Society
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Responsibility Without Permission
Photo by Siddhant Kumar on Unsplash Author’s Note This piece was born from watching someone I love do something difficult and quietly brave. My wife never set out to lead… Read more.
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The Virtue of Rest
Photo by Carla Santiago on Unsplash High in the ash branches of Yggdrasil, Odin hung himself. Not by the hand of enemies, nor by the fall of fortune, but by… Read more.
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The Lives of Men
Photo by Lukas Rychvalsky on Unsplash Author’s Note Most of my writing looks outward — at culture, systems, leadership, and the broader arcs that shape how we live. This piece,… Read more.
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The Comfort of Lies
Photo by Christina Langford-Miller on Unsplash Author’s Note This isn’t a light read, and it wasn’t a light one to write. I didn’t set out to write about Plato. I… Read more.
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In Whose Service?
Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash Author’s Note This began as a question about an old god, and turned into something harder to leave behind. Silence is never just absence.… Read more.
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The Forgotten Roots of Labor Day
Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash Author’s Note When long weekends roll around, I try to take a moment to remember why the holiday exists at all. Labor Day is… Read more.
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The Mirror and the Self: On Wholeness, Not Perfection
If you’re reading this on masqueradeandmadness.com … Photo by Михаил Секацкий on Unsplash Author’s Note: I have spent most of my life circling mirrors of one kind or another. The… Read more.
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Through the Looking Glass: Vector Edition
Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash Author’s Note This piece may reveal more of my professional world than most entries on Masquerade & Madness. It began as a technical side… Read more.
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The hero falls
Photo by Eric Ward on Unsplash Author’s Note I wrote this piece in a moment where I wasn’t sure if I could keep doing the right thing. Not because I… Read more.
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When the Hands Let Go
Photo by Colin Lloyd on Unsplash Author’s Note This piece wasn’t written with distance. It was written with dirt under the nails and the weight of millennial disillusionment in the… Read more.
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A System That Eats Its Children: On Generational Extraction
Photo by Raph Howald on Unsplash They still whisper his name when the fire burns low. Not in temples now, but in the thin corridors of skyscrapers and in the… Read more.
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The End of Permanence
Photo by Colton Duke on Unsplash Darkness. Not the kind that settles behind closed eyes, but something deeper—a velvet void, unshaped and infinite. He didn’t remember falling asleep. Or waking. Only the disorienting… Read more.
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On Land and Legacy
Photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash Author’s Note If you’ve read my work here before, you know I tend to explore the long arc—philosophy, ethics, cultural movement. Big ideas framed… Read more.
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The Medusa Doctrine: Walking with Fear
Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash Author’s Note Most people, in public settings, see me as confident—logical (perhaps too much), and methodical. Even my wife talks about my presence in… Read more.
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A Stronger Mercy: What Endures After the Shot
Photo by Specna Arms on Unsplash It was a clean shot—center mass at fifteen meters. The sergeant hadn’t meant to kill, but he hadn’t meant to hesitate either; drilled reflex squeezed… Read more.
