The reason I pick Greek songs is to introduce this type of music to an international audience. Though you should not assume that I have a vested interest in it. I care about art, which knows no borders.

So here are 10 songs covering a variety of styles that I enjoy. I keep it to 10 because I do not have enough lives to appreciate in full everything people do. Sorted alphabetically:

1. Boney M. - Rasputin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16y1AkoZkmQ (pretending I can pick one from Boney M.)
2. Chumbawamba - Tubthumping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5uWRjFsGc (good energy to keep you going)
3. Deep Purple - Soldier Of Fortune https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjIL2BemqBY (a personal story while you are catching your breath)
4. Eagles - Hotel California https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09839DpTctU (I am almost conventional at this point)
5. GALA - Freed from desire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3l7fgvrEKM (Will Grigg’s on Fire!)
6. Peter Nalitch - Guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOzkN8dHnjk (the GOAT)
7. Placebo - Every You Every Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMaycNcPsHI (“carve your name into my arm”!!!)
8. Scooter - How Much Is The Fish? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbB3iGRHtqA (a fortune, mate—tough times)
9. System Of A Down - Toxicity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iywaBOMvYLI (because I do not understand half of Chop Suey, lol)
10. The Prodigy - Out Of Space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4eav7dFvc8 (just wake up your boring neighbours)

The gist of all this is that each person is multifaceted. Sometimes I do not want to listen to music at all. I enjoy the birds and the ambience of the mountains. At others I am keen on something more contemplative and at others still I will put on a dance song. As a matter of fact, while I am typing this out, Coco Jambo by Mr. President is playing from my archive, which is one helluva blast from the past!

In embracing our multifacetedness we free ourselves from the absurdities of ideological purity. Take any benign idea—love, beauty, peace—to an extreme and it becomes so inwardly corrupted it turns into its opposite.

In the expression of multifacetedness there is common sense. You allow each facet of yourself to thrive, because you are taking care to water all the plants. As such, you are creating an internal polyculture, which is resilient to disease. Diversity in harmony produces balance of the sort that is sustainable.

Balance can also be enforced through uniformity,, adherence to dogma, and brute force. This is the singlefacetedness of monoculture that delivers short-term results and longer-term malaise. In terms of everyday behaviour it runs counter to our nature at times, even when it is done in the name of it, and thus ends up being pretentious in substance and performative in style.

The human condition is diverse throughout. The individual is, in this regard, both mirror and amplifier of group dynamics, of social trends, and historical trajectories. By exposing ourselves to others, we allow our own self to flourish and to become more rounded.

How can you know, for example, if you actually like dancing if you have never done it in earnest? Maybe what you are missing is exposure to that person and/or situation that will tease out whatever remains hidden deep inside of you.

Intellectually, I am a philosopher. Though a more generic term is explorer. I will go anywhere the wind sails because (i) I am keen on learning as much as I can, (ii) I recognise I am not in complete control of the world and so accept my fate, and (iii) I have the courage to deal with whatever danger awaits.

The danger with the explorer’s conduct and with diversity more broadly is that it can become wasteful of its own vitality if it is stretched too thin. Concretely, if I explore too much without integrating any findings into my life, then I reach a point where I am pulled in all directions, unable to actually do anything from start to finish.

Similarly, diversity for the sake of diversity does not produce any good results. Polyculture at its extreme is so competitive for each plant that there can be no one or few species that yield enough fruit.

It again comes down to balance and common sense, to avoiding the absurdities of the extremes.

Palm trees is written and composed by Apostolos Boulasikis. All of the songs I have heard from Apostolos are surreal in the images they evoke and profound in the interpretations they withstand. This one is no exception.

Below are the lyrics, my faithful translation of them, and some philosophy.

Also check the other interpretations I have written related to Vasilis Papakonstantinou:

• I need (2025-09-01)
• Minor adulterations (2025-03-01)
• Sophie (The wild crowd) (2023-03-22)
• Porto Rico (2022-07-28)
• Trench coat (2022-07-09)

Φοινικιές

Ερμηνεία:  Βασίλης Παπακωνσταντίνου
Στίχοι:    Απόστολος Μπουλασίκης
Μουσική:   Απόστολος Μπουλασίκης


Να φεύγεις, να φεύγεις, να φεύγεις 
ώσπου να βρεις τις ακτές 
που χρόνια, τα χρόνια στολίζουν 
με σημαιάκια του χτες

Οι αιώνες 
ξεβαμμένες, αρχαίες εικόνες 
Μεγαλεία 
σκονισμένα σε ράφια βιβλία 

Μα εσύ πρέπει πάντα να φεύγεις 
να βρίσκεις τις φοινικιές 
που κάθε τους λόγχη σου δείχνει 
μια απ'τις παλιές σου μορφές 

Γόνος νόθος του θεού του ήλιου 
Καπετάνιος σε πλωτό του Νείλου 
Αλχημίστας κι ιερέας δικαστής 
Νέγρος ταξιτζής μέσα στο Χάρλεμ 
Αριβίστας ζιγκολό στο Σάλεμ 
Καζανόβας και Λατίνος εραστής 

Λαδωμένος παλαιστής του Σούμο 
Πακιστανός μούτσος σ'ένα τσούρμο 
που βυθίζεται ανοιχτά των Αντιλλών 
Γελαστός παλιάτσος και ακροβάτης 
Μες το Σόχο ζόρικος προστάτης 
Γόης εξαθλιωμένων γυναικών 

Όλα γυρίζουν, ξαναγυρίζουν 
λειώνουν, τελειώνουν 
και ξαναρχίζουνε 

Ίωνας φιλόσοφος και ρήτωρ 
Στη Σεβίλλη ταύρος επιβήτωρ 
Που πεθαίνει στου τορέρο το σπαθί 
Δολοφόνος ενός πρώην τσάρου 
Φύλακας ενός σβησμένου φάρου 
Αμανές σε Οθωμανικό τζαμί 

Στα βουνά της Αφρικής αντάρτης 
Ήρωας πολεμιστής σακάτης 
τα παράσημα του βγάζει στο σφυρί 
Μάγος του Αμαζονίου, μάντης 
Κολασμένος συγγραφέας, Δάντης 
Σαμουράι πέρα στην Ανατολή. 

Όλα γυρίζουν, ξαναγυρίζουν 
λειώνουν τελειώνουν 
και ξαναρχίζουνε 

Κι όμως πρέπει πάντα να φεύγεις 
να βρίσκεις τις φοινικιές 
Φλεγόμενες βάτους που λένε 
σαν τις σειρήνες ψευτιές 

Να φεύγεις, να φεύγεις, να φεύγεις 
ν'ακολουθείς τις φωνές 
στους δρόμους που πάντα φωτίζουν 
φλεγόμενες οι φοινικιές

Palm trees

Singer:   Vasilis Papakonstantinou
Lyrics:   Apostolos Boulasikis
Music:    Apostolos Boulasikis


To leave, to leave, to leave
until you find the shores
which years, the years adorn
with small flags of yesterday

The centuries
worn out, ancient icons
Grandeurs
dusty books on shelves

But you must always be leaving
to be finding the palm trees
whose every spear shows you
one of your old forms

Illegitimate offspring of the sun god
Captain of a riverboat on the Nile
Alchemist and priest-judge
Black taxi driver in Harlem
Arrivist gigolo in Salem
Casanova and Latin lover

Oiled up sumo wrestler
Pakistani sailor in a crew
that sinks off the Antilles
Smiling clown and acrobat
In Soho a tough guardian
Charmer of immiserated women

All goes round, and round again
they melt, they end
and they restart

Ionian philosopher and rhetorician
At Seville a bull rider
who dies by torero's sword
Assassin of a former tsar
Keeper of an extinguished lighthouse
Amanes at an Ottoman mosque

Rebel at the mountains of Africa
Hero crippled fighter
who auctions his decorations
Magician of the Amazon, seer
Damned author, Dante
Samurai far to the East

All goes round, and round again
they melt, they end
and they restart

And still you should always be leaving
to be finding the palm trees
Burning bushes who tell lies
like the sirens

To leave, to leave, to leave
to follow the voices
to the paths that are luminated
by burning palm trees

The titular palm trees symbolise the end of a journey. They represent the exotic life one finds away from their homeland or the realm of the knowable more broadly. “Exotic” in its root as “exo” (έξω), which is outside, thus strictly foreign, unknown yet conceivable as unknown, otherworldly.

The song speaks of flight and makes an exhortation to that end. To leave one’s place, in the hope of finding the altogether different world that lies beyond their current reach. As such, Palm trees invites one to embark on an open-ended adventure in pursuit of an elusive goal.

This is not necessarily a boat trip to the other side of the ocean. One can perform such a journey while physically staying where they are. What matters is that they open their mind to fresh ideas and new possibilities. Practically speaking, though, one needs to abandon their immediate locale to undergo such a transformation. The reason is that people eventually stick to what they used to do because it grants some benefits within the given society.

Someone may be, for example, the cool edgy kid in high school. They gain a reputation to that end, which itself carries expectations. Others now see and want edginess. This person then has the incentive to continue to be edgy, to effectively play the role, rather than, say, pause and become more contemplative.

