Editor’s Letter – M2 July/August 2021

Tom Hiddleston, for all intents and purposes, might be a really nice guy who wishes the world all nice things, but he makes the perfect villain as the God of Mischief in Marvel’s Loki. Like a lot of narrative story telling, where we as an audience are asked to follow and empathise with the antihero, the lines between good and evil become a little blurred. There seems to have been a little bit of a development of late in cinema and TV where the good guys have become a little more fallible and loaded with demons, while the bad guys have become funnier and more loveable. This blurring between good and bad is probably more realistic, of course.

Ironically though, real life seems to be getting less blurred and nuanced, in terms of who is right or wrong. Politically and ideologically, we seem to have become very polarised and galvanised into certain camps. And we just seem to live finding our tribes. I’m also not just talking about the Gen Zers taking to TikTok to mock Millennial’s tight jeans. Even beyond borders, the world is dividing itself into political and economic ideals that were formed far before any of us were born, and our affiliations will influence not only our conduct at family gatherings and on LinkedIn, but also our approach to policies around Covid.

In this issue, Dr. Sydney Savion takes a look back at the forming of these ideals and the current polarisation and asks if there might be a future in between the extremes. At this point, I was really hoping to tie this note up with a profound quote from Loki that might give us some home for the future. The only one I could find though mentioned something about him sitting back watching the world burn. Let’s go with one from Tom Hiddleston instead… “We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realise that we only have one.”