Decay 2

By Mahmoud Maher Eltrawy

PART III

It was during my junior year that I found a deeper sanctuary in critical theory. I was accepted into an advanced seminar led by a professor enthralled with the Frankfurt School. He assigned readings that systematically dismantled every institution, from the commodification of art to the infiltration of capitalist logic into the justice system. I began outlining what would become my doctoral dissertation: “Instrumental Reason and the Commodification of Lived Experience.” Each chapter would eviscerate a core institution: education warped by standardized testing and corporate grants, justice sold to the highest bidder through privatized prisons and exploitative bail fees, healthcare strangled by price-gouging and labyrinthine insurance networks, and religion turned into a spectacle of mega-church branding and consumerist salvation.

I was ecstatic to find an intellectual tradition that validated my deepest suspicions. Yet, for all my newfound clarity, I felt a pang of loneliness. Was there no one else at this university who grasped the sheer magnitude of the doom that governed us?

Then I met Elena.

She approached me after I guest-lectured in a sociology course on how corporate sponsorships eroded public-school autonomy. I’d been railing against the infiltration of marketing into the classroom—where brand logos loomed over assemblies, and standardized testing was a cash cow for big corporations. As the room emptied, Elena lingered, flipping through her notes with laser-like focus.

“That was interesting,” she said, voice poised and calm. “But you missed an entire demographic dimension—how race and class interplay with corporate meddling. Especially in impoverished districts.”

She introduced herself as Elena Michaels, a transfer student in sociology. She had done field research in underfunded schools across multiple states. Over coffee in a musty lounge, I learned she referred to modern society as a “viral system”: a living, self-propagating entity that adapts to preserve power structures. The metaphor was startling. And in that metaphor, I found a kindred intellect—someone who recognized the monstrous organism beneath the surface.

We talked until closing time, delving into the moral bankruptcy of religious institutions that sold salvation for tithes, the travesty of the for-profit prison system that turned human suffering into business. She was as radical as I was, yet there was a hidden warmth in her voice, a flicker of compassion that refused to die. She contended that pockets of genuine empathy still existed, even under the weight of the corporate machine. Unlike me, she believed these pockets mattered. The more we talked, the more I found myself drawn in. That night, alone in my apartment, I replayed our conversation, struck by how she perceived the same grim truths I did—yet refused to slide into despair.

In those days, I was beginning my lectures as a visiting professor, invited to teach an upper-level seminar on critical theory. I threw myself into course preparation, weaving together Adorno, Marcuse, Foucault, and other thinkers who saw the rot in modern institutions. My students seemed perplexed at first. They were used to mild overviews, not a professor who forcibly connected the reading to our city’s structures: the synergy of media, consumer desire, and corporate greed. A small handful responded enthusiastically, while the rest were uneasy. But Elena would attend whenever she could, sliding into a seat at the back, listening with that keen, unflinching stare. I found myself—surprisingly—trying to impress her, pushing my arguments even further, forging links between the emptiness of curated social media and the grand illusions of late capitalism.

It might sound trivial, but those lectures were some of the best moments of my life. I felt a glimmer of hope that my ideas could reshape something, that the myths stifling us could be undone through tenacious critique. Elena and I debated my interpretations afterward, often over coffee in the musty on-campus café. Sometimes she agreed, sometimes she shook her head—but either way, the conversation felt electric.

Igor was traveling abroad that semester for a special program, so he had no chance to meet Elena right away. By the time he returned, Elena and I were distinctly more than colleagues. We grew close amid late-night debates, discovering we had both come from fractured communities—my factory-town cynicism mirrored her experiences of dysfunctional institutions. Over a short span, our connection turned personal, though we both disdained the usual “romantic” language. Our bond thrived on intellectual synergy, shared disillusionment, raw honesty. For the first time, my solitary misanthropy felt tempered by someone who understood it but still dared to see glimmers of compassion in the wreckage.

When Igor came back and discovered Elena in our apartment, reading my drafts while leaning against my shoulder, he lifted an eyebrow. At first, he was cordial. He recognized a familiar spark in her critique of modern institutions. But soon he seemed more distant. Perhaps the dynamic between Elena and me unsettled him: we used to spend hours, just the two of us, dissecting the world. Now I had someone else to share those debates, and Igor recognized Elena might challenge him even more fiercely than I did.

