Author: George Tsakraklides

People who suffer from addiction are sometimes mistakenly seen as the most mentally unbalanced members of society. But while they may be highly self-destructive, they are rarely of any threat to other people. Many of them are in fact functional, productive individuals who often manage to joggle their addiction with holding down a job and … Continue reading Inside the Brain of a Dictator: Why Trump Will Ultimately Use the Nuclear Codes

When I was between the ages of five and ten, my father frequently took me to visit my aunts that lived back in the village where he had been raised. It was a small town tucked away in the leafy mountains of north central Greece, a world apart from the hot, dusty, tourist cities of … Continue reading Indestructible

When you’re in a relationship that seems to be hitting the skids faster than you can say “divorce”, it is tempting to romanticize about what could have been, should have been, all the things that went wrong which could have been avoided, and how both of you could have handled situations differently. You maintain an … Continue reading Detoxing from the Hope Porn: Why Collapse Realism Is the New Activism

I must have been 8 years old when my father and I kneeled on the dirt and tore open a small, clear plastic bag with a cheap, generic drawing of a white rose printed on it. Inside, there was a dried-up brown/black wooden stick, slightly longer than a pencil. “This is a rose” he said, … Continue reading Why Roses Have Thorns

Thousands of years ago, when humans started creating the first breeding lines of plants and animals, they had no idea that by doing so they had begun a long process of gradual decimation of the genetic pool that was so critical to the survival of these life forms. By limiting DNA variation often down to … Continue reading Human Pets: A Brief History of Behavioural Eugenics

Yet another way by which religion and the Unhappiness Machine exercised control was through the myth of human purpose: not only were we supreme beings, we also had a “divine purpose”. We were meant to excel in everything, using our incredible intelligence to patronisingly preside over the creation, protecting and destroying it at the same time. An … Continue reading The Myth of Human Purpose