Travel will help break this loop. The person will have the freedom to become another as their preoccupations are no longer tied to the expectation of specific patterns and outcomes. Modern societies understand this and is why children switch schools after each level and eventually go to university, should they choose to. At each level there is a chance of rediscovering oneself anew, even if only marginally.

A journey in pursuit of the exotic is neverending, because there can be no discovery of the exotic as exotic. Once one enters the other world, they already are conditioned accordingly. They have become another in the process of (i) escaping from the confines of their comfort zone and then in (ii) reaching that world. That which once was distant has become proximate.

Such travels have no terminus. The exotic is not a specific entity, but the notional other of one’s lifeworld. If one moves from inside to a specific outside, then that becomes their new inside as the realm of the familiar and the proximate, which shall have its own outside, and so on.

As people, we change over time to take on certain qualities and leave others. What once was a defining feature now is not characteristic of who we are. There may still be traces, but more pronounced patterns have since taken form.

It thus does not matter where exactly one finds those palm trees, i.e. who they become exactly. The point is to develop a certain consistency such that they can be that person in earnest and feel they are performing their function well. This is described at length in the lyrics through the references to all the figures one can be. Each leaf of the palm tree points to a persona.

To what end? There is none. The journey is not better than staying exactly in place. Those who leave as well as those who stay still meet the same fate. It then comes down to what feels right or what the song describes as the path luminated by the palm trees: one can only follow what they discern.

For instance, I am the journeyman type who leaves home in pursuit of discovering myself by losing the self I was, as merchant on the silk road, pirate at the Horn of Africa, sellsword in one of the many European wars, all as the same person. I thrive in openendedness. This is what makes me a philosopher and a polymath, after all. It is exuberance that comes with the requisite courage to embark on the adventure, to not be deterred by the challenge, and to not be held back by any promise of comfort either.

I am writing this as a public letter in response to the blog post you published on 2026-09-13 with the title An apology to Protesilaos Stavrou and David Wilson.

I accept the apology, though I think there is no need for one. I would personally not delete anything. Instead, I would add a link on top to point to the newer publication, plus some explanation. This teaches each of us to not take everything too seriously and to not pull the trigger before considering the case.

At any rate, I am fine with your choice.

Text is an especially difficult medium of communication because we do not exchange non-verbal cues. It is thus easy to imagine something which is not there and to then attribute bad intent to its author. For example, I find myself laughing at the way I formulated a certain phrase, though I can never communicate as much. Even if I write how I feel and/or what I am doing in the moment, it does not have the same effect.

Moreover, we may write something whose context is fully in our head yet is not known to the reader. Misunderstandings may thus arise.

To your point, I agree with you and have stated as much many times in video and in writing. To me, the source of truth for learning Emacs is the manual. Whatever users do to discover what Emacs has to offer, the manual remains the definitive resource.

I consider my publications complementary material, to the extent that they are informative. They effectively are a demonstration or reminder of what can be done. Though they are neither exhaustive at the time they are published nor current for every future version of Emacs. The viewer must thus be mindful to consult the official documentation.

Furthermore, Emacs is bigger than me. Even when I present my packages and/or ELisp code I have developed, I am always building on top of a corpus of work that far exceeds what I could produce in a lifetime. I mention this sometimes, but I cannot repeat it for everything I do because then I will become tiresome. Everyone should remember what is our common good in this community: Emacs.

Finally, I have warned at length against the attitude of taking shortcuts in Reply to @linkarzu about ‘What I Need From Emacs’ (2026-07-31). What I wrote on this topic is in relation to Emacs though applies to life in general. In short, we arrive quickly where we want only when we move slowly.

All the best,
Protesilaos (or simply “Prot”)

Days do not matter within its confines. What was, shall be. Time loses its meaning when all you can do is stare at those walls. Its passage is not paused though. Each day leaves its mark on the body. Every second is impressed on the skin to show you, whenever you muster the courage to look at the mirror, just how late you have been.

The blue room remembers your moments. Records it keeps to remind those passing by how long it has remained standing. In its space are stored memories of bygone days. It keeps track of your perfect score in a particular category: of dreams never to materialise. Those are your wants: the adventures you did not embark on. They are the characters you never became and the roles you did not assume. It stood there watching them go unnoticed by the travellers of this world.

You appear not, when all is a single colour, no matter how actively you try and how strongly you want it. There is no pattern to be discerned. When you speak, they wonder how is it that a building can have a voice. People are afraid of haunted places, after all. Instead of inferring that you might be there somewhere, they act in response to their deep-seated fears. You are irrelevant in your invisibility.

The blue room absorbs it all. It has inexhaustible patience. It wants you to remain in place. Only then can it perform its function of protecting you, of shielding you from whatever danger lurks in the corner. From your daily routine it will remove any sense of urgency. You shall not go anywhere. There is no need to. What you have is complete. It shall suffice for a lifetime.

Plans for tomorrow can be revised to become aspirations for the week after, which in turn will be rolled over to a future date that remains elusive. The hopes are distorted accordingly, with pragmatic considerations woven into their narrative. A few are enough to bring an abrupt end to the story that would otherwise develop. Not even there do you become another.

The blue room loves you. It tells you that it has desire for you alone. Special you feel when you are noticed, even if it is only by a structure. It has a life of its own. A logic that defies and then overrides your volition. It enters your mind as shapeshifter extraordinaire to become friend and lover whose name you keep forgetting.

The blue room questions your judgement. There is nowhere to go when all you can think of is informed by monotonous surroundings. The door is right there. Step outside whenever you want only to discover that you jump back in. Without a plan, you revert to your default condition, effectively working against the goal you never defined. As you do that, hope is lost. It feels you are standing while running.

The blue room is you. It extends to form a fine line which connects at the other end to become a circle. There is no outside, no inside, no before, no after. It is the everlasting and ubiquitous presence of a hue; the tyranny of one. You switch off the lights to not notice it anymore. Yet you know that it and you are the same.

Before gaming at home became the norm, and before 1GB of RAM had the price of a heart transplant, video games were played at arcades on machines that were operated with coins. You would insert a coin and get a go at the game. When you would lose or complete the game, the machine would ask for another coin. Simple and super effective! At the end of your session, you had the chance to input three characters, representing your name, which would be displayed on a leaderboard screen alongside your total points. Those waiting in line could thus learn who holds the high score.

Inputting those characters was an adventure unto itself. Unlike our fancy modern gadgets with full-sized keyboards, key chords timed in milliseconds, and layered combos, the arcade machines expected you to cycle from A to Z by tapping a button that was already hard to press. Picking a letter would lock it in and move you to the next selection. A mistake could not be undone. In a civilised world, that would not be a problem. You would take your sweet time to cycle all the way back from, say, R to P and then ever so carefully repeat the steps to inscribe “PRT” or something. But ours is a barbaric world, my friend!

The arcade is a social place. You are there together with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells . There are no gaming chairs to make you feel comfortable nor hidden lights distracting you from your solitude. You are typically standing close to the machine you intend you use, playing mind games on the guy whose turn it is to make an attempt at reaching the top of the leaderboard.

If your friend gets the high score, you do what besties are there for: punch the bastard ever so gently to make him mistype his name, of course. We do not want him to become overconfident, do we now? The Greeks have warned us of hubris and all that. But we also do not need to be savages, so we let him have it sometimes, i.e., if he is below our score.

Many of the games at the arcade were in the fighting or beat-em-up genres. Streets of Rage 4 pays homage to the latter. In terms of gameplay, it does an excellent job. For a while I felt that Capcom’s Cadillacs and Dinosaurs got a remake. Though playing the game at home will never give you the same vibes as what you would experience at the arcade. Which is why this game hates you, amigo.

Streets of Rage 4 reminds you that you are at home. That is already a terrible fate. Then, you realise that you cannot punch your friend anymore. What a sad world we live in! It also features prominently a four-player co-op mode. No, not to make you invite people over for a game or two. Don’t be silly! It does it to highlight the fact that you have no friends.

Beside that, you will soon notice that everybody on the titular streets is maxed out in all possible ways. They have more muscles than those known to anatomists and more curves than those anticipated by that whole “curvature of spacetime” mumbo-jumbo that physicists dabble in.

Not only are they all cooler than you, they also have more free time than you ever will. You expend your vitality doing some unfulfilling job while they get to chill on the streets—and they even have coin-ops there to recreate the arcade experience!

Okay, I am not being serious. This is a fine game. I had a good time. As for the plot, it is a generic cartoon villain story of the bad guys wanting to control the world. The good guys are unmemorable vigilantes. I already forgot how they even look, which is fantastic.

For me, this is a strength of gaming. I do not want profound characterisation and interwoven backstories when the premise is that I run around kicking people in the stomach. This is the same point I made about Borderlands 3, namely, I like it when games do not take themselves too seriously. It makes for a fun and easygoing life.

By “beauty”, I am not referring to my Apollonian looks and disarming modesty. No full body naked selfie for you today. Sorry!

