News From Amphipolis 7/7/26

I’ve never been convinced by the ‘seven stages of grief’ thing, even after they’ve come up with assorted workarounds and cheats to deal with the lack of empirical evidence to support the model as originally proposed (you now don’t have to go through the stages in order, apparently, you can move backwards and forwards between them, sometimes touching on them only briefly – how is this a more refined theory than just saying “people experience grief in different, sometimes contradictory and inconsistent ways”?). Denial, for example, has not featured at all in my reactions either to my father’s death earlier this year or to my university’s decision to hack’n’slash the humanities, including potentially my own position. Anger, on the other hand, feels pervasive, rather than a stage, and whatever transpires I don’t think it’s likely to dissipate any time soon. Guilt? Not so much. I suppose one might class the feelings of deep inadequacy produced by having to contemplate making a case for not…