I recall one evening when the three of us half-dined on leftover noodles, conversation turning to how corporations manipulate identity. Igor insisted that, in a globalized world, harnessing those manipulative strategies might allow for beneficial policy changes—like subtle ways to encourage better educational funding. Elena calmly dismissed that argument. “You’re still relying on top-down control,” she said, “just hoping it’ll be used benevolently. And history tells us that’s naive.” Igor looked wounded for a split second, then rallied. “It’s only naive if you assume no one decent exists in power.” Elena arched a brow. “Tell me where decency ends and ambition takes over.” I watched, not entirely comfortable. Igor was still my one true friend. Elena was the woman who illuminated corners of my worldview I hadn’t dared explore. I prayed, silently, that we could maintain some equilibrium. But tensions rose whenever Elena’s unyielding logic clashed with Igor’s pragmatic streak.

PART IV

My acceptance into a doctoral program felt like destiny. I dove headlong into writing “Instrumental Reason and the Commodification of Human Experience,” refining each chapter until it resembled a scalpel slicing into the heart of consumer culture. The premise was simple and damning: modern capitalism corrals human potential, branding and selling every aspect of existence from intimacy to leisure. I analyzed how advertising distorts identity, how social media fosters illusions of connection, how the pursuit of profit infiltrates even moral values. On paper, it was a systematic condemnation. In spirit, it captured a lifetime of raw anger.

Meanwhile, Igor’s star rose in his own domain. He finished his master’s in economics and pivoted to a management track. Recruited by the university’s business consultancy department, he engaged with corporations that sought new ways to interpret data about consumer behavior. I teased him for fraternizing with the enemy, but he laughed, claiming that it was all a strategy. “Better to understand the game from the inside,” he’d say. “We can’t just wave a wand and fix things from some ivory tower.”

Elena, for her part, joined the sociology department as a research fellow. She conducted field studies in struggling neighborhoods, collecting evidence of how local politics, corporate sponsorships, and bureaucratic inertia created cyclical poverty. We’d convene at day’s end, exhausted, exchanging notes and theoretical insights. Sometimes we attempted to share them with Igor, but his interest was sporadic. He was busier with job fairs, corporate mixers, forging a new identity that steadily edged him away from academic critique.

When I finally defended the dissertation, it felt like entering a war zone—my thesis was a deliberate broadside against every pillar of society. The academic panel comprised six professors, some of whom were sympathetic to critical theory, others who found my arguments too incendiary.

I stood at the head of that narrow conference table, delivering a scorching indictment of how civilization manages to buy and sell even the deepest parts of our humanity—hope, love, identity itself. My voice wavered at first, but soon a grim resolve took hold, pushing aside my initial tremors. I wasn’t just challenging a flawed system; I was stripping away the glossy facade that kept everyone in silent compliance. I was revealing, with every fervent word, that the emperor wore no clothes—that society was, at its very core, a monstrous organism sustained by systematic deceit.

Questions rained down afterward—some lauding my analysis, others criticizing me for offering no solutions. “Your approach is purely polemical,” one professor challenged. “Where is the blueprint for reform?”

I stared at him, unflinching. “When a system has deteriorated this severely, superficial reforms are no better than painting over mold. I have no intention of peddling hollow reassurances or short-term fixes. My purpose is to diagnose the underlying pathology in all its stark reality.”

Tension bristled in the room. In the end, they passed me with distinction, though the air felt heavy with unspoken judgment. Igor lurked at the back. Elena was there too, her hand pressed over her mouth in a gesture of relief as the committee announced their decision. I locked eyes with her, feeling a fleeting joy that she had witnessed my triumph.

Igor approached me once the formalities ended. “Congratulations, Doctor Mercer,” he said, voice measured. “Though it’s bleak, isn’t it? You paint humanity as an unwitting puppet.”

I gave a casual shrug. “Oh, absolutely—smoke and mirrors everywhere. If you’ve got a bright side, do enlighten me, because my supply of rainbows and unicorns is running dangerously low.”

Igor gave a small grin, though his eyes were unreadable. “Some of us still think we can steer these carnival acts in a better direction. We can’t all be prophets of the apocalypse, right?”

A retort burned on my tongue, but Elena touched my arm gently. The warmth of her hand diffused my anger, and I turned to talk with the panel instead, letting the moment pass. Later that night, Elena and I walked. She slipped her hand into mine, a gesture of quiet solidarity. My chest felt so tight with emotion that I thought I would burst, but again, I said nothing about love. I merely squeezed her hand, silently grateful that I had found someone who understood my scorn without being consumed by it.

To be continued...