Reclaiming a Social Imagination

Matt Gallagher

As a privileged child, I just assumed things would sort themselves out. As a university student, I thought I was in the pipeline to a principled, stable career. As a young adult in the pandemic-addled restaurant industry with a hard-won but useless social sciences degree, that pipeline seemed to be out of operation.

I did eventually forge an unconventional path – turning my own cynical probing into a vocation – but many weren’t so fortunate.

One of the first things I wrote for Byline Times was about the 2006 film Children of Men. Alfonso Cuarón’s classic spoke to this feeling of decay; society’s building blocks growing withered and hollow.