Whether adjective (in a state of peaceful happiness), verb (soothe), or noun (a state of satisfaction), the appropriate use and pronunciation of ‘content’ is /kənˈtɛnt/
Ahem. This is known. Don’t be suckered into micro-sizing your efforts into a generic descriptor thereof.
Along the same lines, it should also be apparent that people only need to be as corporate and sanitized as they agree to be. While in times of deceit this might be construed as a revolutionary act, self-deceit about the meaning and matter of it all can be as devious as any other form. Remember all the space afforded you, the dark nights and struggles before yours that produce the light that warms you now, that allows you to see. There’s a gem of a reminder by Susan Neiman in the NYRB, reassembling the thinking of and about Frantz Fanon:
tribalism is the simplest form of social organization. It takes an act of abstraction to become a universalist; to see the possibility of common dignity in all the weird and gorgeous ways human beings differ is an achievement we’ve forgotten how to celebrate.
Allow yourself to pull away from tendencies not your own.
Image: Author photo, Hudson River sunrise.