Have you ever noticed that little voice narrating your every move — the one that panics during exams, delivers Oscar-worthy shower speeches, and replays that one embarrassing Year 8 moment like a cursed highlight reel? That inner narrator is called an internal monologue and plot twist: not everyone has one.
Last Friday, some Sixth Form Classics students had the privilege to attend a conference at the Harrodian School. Richard Jenkyns spoke about heroism in Homer and Virgil, and in passing raised an intriguing question: could Aeneas be seen as a Stoic hero? The idea stayed with me. The familiar complaint that Aeneas is colourless, passive, and merely a pawn of fate has never quite convinced me. Yet his moments of irrational furor also fail to define a character who is, at his core, devoted, pious, and deeply reflective.
Some of you may be thinking, well the answer is simple: when you stand up quickly, gravity loans all your blood to your legs for a moment, and your body needs time to pump it back up to your brain. That’s why everything suddenly feels like it’s tilting, your ears ring, and your vision fades a little – your brain isn’t getting enough blood yet.
Well, it isn’t that simple.
The world mourns selectively. One victim is a name, a face, a life, whilst another is a number, a statistic, a political talking point. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, yet the world continues to weigh some deaths more heavily than others. In this article, I will examine the colonial origins of necropolitics, the hierarchy of suffering, and the impact of global governance on systematising inequality.
Conspiracy theories are a hot topic at the moment with cases such as Paloma Shemirani circulating the media once again this October. This is not a new occurrence. They have been prominent in cultures for centuries, such as Flat Earthers appearing in the late 1800s, and even dating back to Ancient Rome with rumours about the death of emperor Nero in 68 AD. Stereotypes around conspiracy theorists tend to label these individuals as uneducated or mentally unwell. However, lesser known psychological factors also tend to play a crucial role.
