Thursday, December 08, 2022

Dreams of Ukraine and plagiarism

This morning, just before waking, I dreamt that many of my peers (Jonathan Drake stands out) had been drafted to join in the conflict in Ukraine. Part of me was thinking of course that it was ridiculous that men of our age should be subject to a draft at all (though of course the Ukrainians aren't thinking like this at all right about now. They just ask themselves what they can do to get through their current hellish situation). Another part was glad that I, unlike my friends, hadn't been called up.

I must say that I had been thinking more and more in recent days about what people in Ukraine are going through now. We mustn't forget, though it is a reasonable critique that we do often forget what is going on in Yeman, in Tigray, in Baltimore, etc., and that managing down our fears and anxieties about the suffering of others is an essential precondition of functioning in the world. Being is complex.

My dream also had a plagiarism fear in it. I was shaking in my boots that the powers-that-be would figure out that my master's thesis had been 100% lifted from someone else, which was plain as the face of day on the thing if you just bothered to read it.

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