Jones’ World: Ambivalence - 04/07/25 - Voices Radio

As the cultural discourse of our generation expands beyond the confines of “getting on with it” and into the territory of crippling self-awareness, emotions inevitably appear less frequently in their pure form, but rather as ambivalence. This state of conflicting feelings, the simultaneous existence of opposing or contradictory emotions, often leads us to uncertainty about how to feel or act. Judging by the new wave of biphobia sweeping the internet, we are uncertain of how to feel about other people’s ambivalence as well. As humans, we are a concoction of colliding needs and desires, of sympathy and antipathy, of attraction and repulsion. The more authentic we are to them, the more ambivalent we become. On the dance floor, we simply call this freedom. It inverts what we know about “real life” and turns it on its head.