The Middle East is a place where cultures meet. Milieux which can be understood as distinct may also be seen as blending into each other.

In Cyprus where I live, we officially are a European Union member state. If you look at the map, you will notice that the island is closer to Lebanon than it is to the next EU country’s mainland. Yet our political orientation is Western in its outlook and Westernising in its function.

Part of this ideology is the historical trajectory of Cyprus as a colony of many Western empires. Though at the level of narrative the major source is the thought of the Enlightenment Age. It branded Hellenic culture as Western, while also reducing the vastness of Greek thought into a rationalist project, which was en vogue back then.

The more I reason about Greek culture, the more I realise and integrate its holistic worldview. This is obvious already at the artistic level, with the intuition of polytheism. Many gods represent the many facets of our experience, as well the many aspects of the world which are, in principle, not necessarily known to us. Yet all gods partake of a singular godhood, which suggests that the many are the one, the one is the many, the way a single ray of light can also be seen as a spectrum of colour.

Any given person illustrates said multifacetedness. You are reasonable yet also have an emotional side. Your mind grasps the transcendent while your body confines you to the here-and-now of everyday necessities. You represent admixture. However constituted, you emerge as the interplay of many factors, of processes that are notionally internal to the system you are, as well as stimuli that occur exogenously.

You look around as your attention discerns patterns. Everything looks different. I am not like you and you are not like a tree and this tree is unlike that other tree. There is individuation throughout. Though as you continue to observe and to study attentively, you stop seeing individuality emerging from the disparate data points. You are instead finding the similarity of things. A bird represents admixture, as does a plant, as does a society, as does our historical trajectory, as does this planet, and so on. At one level, these are all distinct. At another level, they are instances of the same underlying pattern and ultimately of pattern as such.

The Middle East is a place with an actual history and unmistakable characteristics. Though it also is a metaphor for this commonality through diversity. I have met people from so many different backgrounds here. Greeks, Turks, Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians, Israelis, Egyptians, Iranians, Pakistanis… The list goes on. And I have talked to even more of them through video calls.

If you are searching for reasons to differentiate people, then you can go down to the individual. Each person has something unique to them. And if you want to find similarities, you can easily look past whatever differences. Analytically, both are correct. It then is a matter of one’s attitude in pursuit of a certain end.

I like to connect with people from diverse backgrounds. Unlike other fellow leftists, however, I do not do it by denying my ethnicity. I think that is a mistake because you then act like you do not have a cultural background. You sit at a table with people from Northern Europe, for example, and you immediately notice that your Eastern Mediterranean zest does not fit right in. This is fine. My point is that pretending it is not there is not a helpful starting point.

I acknowledge the fact of my Greekness yet do not let it become an obstacle in the way of talking to others. This is why I mostly write in English and why I want to be as good as I can in as many languages as possible. Right now I am relearning French and will then brush up on my Spanish. Long-term, I am interested in Turkish and Arabic, in no particular order, since they are of immediate geographic relevance where I am located.

Cyprus feels like home to me. This is where my land and my house are. Though it also is a place that has a strong vibe of the aforementioned admixture that the Middle East metaphorically captures. I am a country bumpkin in these mountains, in many ways irrelevant to what is going on around me, yet I still manage to continuously meet people from all over the broader region and the world at-large.

It is nice when we play ball together. It is not nice when each wants a ball to themselves.

I always enjoy working at the festival. I have in the past sold bread and related products, but this year I managed a toy store front that also featured κομποσχοίνια (komboschinia). A komboschini is a piece of rope with knots that you typically wear as a bracelet. Komboschinia have a religious significance, but people also use them as a fashion statement. I now have three on each wrist, for example, to turbocharge that religiosity.

Even though I am an introvert, I am a good dealer at noisy places. I am sufficiently talkative, have a loud voice, and take nothing seriously if I do not have to. A tourist thought this was a bazaar where she would haggle to get a discount. I shouted for everyone waiting in line to listen “I want my swimming pool madame; no discounts!”. Then I said “okay, take six and pay for five”

Another person wanted to have a picture with me after we did some good business together and had a positive vibe. I was all smiles until that point and turned dead serious all of a sudden: “a thousand euro for my image rights!” and then I laughed.

Those who know me well will attest to my sense of humour and lightheartedness. The others will have to wait to see what I have in store for them. I am much more careful online because cultural differences increase the likelihood of misunderstandings. For instance, I cannot do the whole trick of raising my hands and shouting “my friend” at a German as soon as I meet them because they will, quite understandably, get PTSD that the Greeks are back for more money. In such cases I am cautious. Though I will still throw some bait, in the form of pointed remarks, and if I notice that the person has caught it then I will not miss an opportunity to make them smile.

Most of what I do either is directly for teasing people or has such a component. Sometimes I do it in a playful and exaggerated manner. At others I am subtle. The latter kind is what I typically do on my website: I challenge the reader to drop what was theretofore an idea that they took seriously. And there is a version of this which takes the form of a provocation. You do not see me laughing while I am saying out loud the most witty formulation I came up with, but if you knew me you would know this part as well. It is not your fault, of course, just the nature of the medium.

At any rate, the festival is my kind of place. The majority of people who show up are the average folk. They belong to the working class, dress with unbranded clothes, have no pretences to greatness, and are straightforward. The snobs will skip such events because they dismiss the plebs as uncultured and crude. They cannot stand out in the crowd, which annoys them greatly. For me not having their smug face there is wonderful news because I do not have to make them feel uncomfortable myself.

For example, I was walking my dogs and one of them took a moment to pee on a tire. Dogs do this all the time. I did not give it any thought until some posh dude called me out asking why did I allow my dog to do that to his car. I looked at him without uttering a word, then checked the car, and said “wash it, you have money”. Implicit in my comment was a common challenge I present: if you come to me to play the game you purport to be good at, then I will make sure you live up to your own rules or realise that it is better to be easygoing. Either way, you win.

To find entry level snobs, you can just go to any random cafeteria these days. They have all become high class. It used to be that coffee was the cheapest drink for the worker to start the day with a positive “good morning”. Now the places have cookie jars and cheesecakes on the front. Their menu is full of augmented drinks. A cup is adorned with creams, syrups, and make-belief all so that they can charge you a small fortune.

Water is extra, of course. Soon the authorities will outlaw that thing. It makes business sense to channel it all to the AI puppet masters. This way, jaded programmers can have the illusion of continuous productivity when an agent surfaces what grep and/or find would have discovered without draining a lake in the process.

Until recently it was 1 euro for a shot of Cyprus coffee (sorry, Turks, we rebranded it because we are petty bastards). Now that amount of money does not even get you a polite look. And say you buy a coffee, they will be pushy about you leaving as quickly as possible. “Would you like something else?” is the most ominous question you can get in this situation. If you respond negatively, they tell you that they will go fetch the bill. Basically, they make it clear that you are an impediment to the boss’ profiteering. Such are their instructions.

At the festival I meet the people who are otherwise invisible. They go to work, then back home. This is their budget. It is the same for me. I basically do not exist as a social animal most of the year. I even work from home for my coaching, which means that I can go for weeks without having an extended chat face-to-face. As for possibly coaching from cafeterias, that is terrible business because of how expensive they are relative to how much I charge. Plus, it would be inconvenient in practice.

Festivals are a reminder that the common folk exist, yet they only come to life when that time of the year arrives. Such is the stupid society we tolerate.

This semester, my students are learning about four polymaths who shaped Islamic science: al-Biruni, Alhazen, Avicenna and al-Khwarizmi. Their circumstances could hardly have been more different: one wrote his way out of scarcity; one was held under house arrest for a decade; one distilled an era’s medical knowledge into a text that ruled European universities for 500 years; and the last worked at the largest research institution of his age. But each shared the same underlying instinct: to move freely between mathematics, medicine, astronomy, philosophy and poetry, testing one discipline’s assumptions against another’s. My classroom is in Pakistan, where students arrive eager to talk about disruption and employability, but rarely about breadth. I want them to see, through these four lives, that this kind of expansiveness isn’t a luxury for stable times; it has produced some of the most enduring breakthroughs in the history of science.

I wish Mariam good luck in inspiring a new generation of students to follow in the footsteps of those remarkable thinkers.

What I would add to Mariam’s account is the word “courage”, which is a necessary quality of character in keeping culture open to the possibility of genius.

The polymath has courage in that they are prepared to move outside the comfort zone of any given specialisation. They have the audacity to draw linkages that others do not discern, not as a matter of superior intellect but as a result of trying in earnest. By “polymath” I apply the term in its original meaning, the one who has knowledge of many things, without implying that such a person is necessarily a genius.

I write from a position of experience as a polymath myself. My skills are well below those of the aforementioned geniuses. I have not achieved anything remarkable in any of the fields I have delved into and have no formal qualifications to even make a remotely plausible case in my favour. Nobody references me now and none will remember me in 500 years. I do, nonetheless, embody the courage and concomitant exuberance that no promise of comfort can constrain and, as such, will go wherever I want to learn whatever my condition renders possible.

