ultimately, built by human hands. And what is built by humans can be rethought, repurposed, or dismantled in pursuit of common goods that honor human dignity and collective agency.