Involution Labs

Author: tinabrescanu

  • Old Age Doesn’t Have to Be a Sexless Destination

    When we talk about ageing, we talk about health, pensions, housing, and care.

    We rarely talk about sex.

    The silence is revealing.

    Older adults are still portrayed as vulnerable, dependent, and increasingly disconnected from desire. Popular culture celebrates young bodies while treating older sexuality as embarrassing, amusing, or invisible.

    Yet the evidence tells a different story.

    Many older adults continue to experience attraction, intimacy, desire, pleasure, and love throughout their lives. The desire for connection does not disappear simply because someone turns sixty, seventy, or eighty.

    The problem is not ageing.

    The problem is ageism.

    Ageism teaches us that growing older means becoming less relevant, less attractive, and less fully human. It encourages younger people to fear ageing and older people to internalise limitations that may never have existed in the first place.

    The pandemic exposed this clearly. Older adults were often spoken about as though they were a single vulnerable population rather than individuals capable of making decisions about their own lives. Protection frequently slipped into paternalism.

    The same dynamic exists around sexuality.

    Older adults are offered care but denied desire.

    Love but not lust.

    Companionship but not eroticism.

    Yet intimacy remains important throughout life—not only because sex can be pleasurable, but because touch, affection, connection, and desire contribute to wellbeing, identity, and quality of life.

    Growing older should not require giving up an essential part of being human.

    Old age is not a waiting room for death.

    It is still life.

    And life deserves pleasure.

  • The Labelling Paradox: How Society Creates Deviance

    What makes someone deviant?

    The obvious answer is behaviour. People break rules, violate norms, and challenge expectations. Yet sociology suggests something more unsettling: behaviour alone is not enough. A person only becomes deviant when others decide they are.

    A child skips school. A teenager experiments with drugs. An employee questions authority. An immigrant struggles to fit in. Whether these actions are seen as mistakes, phases, acts of independence, or signs of deviance depends largely on who is doing the judging.

    Deviance is not simply discovered. It is assigned.

    This is the central insight of labelling theory. Society does not merely respond to deviance; it helps create it. Once a person is labelled delinquent, difficult, unstable, disruptive, or dangerous, the label often becomes more influential than the behaviour itself.

    The label follows them.

    Teachers become cautious. Employers become hesitant. Neighbours become suspicious. Opportunities narrow. Over time, people may begin to see themselves through the eyes of those judging them.

    The act becomes the identity.

    Labelling and Power

    Labelling is never neutral.

    Those with greater social power are usually the ones who decide what is normal and what is deviant. Adults label children. Professionals label clients. Majorities label minorities. Institutions label individuals.

    The ability to define reality is a form of power.

    This does not mean all labels are wrong. Some behaviours are genuinely harmful and societies need ways of responding to them. The question is not whether labels exist, but who gets to apply them and whose interests they serve.

    The same behaviour can be interpreted very differently depending on who performs it.

    A wealthy teenager’s rebellion may be dismissed as youthful experimentation. The same behaviour in a poorer neighbourhood may be treated as evidence of criminality.

    The act remains the same. The reaction changes.

    When Difference Becomes Disorder

    One of the most powerful forms of modern labelling occurs through the language of illness.

    In many cases, this has reduced suffering. Behaviours once treated as moral failings are now understood with greater compassion. Yet labels can also become limiting.

    When every difference is interpreted as a disorder, people risk becoming identified by a diagnosis rather than understood as individuals.

    A label intended to explain can sometimes become a cage.

    The challenge is to distinguish between genuine suffering and simple human variation.

    Not every difference is a disease.

    Why Deviance Matters

    Durkheim argued that deviance serves an important social function. It clarifies boundaries, challenges assumptions, and sometimes drives social change.

    Without people willing to question accepted norms, societies stagnate.

    Many ideas we now celebrate were once considered deviant.

    The danger is not deviance itself. The danger lies in confusing conformity with virtue.

    A healthy society needs people willing to ask difficult questions, challenge dominant narratives, and test established boundaries.

    Not because they are always right.