I synthesise street smart with book smart. I know of politics in theory as well as day-to-day practice. I have pierced into the psyche of humans in sport and the classroom, in company and competition, in solitude and in festivities, through hardship and opulence, in the hinterlands as well as the centres of power. I combine prose with poetry, rigour with beauty, intellectuality with physical prowess, a tendency for collectivity with the reality of a lone wolf, a study of human with an understanding of programming, an intuition on colour with a conception of pattern as such into theology and religiosity.

What is common in this multitude is the virtue to give everything an honest try by bringing to it the full power of my undivided attention. It is to not seek excuses for inaction. I never say “I cannot” when what that would really mean is “I do not want to”.

My initiative is neither informed nor conditioned by the opinion of others. They default to the kind of naysaying that confines a person to a tiny room with no sight of the open vistas. Whereas I am not satisfied with the comfy chair. I will hike to the top of the mountain and dive in cold waters. I proceed with the belief that I can learn anything I set my mind to and can perform admirably in it. Such is my conviction that I am not afraid of the challenge.

This is not a matter of genius, which is beyond human design. It is about attitude, which can be studied and greatly altered by continuous effort with the appropriate method, even if it also has a biological basis.

Genius is rare. I am not that person. I was not a child prodigy and am not a late bloomer either. Though I can tell from history that genius occurs more frequently and is clustered together in cultures that are defined by openness. Those are the societies who are young in age and spirit, freed from the burdens of institutionalist pretence and attendant etiquette, and who exhibit that unmistakable zest which drives forward their inquiry into the world.

Boundaries naturally occur in all fields of endeavour. There is a need to maintain a trail of paper by which to track outcomes. It is then followed up by the want to streamline processes, replicate results, and create a baseline of expectations. The bureaucrat emerges organically as an intermediary among those whose job it is to think things through and/or make stuff happen. The bureaucrat starts out as the custodian of records and eventually turns into the enforcer of norms.

Scholars who had achieved something noteworthy at a certain point in their career, and who lack the courage to press on with their inquiry, wish to cling on to their holdings. They effectively set up barriers to entry by weaponising bureaucracy in the name of standards, with which they limit their competition and thus retain their privileged status.

Over time, bureaucracy turns intellectuality into a pay-to-win scheme. It confers social status and creates a sense of classism where the way one talks communicates more about their perceived intellectual acumen than what they actually say. At scale, this shadow play manifests into a glorified popularity contest, more superficially sophisticated than high-schoolers figuring out who is the coolest among them, though not much different in function: the celebrated experts get the lion’s share of the money while the rest learn to be happy with leftovers.

Bureaucratisation evolves along with the fracturing of intellectuality into increasingly narrower fields of specialisation. The bureaucrat thrives in this environment as the driving force of the want for interdisciplinarity, by becoming the interlocutor among the relevant specialisations. The specialist, in turn, benefits from the resulting obscurity. There is practically nobody who can check on the tangible value of their contributions. This is a state of comfort, which can be alluring, at which point complacency kicks in and the system as a whole enters its state of decline.

Courage is both contagious and dangerous. When one speaks their mind fearlessly, others are emboldened to do the same. Once a few do this, the movement grows into a power impulse that emanates from the mind to affect conduct, institution, and artefact alike.

The potency of courage consists in its unpredictability. The courageous person will not accept to be constrained and is thus inconvenient to any established order that finds comfort in stasis.

What teachers such as Mariam Sabri can do is instil a sense of alertness in their students. Encourage them to continue where they would otherwise stop. Celebrate their every attempt at formulating a question and congratulate them for their eagerness to develop an independent thought. Push them to go where their curiosity leads and be there for them when they need a tutelary figure to help them channel their vitality into a force of creativity.

This, however, demands that the teacher be not pedantic and obsessed with adherence to formality. The teacher must, in effect, have that spark of alertness to push back, even in subtle ways, against the overreach of the bureaucratariat.

Do it right and the next genius might show up soon after to remind humanity that the most predictable is the least animate.

[…] many previously unthinkable far-right ideas are now comfortably embedded in the mainstream of Swedish politics. The past four years have been characterised by an astonishing acceptance of ethnonationalist views, xenophobic rhetoric and authoritarian policies, increasingly targeting children. And many of these ideas have been absorbed and appropriated by the centre-left opposition Social Democrats.

[…]

A new Sweden has emerged, cruel and cold for migrants, including highly skilled employees of research institutions, universities, tech and medical companies – who have been stunned to learn that they are no longer welcome to work in a country where they have lived for years, sometimes decades.

I am here interpreting Martin’s point through the prism of what I have analysed at length in Gigantism and Europe’s far-right transformation (2026-09-08). The gist of what I wrote is that those liberals who today shed crocodile tears about the recrudescence of the far-right will be the enforcers of far-right policies tomorrow.

Compassion requires understanding

Locals in any given culture who profess tolerance of immigrants typically do so from a position of ideology, not lived experience. They are perfectly fine with migration, in abstract, because it does not harm their vital interests, but they are not exposed to the struggles an immigrant faces. At some basic level, they cannot relate to what it is like to be a foreigner in general and a foreigner in their own society in particular.

The average liberal thinker is comfortably middle class and privileged in ways whose extent they are not aware of. They were not forced by economic hardship to remain silent in the face of blatant exploitation. They did not live outside the private banking system and did not have to rely on the acquiescence of others. They were not displaced from their homeland to begin with.

This does not, ipso facto, make the locals malevolent. It merely introduces a barrier that can only be overcome by becoming aware of it and then working to move past it.

The menial jobs I have done were always among migrants, with only the bosses being locals. As a bartender, I worked mostly with Eastern Europeans. In construction sites, I collaborated primarily with Syrians. In agriculture, I was together with people from the Indian subcontinent. Each group has its own niche.

Whenever I was lectured about “tolerance” was from those who have not used a pickax in their life; those who were not forced to work until their palms would start bleeding. That is what teaches you tolerance for good, not books.

Beware of comfortable ideologues

A labourer among labourers feels at home because each person understands the other’s predicament, despite their otherwise diverse cultural backgrounds. The problems arise when the person has to integrate in the broader local society, which now includes the parvenu and rich classes.

I discovered as much when I worked among leftists and other progressives of a Western European background at the European Parliament and beyond in the 2010s. With a couple of exceptions, they shared the same profile of the economically well-off, highly educated figure, who pontificates about workers the way parrots talk about programming.

My colleagues would comment in the most polite fashion on my “North African looks” and encourage me to wear expensive clothes because with those I “looked impressive”. I am confident about my appearance (I am confident in general) and will appreciate a fine piece of clothing. Though this otherwise innocuous language hints at a person’s assumptions and default cultural programming.

What they were actually saying, again without bad intention, is that my path to mainstream acceptance passed through money. With enough wealth or pretence thereof I too could become invisible in phase one and attractive in phase two.

Invisibility is not a matter of skin complexion per se. In the West, “whitening”, if we are to call it thus in the interest of brevity, is a process of assimilation into the dominant cultural group. If you do what they do and say what they say, if you too worship money, then they will recognise you as their equal. Start thinking for yourself, however, dismiss their idols, and deviate one bit from their worldview only to learn that now you have an appearance that stands out, which becomes a set of values they do not approve of, which becomes your entire being rendered as an “other”.

It is for this reason that the average centrist party will become a cheerleader of both far-right doctrine and conduct. At that point, though, what could originally be justified as ignorance must now be treated as complicity and, indeed, malevolence.

The cultural vitality of youth

Europe is an ageing continent. The natives are literally dying because they shifted to the urban life en masse, where the atomic family is the upper limit of their daily community experience. They stopped having extended families, which only really occur in rural areas with the inclusion of grandparents, uncles/aunts, cousins, and neighbours whose lineage is fully known.

This society-wide ageing is not merely a matter of people becoming older. It has far-reaching cultural implications. Older people tend to lose their cutting edge on all matters of collective living. They are not as keen on experimentation because they are settled in their ways. They become less open to new ideas and gradually stop searching for fresh thinking altogether. They lose their physical fitness, which prevents them from doing sport. They lack the playfulness for theatre, fashion, art in general. They are jaded and disinterested. Thus increasingly more facets of cultural experience are eroded until they are washed away by the inexorable passage of time.

Youth provides a power impulse to culture at-large. Younger people tend to be more interested in trying things out. To experiment with new technologies, to entertain potentially useful ideas, to push the boundaries wherever possible, to do sport, to play music, to organise festivals. This practically means that there also are more job opportunities for everyone.

For example, if I had thirty young lads in my mountains here in Cyprus I could easily play football as a hobby (I am elite physically) and even be their coach as a part-time job. Same idea for being their language instructor or life mentor. But without the youth I have no chance of getting a single interested party in these or practically any other activity. And all I ask for is thirty individuals, not thirty thousand. Even that tiny number is not available. Culture as a quotidian affair is thus non-existent.

The zombification of nations

Older people in communities that have plenty of youth get a second wind in life. The generations interact with each other through shared events. The elders provide experience and guidance while the younger ones act as the spark of energy that makes things happen. A healthy society has intergenerational solidarity, which contributes to its vitality.

