u/Lower-Knee-8585

Between 1926 and 1932, Elizabeth Craig, an American dancer, was the lover and confidante of Louis Destouches, a medical doctor working for the League of Nations. Neither of them could have known that he would eventually become the infamous Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

Years later, Craig recalled an unsettling incident from their time together in Holland.

One evening, Louis took her to a street where young women were allegedly selling access to their children. The mothers would walk along the street with their children, hand them over to men, receive a dollar, and disappear inside with them.

Craig was horrified.

She asked him why he didn't do something about it if he found it so terrible. His answer was essentially that it was already illegal, but the police simply looked the other way.

She couldn't understand why he would show her something so horrible without trying to intervene.

His response stayed with me:

«“I just wanted you to know. You who think that everybody is so beautiful and nice, that life is so simple, that all you have to do is have a happy attitude and life will be a beautiful journey.”»

That feels like a very Céline-like sentiment.

For him, human existence wasn't a beautiful journey waiting to be appreciated. It was a journey into the night, through suffering, cruelty, absurdity and degradation. His novels seem almost obsessed with stripping away the comforting illusions we create about ourselves and society.

And perhaps that's where Céline becomes interesting beyond his reputation as a provocateur.

The ugliness isn't necessarily the point. It's the confrontation with the ugliness.

One of his biographers described the shock of his novels as a means of awakening our social conscience by forcing us to confront human injustice and the uncomfortable realization that we are often powerless in the face of suffering.

But I wonder if Céline went even further than that.

There is something profoundly nihilistic in his worldview: the suspicion that beneath our moral systems and ideals there is simply chaos, desire, suffering and death. If there is no objective meaning or morality, what ultimately separates justice from injustice?

That brings to mind the old maxim associated with Hassan-i Sabbah:

“Nothing is true; everything is permitted.”

And perhaps this is where Céline overlaps with Schopenhauer and Leopardi. Not necessarily because they all arrive at exactly the same philosophical conclusions, but because they refuse to look away from suffering.

Schopenhauer wrote of Leopardi that he was completely absorbed by “the mockery and wretchedness of this existence,” yet somehow transformed that pessimism into something compelling and even stimulating.

I think Céline does something similar, although in a much more violent and disturbing way. Maybe that's what makes writers like him so difficult to dismiss.

I look at people around me sometimes and wonder just how much people actually change as they grow older.

When I was young, I remember playing football with some guys who were incredibly rough. They would tackle, hit, and kick each other like they were actually fighting, even though they were friends. I used to wonder, “Why are you this aggressive toward someone you literally came to play with?” 😂

Looking back now, I sometimes wonder whether that was simply who they were at that age, or whether they were still learning how to express and control themselves. Maybe the aggression was always there, but as they grew older, they learned how to manage it differently.

It makes me think about how much of our personality is actually fixed and how much is shaped by age, experience, and our environment.

Hello everyone, I’m a university student currently at the final stage of completing my degree. I’m going through a difficult financial period and struggling to keep up with accommodation costs and basic necessities such as food etc. I’ve been trying to manage with the little money I have, but things have become difficult, this past few months. I’m seeking 60$, mainly to help with accommodation this month. Anything extra will help with food and other basic things. I understand everyone has their own financial responsibilities so I'm also open to any ideas that might be helpful since I have literally thought about nearly everything. I can receive help through paypal. Feel free to message me if you can help. I'll also reply to any questions in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

Is it language? Family traditions? Food? Religion? Music? Clothing? Ancestry? Geography? Shared history? Or simply identifying with the continent?

I've been thinking about this because "African culture" can sometimes sound like one single thing, when Africa is made up of thousands of communities with their own languages, traditions, histories and ways of life. What is considered traditionally African in Kenya might be completely unfamiliar to someone from Senegal, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe or Morocco. Yet there are also cultural similarities that connect communities across very different parts of the continent.

Interestingly, African cultures have never existed in complete isolation. Communities traded with one another, migrated, intermarried and interacted with people from outside Africa. Languages changed, foods were adopted, religions spread, and traditions evolved. The paper also describes African culture as something expressed through music, dance, art, sculpture, beadwork, oral traditions, religion, cuisine and language.

That makes me wonder whether cultural identity is really about keeping everything "pure" and unchanged. Can a culture absorb something from another culture and still remain distinctly its own? If an African family speaks English or French at home, eats foods that came through centuries of outside contact, practices a global religion, listens to both African and foreign music, but still maintains its own customs and sense of belonging, is that any less African?

I think African identity isn't defined by one particular language, religion, food or tradition. Maybe it's something more complicated like a combination of history, community, memory, values, experiences and the way people choose to identify themselves.

If you had to explain African cultural identity to someone who knew absolutely nothing about Africa, what would you say makes something "African"? And can something be African even if it originally came from somewhere else?

Is it language? Family traditions? Food? Religion? Music? Clothing? Ancestry? Geography? Shared history? Or simply identifying with the continent?

I've been thinking about this because "African culture" can sometimes sound like one single thing, when Africa is made up of thousands of communities with their own languages, traditions, histories and ways of life. What is considered traditionally African in Kenya might be completely unfamiliar to someone from Senegal, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe or Morocco. Yet there are also cultural similarities that connect communities across very different parts of the continent.