    But because the freedom to dissent protects everyone.

    The Real Question

    Perhaps the most important question is not:

    Why are some people deviant?

    But:

    Why are we so eager to label them?

    Because every label reveals something about the person receiving it.

    And something about the society applying it.

  • The Lost Boys of Europe

    Europe worries about many things.

    War.
    Migration.
    Economic uncertainty.
    Political polarisation.

    But there is another problem hiding in plain sight.

    A growing number of boys and young men seem lost.

    Not evil.
    Not broken.
    Not dangerous.

    Lost.

    They are growing up in a culture that tells them what not to be far more often than it tells them what they can become.

    Many are disconnected from meaningful rites of passage. Some grow up without strong male role models. Others struggle to find purpose, belonging, or a clear sense of identity. They spend more time online than in communities, more time-consuming images of life than living it.

    And yet we often speak about them only when something goes wrong.

    When they become radicalised.
    When they become violent.
    When they withdraw completely.

    By then we are no longer asking how they became lost. We are simply reacting to the consequences.

    The Need for Purpose

    Human beings need more than freedom.

    We need purpose.

    Historically, cultures offered young men pathways into adulthood. The details differed, but the message was similar:

    You belong.

    You matter.

    Here is your responsibility.

    Modern societies are less certain.

    Many traditional expectations have disappeared, which has created new freedoms. But freedom without direction can become confusion.

    A young man may know what he wants to avoid.

    He may have no idea what he wants to become.

    The Digital Mirror

    Social media has intensified the problem.

    Young men are constantly shown images of success, wealth, status, and desirability.

    They see the finished product.

    They rarely see the struggle.

    The result is a widening gap between expectation and reality.

    Some respond by giving up.

    Others search for belonging wherever they can find it.

    And belonging is one of the most powerful human needs.

    When healthy communities fail to provide it, unhealthy ones often step in.

    What Boys Need

    Most boys do not need to be fixed.

    They need to be seen.

    They need boundaries without humiliation.
    Responsibility without shame.
    Guidance without domination.

    They need adults willing to take them seriously before their frustration hardens into resentment.

    And perhaps most of all, they need a sense that they have a place in the future.

    A society that cannot imagine a positive future for its boys should not be surprised when its boys struggle to imagine one for themselves.

  • What Is Peace, Really?

    Europe says it wants peace. But peace has become a brand — not a practice. A word used to mask fear, project virtue, or justify silence.

    I remember a line from an old song, rasped out by Thåström of Imperiet in the 1980s: “Är det verkligen fred vi vill ha — till varje tänkbart pris?”

    Is it really peace we want — at any price?

    It wasn’t just a lyric. It was a warning. Because peace, too, can become dangerous when it is used to avoid conflict rather than resolve it. When it becomes a way to surrender truth in the name of harmony, or a tool to suppress dissent in the name of order.

    What is peace, really?

    Most define it as the absence of war. But that’s not enough. Real peace is not just silence. It’s not compliance. It’s not stillness imposed from above.

    Real peace is:

    • The presence of justice.
    • The freedom to disagree without fear.
    • The space to remember who we are, and still welcome others.

    It is not uniformity. It is not amnesia. It is not obedience.

    We live in a time where leaders shout about war but brand themselves as peacemakers. Where NATO expands in the name of defence. Where sanctions starve civilians in the name of freedom. Where the word “peace” is printed on missiles and survival brochures.

    Peace has become sterile. Marketed. Safe. Hollow.

    But true peace is not safe. It requires self-reflection. It demands that we look in the mirror and ask:

    • What are we afraid to give up?
    • What lies are we still protecting?
    • Who do we become if we stop pointing outward and start looking inward?

    Sometimes, war feels easier than peace. Hatred gives us direction. Enemies give us purpose.

    And peace? Peace asks us to love. To forgive. To compromise. To be vulnerable.

    So maybe the real question is not how to achieve peace, but whether we even want it. Because peace means giving up our favourite myths. That we are always right. That we are always the good guys. That power equals security.

