The Essential Catalyst

The Essential Catalyst is an essay I wrote during the latter half of 2021, endeavoring to question the lack of compassion evident in our busy modern lives and, if we truly want to live better lives, what can be done about it? In taking heavy inspiration from Albert Camus in his essay on human nature and rebellion, sufficiently titled The Rebel, I attempt to argue that our lives, though inherently absurd, are each individually meaningful and that, if our goal is truly to work towards human solidarity—peace, in whatever form that happens to take—then an equal consideration into the lives of all beings is to be made. The ultimate contingency here is indeed the point of question though. Where is the limit and how can we address its practicality in our own lives? If capitalism is so subsuming, how can we possibly elicit change when it seems as if nothing we do is capable of impacting real, positive change in our communities? If these are questions you’d like to explore, give this essay a chance and reflect on where your limit is drawn in the inevitably eroding sands of time.

The Essential Catalyst is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0), which means anyone is free to share and adapt the work under the same license with attribution.