Conversely, the lack of youth leads to the zombification of the nation. Europe’s native populations are in this rapidly deepening phase right now, which will become the driver for their increasingly intolerant reflexes because of how old age makes society less interesting overall.

The ideologues who dismiss any argument in favour of children as “natalist”, in a derogatory sense, those who are irresponsible and selfish enough to interpret “family” as far-right dog whistles and who thus give the extremists an easy win, do not realise how the prevalence of old age kills culture.

Much like the ignorant middle class liberals vis-à-vis migrants, they are not exposed to the insidious erosion of culture I mentioned above. By the time they understand what is actually happening, they will be zombies themselves.

Europe’s increasing irrelevance in global affairs

That Europe is punching below its economic weight in international affairs is not a coincidence. Same for its Russophobia and Sinophobia. Its decline is a function of the aforementioned. Without that spark of vitality at the micro scale, there shall be no potent force at the macro level.

Europe still has a lot of influence on the global stage, owning in large part to its colonial legacy, but its relative weakening is undeniable. As with many processes in life, change happens slowly until it happens all of a sudden. This is the predicament Europeans are in.

The continent is saddled in depth. Economic growth is frail. The industrial base is weak. Competitiveness is missing. Social movements have been infiltrated and inwardly corrupted by various brands of individualism.

What the political elites have for a while now understood as their short-term escape from this death spiral is the turn to the war machine, as I explained in my previous essay about gigantism and Europe’s far-right transformation.

The elite’s gambit is to antagonise Russia and China. Plus, with the help of Israel, which remains their friend despite minor noises about the occupied West Bank, they wish to exert wider control over the Middle East and North Africa. This wider region, culturally defined by its Muslim heritage, is showing strong signs of capacity for independence and has the potential to break free from the clutches of the Western empire.

Europe’s toxic cocktail of necessity and intolerance

Whatever they do, however, European societies require mass migration to prevent their disorderly collapse. I state as much because I have no faith that there can be a quick and thoroughgoing change in attitudes that would inject new life from within.

The average European native is complacent in their ways and unwilling to tolerate any kind of perceived discomfort, preferring instead the road of short-term inertia that ends in longer-term annihilation.

Immigrants are the only force that can, in practice, invigorate Europe: highly skilled experts but also working class people. Many of those immigrants will be of a Muslim background, because Islam remains a religion of vitality, in the sense of I have described herein. This means that Europe is bound to change face in order to stay relevant or submit to the rising powers of the world.

The problem, however, is that those immigrants are entering a society of intolerant zombies. The native Europeans are not open to much anymore and will only treat with hostility the growth of those migrant communities.

They will pick totemic issues, such as the scarf Muslim girls wear to school, in an attempt to enforce conformity with their own norms. They will deny any wrongdoing, making this a matter of “liberation”. Facts are their first enemy. They will go after vagrants who purportedly are a burden on the welfare state, only to end up targeting everyone. They will not hesitate to become vigilantes who burn the Quran and who generally use brutality to force people into submission. All to extend their privilege for a little longer. And they will do it while still claiming the moral high ground and touting their “European values”.

La nostalgie ne signifie pas en nécessaire la désire pour les temps passé. Quand nous cherchons pour une patrie qui n’existe pas nous sommes, en effectif, guider par la vision de peut-être actualiser ça qui être présent dans la potentialité de le monde.

Pratiquement, le personne qui est caractériser par la nostalgie est celle qui est un étranger dans son milieu. Nous pouvons devenir les étrangers même sans partir de notre terre maternelle. Ça arrive quand les conditions prévalent dans la société changent radicalement.

Tu a de nostalgie quand tu poses la question «où est ma communauté?».

Avec tous les réseaux de la technologie contemporaine nous avons institué du changement quasi-total dans le monde. La vie quotidien est très rapide. Les rythmes de changement et l’obsession de croissance économique perpétuelle créent du stress chronique, la déjection, et l’apathie. La nostalgie est l’idée d’avoir stabilité entre notre peuple. Mais parce que ça n’est pas ni facile ni permanent, la nostalgie est effectivement le mal de notre siècle.

C’est impossible de reconstituer les temps passé. Devant l’âge de les premiers humains, la technologie change notre idées et introduit le logique de fixer les problèmes qu’elle a crée pour garder les avantages qu’elle a donné. Mais en fixant les problèmes nous trouvons toujours des nouveaux problèmes et des avantages. Donc la transformation est inexorable.

L’option pragmatique est d’accepter que la technologie ne part pas d’ici et [re-]trouver les modalités des relations interpersonnel qui peuvent établir les communautés résilientes. C’est ça la remède du mal de notre siècle.

Et pour ma pratique de la langue française, la solution est toujours d’accepter des erreurs et de continuer à m’exprimer sans soucis. Voilà!

Comme les artistes d’impressionnisme je produis des peintures dans l’esprit d’admiration de la nature. Pas pour créer une imitation des phénomènes mais pour exprimer le commun entre leur diversité.

Contrairement aux peintres, je n’utilise que des mots. Mes figures sont des concepts. Chaque expression est une image, une petite détail qui a la potentialité de devenir une jardin où nous pouvons cultiver les fleurs et où les chiens vont courir et jouer.

Tous que j’écris, technique ou artistique, est une transmission d’un message. Voici la possibilité. Voilà l’opportunité. De faire quoi? De trouver les autres en procès de chercher le personne que je suis.

En ce moment là, je mets mes pensées dans une bouteille et je la jette à la mer. Personne ne sais pas qui est l’auteur, même si j’écris mon nom aux capitaux: PROTÉSILAOS. La raison est que l’auteur original des idées est toujours inaccessible. Tu vois la raison de l’homme mais pas la raison du raison.

Protésilaos est moi-même mais il est aussi l’instanciation d’une motif extra-personnel. Moi je suis seulement le raconteur des idées. Ils sont des histoires. J’ai les écouté à quelque part pendant mes voyages autour du monde. Maintenant je les partages au manière faillible avec les autres; avec du gens que je ne connais pas.

It can stand on its own, which is why I am publishing it separately. Again, I am doing it without disclosing the identity of my correspondent.

The quotes that are two levels deep are mine from my previous publication. The others belong to my correspondent.

You seem to have a very stable set of commitments. I wonder if trial-and-error was also involved here. For me, there were things I wanted to keep working on in the long term, but I always had to pause due to environmental constraints and external events. Did you have similar experiences?

Overall, my biggest fear with controlling my curiosity has been losing myself, but hearing your experiences gave me enough confidence that this is unlikely to be the case.

“Fear” is the key here. Keep this in mind for my other comments as well. It is related to every aspect of this topic.

First to your question. Yes, trial and error was involved. I was not always the person I am today. My growth has been surprising in this regard. I can compare my teenage self to my present self to give you a concrete idea.

As a teenager, I had no intellectual interests whatsoever. I was not reading books, I was not studying for school, I did not have any plan for my future such as to become a scientist or an engineer or whatnot. When they were doing career orientation day I was leaving school to go have fun.

I was good at sport in general and especially good at football (soccer). I took it very seriously and was a pillar of discipline about it, meaning that I would always be on time, do all the drills correctly, never fake it, train no matter the circumstances, never find excuses not to put in the hard work.

As a sportsman, I had tenacity of body because, fundamentally, I had tenacity of mind. But I was not an intellectual in any way. I was a dumb boy. You would never think of starting a conversation such as this one with me, for example. Or any kind of “deep” discussion for that matter. I would only do silly things and talk nonsense the whole time, while making fun of everything.

I did not respect most of my teachers at school. I talked back to them and ridiculed what to me looked like their absurdity. In short, I was not a “good boy” in the way most people understand this term. I was only good when it concerned what I cared about, namely, football. I was never a bully and would hurt bullies in my midst because that is the only language they understand. I was not a delinquent child. I simply was not one to be controlled and because of my discipline, which I would demonstrate in sport but which I generally had as a form of responsibility, I was earning my independence from a very young age.

Because of an untimely injury that prevented me from becoming a professional footballer, I turned my attention to studying. Even though I was not a good student at first and had no interest in all that “incredibly boring stuff”, I discovered that I actually enjoyed thinking things in depth. I was fascinated by the process of discovery. In short, I realised that I could become a thinker. What you see now is the result of that transformation.

But becoming a thinker was not a straightforward process. I had no idea what I actually wanted to do. The formal study I picked was about the European Union (the European integration process). I did not know anything about this field and the only thing that drew me to it was that I could use foreign languages (my native tongue is Greek). Yes, I was superficial in this regard—I was a dumb boy, after all.

I formally learnt about political science, economics, and law. Then I started my blog/website where I wrote articles on the political topics of that time that were of interest to me. A Member of the European Parliament from Portugal found my blog and offered me a job. So I ended up in Brussels, working at a centre of power, before even getting my Bachelor’s degree, without ever being involved in party politics, and without any connections to people of authority.

There I realised that I did not actually like politics. The theoretical aspects are appealing, but the day-to-day stuff is not interesting to me. In the meantime, I was always observant of phenomena, and would show a knack for discerning in them that which was common in their multitude. In other words, I was becoming a philosopher without realising it in the beginning.