    Maybe the reason we keep choosing war — again and again — is because we are terrified of what peace might demand from us.

    But if we don’t ask, now, what peace really means — someone else will define it for us. And they will call it peace, even as they destroy everything it ever stood for.

    Let us not be fooled by a peace that costs our dignity. Or our truth. Or the future.

    Let us want peace — but not at any price. Let us want peace that is worthy of the name.

  • En tidsresa

    Nora är en liten trästad mitt i Bergslagen, omgivet av skog och sjöar som sträcker sig bortom horisonten. Jag, Toini, har alltid älskat Nora för den där känslan av närhet till naturen, som om platsen själv var en del av mitt ursprung. Inte bara född av min mamma, utan av själva jorden, träden och vattnet.

    Det finns ett träd i Striberg, en liten by åtta kilometer härifrån, som jag alltid känt en särskild koppling till. Det var som om det skickade en signal till mig för länge sedan, och då byggde jag en koja där uppe bland grenarna. När jag tog med mina barn dit förrförra sommaren fanns kojan fortfarande kvar, sliten men stadig.

    Det fanns något särskilt med den där platsen. Vi klättrade upp, och jag såg hur mina barn, som nästan vuxit ikapp mig vid det här laget, enkelt fick plats. Jag satt där med benen dinglande över kanten, när något märkligt hände. Det var som om tiden vände sig själv ut och in. Plötsligt var jag liten igen, precis så liten som när jag byggde kojan första gången.

    Mina barn skrattade rakt ut, inte av chock utan av ren glädje. Marika kramade mig hårt.

    ”Du är så söt, Toini! Du ser ut som ett busfrö som precis planerar något stort… som att gömma en macka i en sko.”

    Kejt torkade bort några lyckotårar.

    ”Eller som någon som redan gömt mackan och bara väntar på att någon ska sätta på sig skon.”

    De kände igen mig direkt från gamla fotografier. Nu var de äldre än mig, elva och tolv, och vi skrattade tills magen gjorde ont.

    Jag hittade en platt metallgrej i fickan och höll upp den.

    ”Vad är det här?” frågade jag.

    ”Din nya drog,” svarade Marika torrt.

    ”Ja,” sa Kejt, ”du kollar på den minst 125 gånger om dagen.”

    ”Mer som 1125 gånger,” inflikade Marika med ett skratt.

    ”Så den funkar som ett fönster till en parallell värld? Typ som en magisk spegel?”

    ”Mest som en magisk spegel som visar vad folk åt till frukost och vilka memes som trendar,” sa Kejt.

    De visade mig hur man tog en bild, en ”groupie” som de kallade det. Kejt höll upp apparaten, vi tryckte oss nära och sa ”hej” samtidigt som han klickade på skärmen. Plötsligt fanns jag där, på skärmen, med mitt spretiga, egenklippta hår.

    ”Jag ser ut som en blandning mellan en igelkott och en vildidé,” sa jag.

    Vi skrattade igen, lika mycket åt bilden som åt min min.

    Det var något särskilt med den dagen. Vi stannade i kojan tills solen började gå ner, och vi visste att så snart vi lämnade den, skulle jag vara vuxen igen. Men det gjorde inget.

    ”Det gör inget att du blir vuxen,” sa de i mun på varandra. ”Du har alltid varit på vår nivå. Fast med fler räkningar att betala.”

  • Museum of Now & Us– A Living Archive of Irishness—And A Model for Europe

    Status: Concept

    The Museum of Now & Us is a social innovation proposal exploring how museums might become living spaces for dialogue, belonging, and identity in a changing Europe. It does not currently exist, but perhaps one day it could.

    Ireland is changing. But are we truly listening to what’s emerging?
    For generations, we’ve told stories of who we were. Now, more than ever, we need spaces that ask:
    Who are we now — and who are we becoming?

    UPDATE:

    When I first shared this idea, I was focused on Ireland’s present and future. But the conversations it sparked (and my own deeper reflection) made me realise something bigger: this isn’t just Ireland’s story. It’s Europe’s story.