The interesting part is that African cultures have never existed in complete isolation. Communities traded with one another, migrated, intermarried and interacted with people from outside Africa. Languages changed, foods were adopted, religions spread, and traditions evolved. The paper also describes African culture as something expressed through music, dance, art, sculpture, beadwork, oral traditions, religion, cuisine and language.

That makes me wonder whether cultural identity is really about keeping everything "pure" and unchanged. Can a culture absorb something from another culture and still remain distinctly its own? If an African family speaks English or French at home, eats foods that came through centuries of outside contact, practices a global religion, listens to both African and foreign music, but still maintains its own customs and sense of belonging, is that any less African?

Maybe African identity isn't defined by one particular language, religion, food or tradition. Maybe it's something more complicated like a combination of history, community, memory, values, experiences and the way people choose to identify themselves.

If you had to explain African cultural identity to someone who knew absolutely nothing about Africa, what would you say makes something "African"? And can something be African even if it originally came from somewhere else?

https://preview.redd.it/l32ofwbm8eoh1.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f966a504fcaa547feabd67b811d23856b400a650

Here we have beans cooked into a watery stew, served with chapati.

I've been thinking about safe spaces in this country where people can go to if they are in trouble but I'm still not convinced there's any safe place out there. I see here on r/Kenya MODs post mental health professionals and their handles but how many people know of them? How many people even know whether they're doing well mentally or not and that they need to talk to someone? Posting the contacts of therapists on Reddit is useful, but it assumes several things. That the person knows they're struggling, that they have enough self-awareness to seek help, that they have internet access, that they can afford the professional, and that they're psychologically capable of reaching out. Someone who is severely depressed, homeless, abused, suicidal, addicted, abandoned or simply overwhelmed may not do any of those things. How slow are we bana.

Anyway, my concern is on the lack of a working support system for the welfare of those in need. And before you jump in without any deep thoughts on the same you just read through and shut up. Don't drop that card anga sijui ''as a country we've a long way to go/ na funds zitatoka wapi.'' This damn country has seen 5 presidents so far. Someone confirm to me that all government hotlines work? Is there any? 62 years now going 63 and they have been unable to establish a welfare check system. We have systems for dealing with people after something has happened, police after a crime, hospitals after someone becomes critically ill, courts after a dispute, children's services after abuse is reported. But where is the ordinary mechanism for identifying people who are progressively falling apart before the crisis becomes catastrophic? Hospitals are shit and so is the judicial system.

You walk around town and can see people struggling and suffering. What strikes me most is that we tend to operate on informal rescue systems rather than institutional ones. If you're struggling, you're expected to have a parent, sibling, friend, church(I have a personal problem with this one), chama, neighbour, employer or huh a well connected person who can intervene. But what happens when you don't have those people? I'm not saying that Kenya can be, you know 'a heaven on earth type of place.' It's that there's a certain level of negligence of duty. How often do you see police patrol around your place? Get CBD(nairobi) and major towns out of this, how often do you see them?

Come to church, I see them organising mega crusades every other day, your first lady some time back even used to conduct prayers in state house, my question is, who do their charity go to? Seriously though, who? I don't know of any person who has been helped by the 'mercy' of church. I do acknowledge that churches and religious organisations do a substantial amount of charity work. The problem is that charity is not the same thing as a welfare system. Charity is somewhat discretionary. A functioning public system is supposed to be predictable. You shouldn't have to be lucky enough to encounter the “right” church for you to receive basic assistance. I can however give credit to Equity bank. Their wings to fly program deserves its flowers.

Kids get mistreated and find themselves running away from home. They end up in the streets and somehow we despise them because of that. We often criminalise or stigmatise the consequences of whatever happened to them. We see the child begging, stealing, sniffing glue or sleeping on cardboard and ask, “What's wrong with these children?” when the more important question is “What happened to the adults and institutions that were supposed to protect them?” See what this life has made you become unremorseful? As long as they're not of our blood it doesn't matter. Tell me of any functional public rescue centre that has helped take kids out of the streets?

Ndindi rolled out a meal programme for his constituency, why only his? Does it mean his constituency is more funded? Doesn't matter, those students have managed to beat hunger than other students from different regions. That aside, there has been a rise in dv cases. Husband kills wife, wife kills husband, kids get killed etc. What measure have we taken? Tell me just one that has proof and is functional? Nkt. I dare you to go back to your primary school, and tell me you can see 'some' improvements if there's any. Don't you think we need a functional systems? I watched some old government retard say all of us are corrupt and that he has also eat from the publics sweat. Who even does that? What is wrong with this country?

After 62 years of independence, shouldn't there be a minimum institutional safety net between a person and complete social collapse? Not perfection. Not free everything. Not “government must solve everyone's problems.” Just a functioning system where a child wont have to be lucky to find protection/ a suicidal person won't have to know which Reddit moderator has a therapist's number / a woman experiencing escalating domestic violence won't have to wait until she's almost dead before the system takes her seriously / a hungry student won't have to hope that their MP happens to start a feeding programme and a homeless person won't become invisible simply because nobody has formally reported them. You tell me.

Just hear me out. I’m not looking for sympathy, but I’ve noticed something genuinely disturbing. Someone can ask for help online and instead of simply scrolling past if you can’t help, people will go out of their way to mock them, downvote them into oblivion, or say things that make an already bad situation worse.

If you don’t want to help, that’s fine. But why actively make someone’s situation worse just because they had the courage to ask?