This trial and error made me move away from Brussels to the mountains of Cyprus, where I now am. I have a house here, that I designed from scratch and built myself. I am no longer who I was when I was at the heart of the European Union. My preferences have changed, my ideas have become more clear, I have become more efficient in my methods and decisive in my actions. That I write in one go, that I do it frequently, and that my writings have the coherence they do is evidence of this.

Through these words you can find this person because there is no faking these words. I am this. To put it metaphorically, I have an extremely sharp cutting edge which was blunt in the beginning and became what it is now by continuously hitting it against all sorts of surfaces.

You can already tell from this that my path to where I have arrived was not a straight line. It went left and right, up and down, always open to the possibility of the new that I sensed but could not name. It took me from the most modest of jobs, such as construction work and bartending, to the centres of political control, and then to the countryside where I live at the margins of Cypriot society as something akin to a more polite dog.

People romanticise the man who moves away from established society. They do it to me as well. Not because they actually want to live the frugal life. No! They prefer their comforts even when they claim otherwise. They do it because deep down they know that the only way to find yourself is by losing yourself. But fear keeps them at the level of romanticising instead of acting out of that ideal, at the level of fantasising oneself as another instead of becoming another.

You can now understand “fear” better. It is the clinginess people have towards the thing they think they own. We are not prepared to let go. We hold on to whatever we think is ours and we carry it as far as we can. This is how Sisyphus, the man who rolls a boulder up the mountain, punishes himself. He is representing clinginess: to hold on to everything and to carry it with you. This “everything” includes the self you are, where you are not prepared to forgo this self so that you might become another. The “might become” is how Sisyphus drops the boulder and can now move up to the top of the mountain unburdened. There at the top he sees open vistas, new horizons, an entire world of possibilities. He is no longer the man who is punishing a boulder uphill for an eternity. He left his clinginess roll downhill.

You find yourself by losing yourself. What does this mean? It means that you proceed through trial and error. You trust in your heart that the inkling you have about what you are searching for might actually be what you will fall in love with. This is not a rational plan. Those who think they can sort out everything through a thought experiment or some neat program are simply letting their fear do the talking. What I represent is the person who jumps off a cliff, with nothing but faith, with nothing other than the inkling that there is something there to be loved, and who grows wings on the way down.

For as long as you are thinking about it without doing anything, which means that you may be overthinking it, you are operating within the boundaries that your innermost fear has delineated. The fear has drawn your comfort zone. It is even encouraging you to continue overthinking: “figure everything out completely” it says, “before you make a move”. What it does not add is “because I do not want to leave this place”. The fear knows that you will never figure out everything, so you will stay exactly where you are, which is what it wants.

Notice that in the above paragraph I am personifying the fear as somebody else who is not you and who is keeping you there. You can think of it as another spirit, as a daemon as we say in Greek, which has a life of its own (“daemon” does not mean evil; it is a spirit with a life of its own, and thus with preferences). This is a rhetorical device, a metaphor to say in one word what requires an entire essay to describe. I am referring to the clinginess we have, where we think that what we hold on to is super valuable, when it seldom is.

Now consider all of the above in light of what you wrote about “controlling my curiosity”. This is your fear talking even if it does not feel like an intense emotion. It says “stay here, do not go anywhere”. It will show you all sorts of monsters to compel you into inaction. It will speak about horrors and the terrible fate that awaits you if you dare to move away from where you are. For as long as you do what it is telling you, you are in effect befriending your fear. The daemon has taken over you and you are now its toy. You are staying there.

Trust in your feelings. I speak of “feelings”, not reason, because there is no reasonable explanation why I jump off cliffs. I do it because fear is not my friend. I am the daemon to the daemons. I do everything I want because fear does not talk to me. I live where I do, outside a built-up area, because even fear is afraid of the dragon I have become.

There has to be a goal for the curious mind. Something greater than curiosity for the sake of curiosity, which provides immediate guidance on whether a given path is worth exploring or not.

What if the path seems unrelated to the goal on the surface, but can actually give new insights?

Then you will surprise yourself, which is consistent with what I wrote above. You will discover something you had not anticipated, something that was not part of your dreams, something that did not live within the boundaries of your comfort zone. What remains to be determined, then, is whether you will follow it or not.

Goals can feel empty when they are not embedded in the conscience as important. In other words, they are not connected to something greater still. For example, a student might not understand why it is useful to study because they have not connected the fruits of studying to some concrete lifelong benefit. Having sight of the immediate target of the study is not enough: it has to be contextualised in something that gives it meaning.

Could you give your definitions of the related terms, such as “goals”, “commitments”, “projects”, and so on? That would help me a lot.

I learned the hard way that I cannot just fake my goals! They need to be sincere. When I tried faking them, I eventually asked “why” and then collapsed.

I can give you any definition you want. I am interested in rigour. You know there is rigour in my deeds, there is coherence in my thinking, there is consistency throughout, no matter what I do.

Though you are smart and already experienced enough to understand that what I wrote above about fear fundamentally speaks to our desire for clarity and closure. We want things to be closed because what we fear the most is openendedness. The open vistas are scary, the stories without a finale leave us unsettled, whereas our cosy little bedroom with its clear boundaries is so nice.

What I write is defined by fearlessness. You know it has structure. You know it is as defined as chiselled marble. You also know it is uncompromising and will go wherever it wants because it is free of fear.

So I can give you definitions, which you can cross-reference with dictionaries or all the books of the world, but you will eventually learn that “definitions” is not what you need, even if it is what you now want.

What the curious mind needs, and may develop gradually through trial and error, is to learn the art of thriving in indeterminacy. It is the mastery of living in a world that has no closure.

Here are some definitions, to answer your question, but I repeat that those are a distraction from what you really need.

• Goal: The end state of a process (e.g. I will write to Protesilaos).
• Commitment: Activity that requires upkeep (e.g. watering the plants, else they die).
• Project: An analysis (“breaking down”) of a goal that enumerates the prerequisites and thus the intermediate goals (e.g. to build a house, I have to build the foundation, the foundation unlocks the setting up of the walls, which then unlocks the installation of electricity, etc.—to write to Protesilaos, I have to have an idea of what to discuss, I have to have the tool to make the communication happen, and so on).

Not faking your goals is how you learn to trust your heart. Take that to where it leads you and you will discover that you too can jump off of cliffs, with faith as your sole motive, like I have been doing.

I’d always identified myself as a software developer, but I’ve been thinking that this might not be my only calling.

Ever since I started to learn computer science, I’ve been feeling the strong desire for rigorous and formalized theory. I found informal explanations in introductory books were not satisfying enough. This led me to study formal logic at some point, which I think was one of the most fascinating experiences in my life.

I do still love building things I want, but this desire for rigor is not going away. I can feel it whenever I’m studying some theory required to build something.

It is useful to be rigorous. It is also intellectually rewarding. You can think of it more as “fun” though rather than an absolute necessity for everything. Because if you make it a requirement for everything then you will be miserable as you will always be seeking closure and you will always be feeling unease while you are dealing with indeterminacy or uncertainty.

Software developer or not describes the kind of activity that is interesting to you, but is not who you are. Remember that you can be the person who lets the boulder roll down the mountain, while you move on to the summit to get a completely different view of the world. Today you are a software developer, tomorrow you can be something else. There will be elements of the past that continue to live through into your future, though they take on other forms.

People suffer because they identify with their job and with their ideas to the point where they cannot move on when the time calls for a change. Again, this is clinginess. The job/activity is helpful for as long as you are feeling alright with it. It becomes burdensome once your heart no longer has passion for it. This may happen for all sorts of reasons, including external factors. But the fact is that you will be harming yourself while forcing yourself to do that which you no longer love.

I keep mentioning emotions and love because I want to emphasise that you cannot fully rationalise the world. You will never be able to describe the beauty of a sunset through some formula. That is a reductive exercise and “reduction” is the correct concept because it takes something away from the whole.

You will never capture in words how a kiss feels. Those who always try never experience a kiss even while being kissed. You know deep down this is the case, so the sooner you embrace the multifacetedness of the human condition, the reason and the emotion, the bodily pleasure and the aesthetic delight, all as one, you will be prepared to navigate indeterminacy.

It is possible to kill curiosity. Sometimes people die inside and are forever broken, never to find their zest again and make any meaningful contribution that fulfils them. Though I do not expect this to happen merely by directing your curiosity. It will have to be something more injurious.

What would “something more injurious” be like?

Some really harmful experience like betrayal or abuse. Though it can happen more slowly too as slow erosion and eventual collapse of an environment. For example, you love a certain job and you go work in a certain place where you discover that over time it has become a toxic milieu. This is the death by a thousand cuts that people never take seriously because they only think of death by a single blow.

There, because of that toxicity, you become stressed and jaded. Your defences are always up and you lose trust in everything, including your very ability to cope with the challenges. Your horizons start shrinking because there is nothing around you to look towards with a sense of admiration and awe. Nothing is beautiful anymore. Nothing is attractive. As the horizons shrink, they converge into a tiny dot, with darkness all around. There you only find depression, which is how you as the person who reached that point dies; it dies while still leaving behind a body that lives as an empty shell hoping to be animated again, to have a soul breathed into it once more.