    We have welcomed people from all over the world—and we’ve heard many powerful stories of who they are. But in the process, we haven’t had the same opportunity to explore who we—the long-rooted communities—are becoming in a fast-changing world. We need space for that. We need space for all of us.

    So, I’m evolving the vision: from The Museum of Now to The Museum of Now & Us—a living, collaborative museum concept that can exist across Europe, holding space for everyone to explore identity, belonging, and change in real time.

    The Vision

    Ireland has spent generations remembering who it was. It’s time to ask who it is — and who it wants to be.

    The Museum of Now is a living, evolving space — part digital, part physical, entirely human — where the story of Irishness is told not by curators of the past, but by the people living it in the present. It’s a place where identity is not inherited, but explored. Where truth is spoken, not polished. Where stories are shared, not filtered. This is not a celebration of greatness. It is an invitation to realness.

    What It Is

    – A reflective, inclusive, and inspiring museum dedicated to the present and future of Irishness.

    – A space that holds the stories of:

     • Ethnic Irish: navigating change, disconnection, rediscovery

     • New Irish: immigrants, children of immigrants, naturalised citizens

     • Diaspora: as part of a complex global identity

     • The unheard: quiet lives, overlooked voices, everyday truths

     It includes the past — but does not glorify it. The past is honoured, not idolised.

    Key Elements

    A Sensory Layer

    • Soundscapes: Ambient recordings from different Irish environments (a bustling market, a quiet country lane, an immigrant kitchen, a schoolyard).
    • Scent Stations: Gentle hints of familiar and unfamiliar smells (ocean air, turf smoke, curry spices, rain on pavement).
    • Textures: Walls or small objects visitors can touch — rough stone, smooth glass, soft wool — connecting past and present Ireland through the senses.

    The Digital Fireplace

    A 24/7 living archive. One voice at a time. Visitors can listen, record, or write a truth in real time — a thought, a feeling, a story. No edits. No applause. No performance.

    The Stage of Now

    A space for live storytelling — curated open mic events, interviews, and personal moments shared aloud. Not a stage for fame — but a stage for presence.

     The Room of Realness

    Stories of modern life in Ireland: the challenges, the pride, the friction, the doubt. Updated monthly with new themes: First Days, Still Not Sure, This Is Home, What We Thought Was Great.

    The Mirror of Many Faces

    An evolving digital mirror that overlays visitor faces with archived faces, forming a slow, living collage of the people shaping Ireland now. Short whispered messages play when you stand before it, captured from real visitors.

    Letters to the Future Wall

    Visitors write (or voice record) messages addressed to Ireland 2075. Hopes, questions, advice, and confessions — building an archive that can be revisited in decades to come.

    Conflict and Repair Space

    • A listening room — soft, dim, welcoming.
    • Stations where recorded testimonies about real pain (racism, poverty, displacement, rural alienation, religious trauma) can be heard anonymously.
    • No debate, no commentary — just listening, as an act of repair.

    Wandering Voices App

    • An optional mobile extension — allowing people to record their thoughts as they move through the city, countryside, diaspora spaces.
    • Geo-tagged snippets could feed into a living map: Ireland as it’s spoken into being.

    Reflective Rooms: Past Meets Present

    Ireland As I Remember It

    A room for reflection and honesty. Visitors — especially native-born Irish — are invited to speak or write about the Ireland they grew up in, what has changed, and what they fear losing. This is not a space for blame. It is a space for grief, nostalgia, memory, and love — all held without judgment.

    Ireland As I Found It

    A companion space where immigrants and new Irish voices share what brought them here, what they expected, what they discovered, and what they’ve had to navigate. This isn’t an explanation or a justification — it’s an invitation into their reality. Into humanity.

    What Connects Us

    An interactive wall of common threads — hopes, values, rituals, food, parenting, music, faith, humour, silence, shame, joy. Visitors can add new connections. Over time, the wall grows. And so does understanding.

    Youth Voices Corner

    A section curated by and for teens/young adults growing up in Ireland.

    The Shared Spaces Charter

    A living, co-created social contract.

