{"id":9299,"date":"2024-12-02T14:11:24","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T19:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=9299"},"modified":"2025-08-24T14:30:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T18:30:22","slug":"midnight-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2024\/12\/02\/midnight-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Midnight Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-429c21a44a5a0691a23df07bf2938749\">Aubrey Sinclair, UTIMES Contributor<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9df88377d5ecb783290f09e7fa641fae\">I\u2019m laying in bed asking myself: did the world fasten the yoke to our necks or did we put it there ourselves? Are we driving the wheel of fate forward or are we the ones being driven? There are times when I feel that the only just path ahead is to scorch the earth to ashes; other times to plant seeds in the cracks of the structures which rape the nation\u2019s soil barren and blot out the hopeful sun which nourishes our youth, hoping feebly that they will be fed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e98dfddbcc59725568a955177b6387e7\">Perhaps any attempt at change is futile. When has ever there been a great measure of peace, prosperity, and equality in a country simultaneously? The injustice of the truth that there never was such a place is harrowing, and debilitating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c1e7bc78dabc3110486b7600c173a3b3\">What remains\u2026 Inner peace? It feels too much like a betrayal to the world to close my eyelids and build an empire of peace for no one but myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c8158f3355bda346465e654963f2a709\">Perhaps the sword of change is time, time dedicated to helping the ones who need it. Sisyphusian as that may be, at least for a time someone somewhere will have a moment of betterment. The futility, the impossibility of lasting peace makes me want to rip God from the heavens and separate the atoms to nothing. Only a winter-hearted maker would contrive a world this cold and still expect praise, but I don\u2019t believe it. Or rather, if such a thing as a sentient creator exists, no man or beast alive has known its mind &#8211; unless it&nbsp;<em>is <\/em>us<em>.&nbsp;<\/em>In which case, God is as kind or cruel as we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6ea22ef10a0693c8312c97724fd4fc25\">Determinism is the most rational conclusion to human behavior that I have been led to, but it makes me so fucking angry! That this\u2014that WE are this cruelty, this injustice, burns a hole in my chest and replaces my heart with stones to throw at the world or be drowned by in sorrow.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aubrey Sinclair, UTIMES Contributor I\u2019m laying in bed asking myself: did the world fasten the yoke to our necks or did we put it there ourselves? Are we driving the wheel of fate forward or are we the ones being driven? There are times when I feel that the only just path ahead is to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7376,7377],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-opinion","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9300,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9299\/revisions\/9300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}