Just feel a bit despairing today

Feeling hopeless.

I'm not one for the sunny side of anything. There was a temperature check here on how we felt after the Forstater ruling and whether it was an indication of a turning tide. I was 4/10 at best. My deepest apprehension for some years has been how far all of this deeply illiberal policing of speech and ideas is a proxy for progress towards a future that history tells us would be akin to some aspects of totalitarianism.

That said - setting aside the meat of the sermon, I've long admired passages from CS Lewis' Learning in War-Time

The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself.
…
Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never come. Periclean Athens leaves us not only the Parthenon but, significantly, the Funeral Oration. The insects have chosen a different line: they have sought first the material welfare and security of the hive, and presumable they have their reward. Men are different.They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffold, discuss, the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature.

ontheruinofbritain.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/excerpts-from-cs-lewiss-sermon-learning-in-war-time/

(I was tempted to dig this out by the discussion of the love of shiny things and combs discussed in the MN thread about the DNA testing of the non binary Finnish warrior.)

Me too OP. I'm normally quite resilient but the knowledge that a government has actually told adults in schools to keep children's secrets about something so fundamental as believing they can change sex has floored me. I know that trans activists don't give a toss about safeguarding children but for a government to promote the modus operandi of every child predator going is unbelievable.

Yesterday I spotted a plethora of white, green, violet ribbons in my local park with lovely little labels attached. Today, I walked again. Some had gone, but some were still there. I can't tell you how it lifted me up. Ribboning wimmin - it is an easy thing to do. When things are dark, the only thing to do is to lift others up. Little gestures make a difference. But I am not dismissing your concerns on these things. Little by little women will get heard, but only en masse I feel.

Apologies, didn’t notice your question. Are we talking someone adult and male, or a naive teenager or…?

I am too. Everything seems dark at the moment, in particular regarding the awful situation in Scotland, where those who should know better are doubling down to keep the fox inside the henhouse, despite the fox demonstrating over and over why he shouldn’t be anywhere near, amongst other Scottish horrors, such as one woman’s repeated court case delays.

Hope there’s some positive news soon.