    The Shared Spaces Charter invites long-standing Irish communities and immigrant/new Irish communities to come together and define what “shared public space” means—honouring both the deep roots of Irish culture and the visible, evolving diversity of today’s Ireland.

    This charter isn’t a fixed rulebook. It’s a breathing document that grows as society changes, asking:

    • How can we celebrate difference in ways that feel like invitation, not imposition?
    • What does respect look like in practice—in festivals, on the street, in symbols and rituals?
    • Where do we draw the line between personal freedom and public responsibility?

    For example:

    • Public prayer may feel meaningful and grounding to some, while others experience it as a form of public dominance or discomfort.
    • Public sex acts or intimate displays might seem like personal freedom to some, but deeply inappropriate or offensive to others.

    The charter doesn’t seek to erase these disagreements, but to hold them openly. Its purpose is to create a space where difficult conversations about belonging, visibility, and respect can happen—not just online, but in real life, face-to-face.

    Visitors can read, discuss, and add to the charter in real time,helping it evolve as a shared reflection of Ireland’s ongoing work of living together.

    The Philosophy: Dividualism, Not Just Diversity

    Rather than focusing solely on external markers of difference, the Museum of Now embraces dividualism — the idea that our identities are shaped in relationship. That we carry each other in language, laughter, memories, resistance, and love. We are not fully ourselves without each other.

    This is not about agreement. It’s about connection. And from connection, a deeper kind of national belonging can emerge.

  • End of Year Ceremony

    Karin read the joint email from the city’s schools one more time.

    The principal of the secondary school wrote that they would very much like to continue the tradition of holding the end-of-year ceremony in the church, but that her speech must not contain any religious elements whatsoever. Not like last year, when she had ended by wishing the children a pleasant and blessed summer.

    One word.

    Blessed.

    “Then why are you holding the ceremony in a church,” Karin muttered as she typed her reply, “if you want to restrict my right to say what lies closest to my heart—the very thing I have been called to say in my role as a priest?”

    She smiled to herself.

    She always built her sermons around the infinite love of the cosmos. She intended to do the same this time.

    Karin practiced a form of spirituality that not even the Church of Sweden quite knew what to make of, but her message had always been the same: to bring people together, not divide them.

    When the day arrived, she was unusually nervous.

    What was expected of her and what was about to happen were not necessarily the same thing.

    She reminded herself that light had always made people uneasy.

    Karin welcomed everyone into the church, dressed in its summer finery. Once everyone was seated, she closed the doors and, her legs trembling slightly, climbed into the pulpit.

    “When I stand here before you,” she said, “I am dazzled by your light. The inner light that shines so brightly it can sometimes be difficult to see. But I can see clearly that the future is bright because of you.”

    She let her gaze wander across the room.

    “You have chosen to celebrate an ending and a beginning here. You are ending a school year and stepping into a summer of unfamiliar things. You do not need to go to church to be loving, and you do not need to be here to believe in something greater than yourselves. But sometimes people need to gather in ways they otherwise would not, to acknowledge what brings us together.”

    She paused.

    “Light.”

    The children sat quietly.

    “You celebrate your birthday once a year. You come here once a year. Days like these are for letting go and replenishing yourselves. You are concluding a year of worldly learning in a place that can remind you of something larger. The cosmos dissolves boundaries.”

    She smiled.

    “I hope you at least catch a glimpse of your own greatness. I don’t mean followers or comments, but your inner light.”

    She stepped down from the pulpit.

    “To see yourselves and one another more clearly, we are going to do a simple exercise.”

    Karin demonstrated with her hands.

    “Stand like warriors. Follow the movements and sweep away whatever no longer serves you. What truly belongs with you will remain.”

    They followed her lead.

    “Now take each other’s hands. Form an unbroken chain.”

    The church fell silent.

    “Close your eyes if you wish. Think of something you are grateful for. Say it silently or aloud. Feel that gratitude moving through you, like a wave of light.”

    Karin walked slowly through the church, between the rows.

  • What Do the World Cup and Eurovision Have in Common?

    They are both global storytelling festivals.