Consider this metaphor of the shrinking horizons in terms of thinking things in depth. If you go too deep, in a literal sense, you only find darkness and the kind of air that poisons your lungs. There may be riches along the way, such as valuable minerals, but you are moving towards a world that is not your world and will be hostile towards you.

This is why the wisest of Greeks speak in metaphor and why people who do not understand that surface and depth are one only think literally. We call these phenomena “Hades”, the god of the underworld, the god of the dead, the god of wealth. In the depths you find riches and you also find death. The riches are literally the minerals but figuratively they are the profundity of thought, that deep knowledge the curious mind seeks.

The “underworld” is a place that is very close to us while being decisively alien. We move towards Hades whenever we go in depth and reach a point where all we see is that tiny dot. In seeing that dot, we have become the person who can only see a dot. We have been transformed into that being. But that being no longer belongs to the world of the sun. It is forever destined to stay with Hades: he will not let anybody leave. Hence death.

So the injurious experience that involves depression will kill the person. This means that what you were doing is no longer viable. There may exist a new soul that can be breathed into your body. This can happen as you move towards a different direction where you might discover something else that you are passionate for. This is again the metaphor of transanimation, of your soul dying so that there is a new soul to take its stead.

I have experienced this death and this transanimation. It is part of the trials and errors I have been through. And because I was dead, and because I was reborn, I am not afraid of anything anymore.

Also, I’m being more and more skeptical about being a software developer. The industry in MY COUNTRY [edited for privacy] appears to be mostly talking about running businesses, building agents with LLMs to ship products more efficiently. I don’t want to play that game, however entertaining these can be.

I understand and feel you. It seems so shallow. Though you realise that people will be shallow most of the time, no matter what you do.

I can tell you from my self that the curious mind, the mind that tends to go far and deep, typically is lonely. It is very unlikely that you meet another person who is on the same wavelength as you. You might have a thousand friends, covering a broad range of activities, and you will still be lonely in this regard.

“Lonely” means that you cannot share the depths of how you feel with others because they simply cannot understand you. They are not there where you can go so they have no frame of reference. Imagine you are a fish and wish to invite your human friends to the depths of the ocean: they will never be with you because such is their nature and such is your nature as well.

To reuse the metaphor I brought up earlier, in my case people meet an ordinary man. I am talkative. I am amiable. I am fun. I can do stuff with them and help them out. What they cannot fathom in the face of all this, because the depth is obscure, is that I actually am a dragon.

I let my curiosity take me far enough. Though I have a sense of what is “too far”; a sense that I got through experience. “Experience” basically means trial and error. You will have to feel some pain to know when to stop. The body is an excellent mechanism in this regard. It is why you want to put ideas to the test. Do not keep them in your head. Try things out, give them a material expression, which will then allow your body to give you the fine feedback it is capable of.

I read this as getting myself into a feedback loop; I have an idea, test it out, gain feedback, and repeat this process. I guess I need some practice here. I tend to overthink without actually doing anything.

I’m also curious about how this would look like in philosophy.

Exactly! You want the feedback loop. You want it to involve your body. You want it to have consequences “out there”. Those are conditions that somehow shape your decisions. The “out there” reality of your ideas helps you have a three-dimensional understanding of what they are and what they can produce.

The philosopher is prone to overthinking and thus to suffering. All of what I wrote above can be presented as my philosophy of living, which is that deeds form you, that your choices become your destiny. This is a long way of saying “you cannot just be a friend of wisdom (literally what philosopher means) but you must become an agent of wisdom”. Stop thinking. Start acting.

Already in 2019, I wrote that the extreme right is the new right. Yes, I see the future in its essential form because by thinking things through I understand the internal structure of phenomena, the “physics” if you will, beyond the day-to-day particularities. When I say something, I have considered it carefully. I do not do tricks and gimmicks.

My argument then, as it is now, is that liberalism, expressed by this political centre, effectively is a luxury that society entertains under conditions of abundance. It stops being appealing when the constraints appear to be tighter, at which point some form of intolerance takes centre stage.

Liberalism in day-to-day politics has a strong correlation with political correctness and tokenistic virtue. It is performative because it sounds smart and caring. The European Union, in particular, has a clear rhetoric of moral superiority in its touting of the so-called “European values”, which are enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union and then elaborated in Article 3, as well as all sorts of everyday self-righteous talk.

Virtue signalling, however, does not have strong principles as its actors are principally concerned with staying in power. My follow-up argument, then, which I shall elaborate at length herein, is that those who today shed crocodile tears over the drift towards the far-right will blithely be implementing far-right policies tomorrow, having performed the requisite mental gymnastics.

Short-term thinking and disconcerted action

The radicalisation we are experiencing now is the natural evolution of the 2008+ financial crisis. We have been moving from a crisis of money to a crisis of values. This is because the financial crisis is the cumulative result of many smaller frailties of ethical character, which revolve around short-term thinking with its attendant greed.

From the perspective of decision-making, short-term thinking necessarily engenders disconcerted action. The consequences of prior actions must be undone or otherwise revised by posterior actions. It is the “debt” they create, which may be measured in monetary terms though can also be understood as legacy software that was never refactored, as policies with perverse incentives that were never thought through, as wants that were decoupled from one’s capacity to fully realise them. This is true for individuals who act in a haphazard fashion and are thus not in control of their workflow, as it is for groups of people and official entities.

Concerted action consists in logically coherent and pragmatic longer-term sequencing. One action flows from the other, creating the benign conditions for the next, such that the flow is uninterrupted and the ulterior end, as originally envisaged, is met.

Disconcerted action, by contrast, is reduced to opportunism. It is about kicking the can down the road and rolling the problem over to somebody else. This “somebody else” may be a future version of the same agent of action or another agent of action altogether. In dithering, the problems accumulate and the solutions to them are no longer easy to implement without incurring painful losses. Again, true for individuals and for groups.

Concretely, disconcerted action on the political front creates legal-institutional arrangements that amplify tensions, turning power impulses into systemic pressures and thus local shocks into global failures. Put differently, there is a transmission mechanism from elementary patterns of behaviour to broader phenomena.

Money fits into this scheme as a figment of a culture’s disposition. It is an instituted representation of its aspirations. Through the processes of money creation, money distribution, and money accumulation, we discern the underlying beliefs of the given society. In light of short-term thinking, money-seeking takes the form of individualistic profiteering, of making as much as possible right now at the expense of others, especially “others” in the future sense. The logic is the same for the distribution and accumulation of money, which favours present gains no matter their potential pernicious costs.

Against this backdrop, we can understand the overarching market incentive of short-term conduct as “you want to jump off the train which is on a coalition course as late as possible”. The reason is that there is profit to be made in the meantime and there is no interest in preventing the crash altogether by toning down or otherwise redoing individual patterns of behaviour: those are not profitable in the immediate time frame.

The European Union’s sovereignty mismatch

Which brings me to the European Union’s disconcerted action in the post-2008 world. What happened in the EU since then is a series of half-baked reforms that did not address the design flaws of the Union in terms of economic governance.

To this day, we have a monetary function, conferred to the European Central Bank, without a counterparty fiscal function, which would be given to a European Treasury under the authority of a fully fledged ministry of finance.

By extension, we do not have a European government, but a bureaucratic body, the European Commission, which fleshes out and implements the guidelines that an intergovernmental institution, the European Council, prescribes. The European Parliament is secondary in significance and in no way capable of escaping the architectural constraints it exists in.

These halfhearted reforms were conceived and implemented in accordance with the historical incrementalism of the European integration process. This is the mode of conduct whereby one problem is fixed by creating two new ones, so that those can be addressed in turn, always with the intent of shifting the locus of power towards the notional European centre. The post-2008 reforms compounded what already was a labyrinthine organisation.

In effect, the European Union is a monster of complexity. Its processes are hard to understand and harder to follow. Through its very constitution as a political order it obfuscates whatever answer to the questions of “who governs?” and “where is the locus of power?”.

Its decision-making effectively denies the sovereignty of peoples because of the inherent mismatch between the scopes of application of the Union as a whole and of national interests in isolation.

There are rules for the system as a whole without the commensurate accountability structures. Accountability, in its expression as representative democracy, only exists in full and in direct form along national lines. There is no equivalent to it for the European Commission or indeed the European Council when it is acting as a whole.

The sovereignty mismatch means that we have governance at the EU level without government, state sovereignty without popular sovereignty. To have democracy, we need both. The EU as such is not a democracy, but a technocracy with severally contributed albeit never jointly established national democratic inputs.

Unaccountability and the gigantism of “more Europe”

This very structure gives rise to an intellectual elite. It comprises the diplomats and apparatchiks who understand the inner workings of the Union and who operate behind its closed doors. The policies they set in place function as quasi-permanent directives that no national government can effectively deviate from and, by extension, no singular sovereign people may contest in full.