    The competition is the stage; the real drama is the people watching it.

    The World Cup and Eurovision create temporary maps of affection and resentment. For a few weeks, people rediscover who they feel close to, who they instinctively oppose, and which old stories are still alive.

    The arguments around Eurovision can be more revealing than the winning song. They show what a country cares about, what irritates it, and how it sees its place in the wider world. The fascinating part is watching a country say, in effect: “This is how we want the world to see us this year.”

    The World Cup does something similar on a global scale.

    When people talk about Eurovision, they often talk about the songs. When people talk about the World Cup, they talk about the football. What fascinates me is what happens before either competition begins.

    Long before a ball is kicked or a song is sung, countries start telling stories about themselves.

    Every Eurovision act is, in some way, a national introduction. Some countries present themselves as modern and sophisticated. Others embrace humour, eccentricity, tradition, rebellion or nostalgia. The songs matter, but so does the message behind them.

    The same thing happens at the World Cup.

    This year, Norway told a story.

    Before the tournament had even properly begun, the Norwegian team posed dressed as Vikings. Some people immediately saw colonisers and raiders. Yet that is not how much of the world sees the Vikings. For many people, the Vikings represent curiosity, courage and the willingness to leave the familiar behind.

    The people who sailed west from Scandinavia were not living in a land of endless abundance. They survived in a harsh climate with short growing seasons. They looked beyond the horizon and wondered what else was out there.

    That image still resonates today.

    Norway took that story and turned it into a simple act: rowing.

    Suddenly people everywhere were rowing for Norway. They dropped to the floor in offices, schools, gyms and living rooms. Nursing home residents turned their exercises into rowing sessions. People who had never met a Norwegian in their lives found themselves taking part in a small national ritual.

    The rowing was not really about football.

    It was a story about a small country setting out into the unknown and inviting others to come along for the journey.

    The image was simple and irresistible: a small nation climbing into the boat together and rowing out to take on the world.

    Norway was rowing for gold.

    I don’t even watch the matches, but it was almost impossible to miss. My social media feeds filled with Erling Haaland videos. There were clips of his goals, his interviews, his larger-than-life presence and his peculiar sense of humour. I even found myself watching videos of his sister affectionately mimicking him. Her impressions were funny precisely because they were so warm. She seemed to know exactly which details made him recognisably himself.

    That’s how these tournaments escape the boundaries of sport. The players become characters, their families become part of the narrative, and the supporters create rituals that travel far beyond the stadium.

    You don’t need to watch ninety minutes of football to become aware that something is happening.

    The same thing happened at Eurovision.

    Bulgaria did not simply send a song. It sent an idea.

    Before Eurovision, Bangaranga was a catchy pop song. On stage it became something else. The choreography, movement and visual storytelling brought the song fully to life. I found myself completely hypnotised by it.

    The word itself is unusual, but DARA used it to express something universal: finding your inner strength, letting go of fear and having the courage to be yourself. The performance transformed that message into something you could feel rather than merely hear.

    Bulgaria went on to win Eurovision for the first time, but by then the story had already connected with people.

    That is what these competitions are really about.

    Countries do not simply send football teams and songs. They send stories about themselves.

    This year, Norway’s story was rowing towards the horizon. Bulgaria’s story was finding the courage to become yourself.

    One invited people to pick up an oar. The other invited people to let go of fear.

    The competition gave them a stage. The stories are what people will remember.

    Years from now, most people will not remember every result. What they will remember are the stories.

    This year, Norway’s story got people rowing.

    A small country told a story about itself, and the world decided it liked the story.

  • Freedom and Responsibility

    Freedom and responsibility go together; you can’t have one without the other.

    Change is also a form of freedom – when we welcome it.

    So, freedom is the ability to choose, take responsibility for our choices and grow through change.

    Simple to understand. Challenging to live.

  • Roots and Routes

    We spend a lot of time thinking about our roots and where we come from.

    But our lives are shaped just as much by the journeys we take, the places we go, and the people we meet.

    Our roots tell us where we began. Our routes tell us who we became.