The elites occupy specific milieux, such as Brussels’ European quarter. Because of the social bubbles they live in, they make for natural allies of big interests, in what effectively is expressed as an ideology of gigantism. This is summed up in the motto “more Europe”. Whatever challenge we are facing, “more Europe” is the solution, which is about another transfer of power from the national level to the hands of the Europeanists.

The rationale of gigantism is that bigger is always better. By handling things directly at the European level, the thinking goes, we avoid all the inefficiencies of having many governments do what they are there for, namely, to decide on behalf of their people. National will formation is thus construed in functional terms as a matter of impracticality, decoupled from its normative components of legitimacy and accountability.

Gigantism has its own all-consuming logic, once thought through in full. For whatever we may now think of as a national particularity such as, say, schooling, we can always come up with a Europeanist interpretation of it by which the European centre is the template-maker and enforcer of uniformity, all in the name of “efficiency”.

This is, indeed, anticipated in the ancient myth of Procrustes. The man wants to eliminate the “inefficiency” of diversity among people. If we are all different, then one size cannot fit all. This applies to the clothes we wear, but is figuratively true about the activities we do, the preferences we have, and so on. But if, Procrustes thinks, everybody can be made the exact same size then we are working towards “efficiency” as then one size will fit all. The myth has it that Procrustes places each person on a bed, which serves as the frame of reference for the target size. Those who are smaller than the bed are stretched to fit it. And those who are bigger are mutilated accordingly.

The myth of Procrustes is an ancient insight into a perennial mistake of the governors who think that they can control everything centrally. It also is a story of cruelty and abuse, as that is what happens when you dismiss normativity in pursuit of “efficiency”.

The jingoism in Eastern Europe and the militarist rhetoric

The European Union is an underachiever on the global stage relative to its economic weight. It cannot, for example, control a small country like Israel, to make it do what it purports to believe (because what they claim is not what they actually want, given that actions speak louder than “strong condemnations”). Similarly, it has no leverage in the Middle East more broadly, so it is subject to the energy shocks coming out of Iran and the Arab world, as well as the capricious power plays of the American administration, owning to their strong dependency on US energy.

Muslim sovereignty is emerging stronger than ever. Iran has demonstrated that it can hold its own against the Western empire. The Mecca agreement reflects the culmination of a longer process towards self-governance of the region by the countries that compromise it. Not only are the Americans losing their grip on power, but the Westerners in general are adapting to the rapidly developing multipolar world.

What the EU has been trying to do in recent years is to find a niche by positioning itself as a counterweight to Russia and then to China. Towards the latter, it implements all sorts of impediments to trade. As for the former, it has since Euromaidan been cultivating Russophobia which culminates in lucrative contracts for the makers of weapons.

The jingoism in Eastern Europe draws from the historical memory of nations bordering Russia, though uses them as a pretext to give a new power impulse to the otherwise underperforming European industry. Industrialists know they cannot compete in market terms, so they decide via the aforementioned gigantism to set up trade barriers and then to shift business to the war machine.

Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kalas, among others, are gung-ho about the war in Eastern Europe, claiming that Ukraine is winning. This is the narrative that justifies the continued transfer of treasure to the coffers of the industrialists. Money is nominally sent to Ukraine when in reality it is cycled back into European industry. The argument is that “helping Ukraine” is how we let it win decisively the war it is supposed to be winning already. How exactly a country is winning when it is losing territory and is now set for an extremely harsh winter is the kind of knowingly false talk that future historian will have to reconcile with the facts.

What matters is that the EU is fully committed to the grift of militarism which is, once again, a short-term measure to cover its structural weaknesses.

Preparing the far-right transformation

Due to its already turbocharged militarist movements, the gradual transformation of EU gigantism from nominally liberal to effectively far-right is all but inevitable.

Parties like the AfD are purportedly pro-Russian. This I consider a tactical trick, akin to that of Georgia Meloni’s, or even the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact for an older example. The moment they are in a position of power they will understand that their interests are those of the industrialists and financiers which, in turn, run counter to the agenda of the Russian elite as well as the interests of other rising regional powers.

In light of the reemergence of Muslim sovereignty as well as Russian, Chinese, and Indian strength, the European gigantists, now invigorated by the far-right to drop their performative tolerance, will seek to redraw the map.

In phase one, they will continue antagonising Russia and China, ramping up the pressure however they can. In phase two, they shall collaborate closely with Israel in the Middle East, as it is the protectorate of the Western empire in the region, to provide a counter-balance to the alliance of Muslim nations.

The historical disputes between the Greeks and the Turks on the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean will be exploited in an attempt to (i) extend the already developing influence of Israel in Cyprus and the Balkans and (ii) draw a wedge between Northern Africa and the Middle East, effectively bringing the Mediterranean under tighter Western control.

Their goal is to change the momentum that is building up in the Middle East and the Muslim world more broadly, ranging from Morocco to South Asia. Currently the Mecca agreement covers Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey, but there is no principal reason why it does not incorporate other countries such as Egypt and maybe even Iran, given the requisite political realignments. The trend is in that direction.

This is all happening because the European Union started out as a half-done political project. It tried to introduce political union through the back door, by instituting a purposefully incomplete monetary union (the euro) to then create the instability that would make “more Europe” a necessary step towards immediate relief. It now continues as what effectively is a colonialist gambit.

The dynamic is the same. The EU is playing the militarist game to ultimately shift even more power to the centre. A small group gains a lot in the process, but there is no public good involved. In turn, national sovereignty will be reduced to a shadow play of elections that change nothing, of governments that have no power, of citizens who are brainwashed to believe that they actually control the apparatus that determines their collective life.

Western interests are currently using the Eastern and Southern European periphery as colonies that provide a buffer zone as well as the potential of becoming battering rams. The far-right in the Western countries will only intensify this dynamic.

Anyone who paid attention to the whole PIGS fiasco of the 2010s (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain, plus the obvious Nazi-style dehumanisation) knows that if even the so-called moderates were outright racist against Southern Europeans you have to be naive to think that the far-right will be any better. Additionally, you have to be clueless about how ruthless big interests are.

They will happily bring pain to the Greeks, for example, by involving them in some conflict on the side of Israel if that serves their Middle Eastern ambitions. Not because they care about the Greek national interest or, indeed, the Israeli people, but simply due to how they can service their goals by throwing nations to the fire.

The EU has the potential to become a monster of totalitarianism, all while paying lip service to the vaunted “European values”. This is what happens when disconcerted action becomes the norm: moral decay follows.

The elements are there and the far-right transition is going to become the organising principle that puts everything in place. If there is no staunch resistance against “more Europe” from the national governments, of which there are no signs right now, then the EU is destined to become a beast of epic proportions and thus to usher anew into the mainstream the brutality that characterised Western power politics in centuries past. “More Europe” will simply develop far-right characteristics and those who today pretend to worry about this turn will be its infamous apologists when the time comes.

La langue peut être simple. Mois je ne suis pas concerner avec le programme de le grammairien, même que je comprends le valeur de la langue grammaticalement propre. Mon intérêt immédiat est de trouver les autres, les gens avec eux je peux avoir une communauté.

Donc je ne suis pas perfectionniste: je publie mes idées sans soucis. Chaque publication effectivement est un impulse de pouvoir qui peut créer des conséquences. Là y a le potentialité d’une connexion: une échange des idées ou, simplement, une convergence temporaire des pensées.

Quand tu lis quelque chose, tu entres dans le monde de l’auteur. Salut! Pour quelques secondes, tu est aligner avec ses pensées, même si tu n’est pas d’accord avec leur contenu. C’est ça le monde.

La langue comme elle fonction nous le rappelle que il y a toujours l’espace entre nous qui est commun. Nous sommes les étranges, les métèques, les vagabonds, qui faisons des promenades ici. Et quelque fois, avec la communication, nous faisons les promenades ensemble; les promenades les plus longs pour une vie ou les plus courts pour un instant.

Mais, malgré leur utilité, Pierre expliques:

“Comme ci comme ça”: voilà une expression française que les étudiants étrangers adorent. Le problème, c’est que les Français ne l’utilisent presque jamais!

L’autre problème, mon amis, c’est que je suis un Grec irréparable: nous allons à la bataille même contre les dieux! Je suis ici principalement pour sourire et pour raconter des bêtises. L’apprentissage de la langue française est un détail assez intéressant, mais pas essentiel. C’est ça le pire! 🙃

Mais, d’accord, Pierre est l’expert et je veux m’exprimer avec la propriété grammaticale qui caractérise les francophones de la France. Donc en futur je dirai «pas terrible», qui est une expression… pas mal.

Je trouves que en écrivant et lisant souvent, c’est plus facile pour moi de réfléchir directement en français. Pour l’instant, les résultats sont comme ci comme ça (😈) parce que il y a beaucoup des mots que j’ai déjà oublié ou que je n’ai les jamais connu.

En plus, je pratiques «alla prima». Ça veux dire que j’écris sans rechercher les mots nouveaux en parallèle pour formuler les phrases. Chaque article est un petit test pour savoir si je peux rappeler une expression que j’ai lu quelque part.

Je suis content avec ma progrès jusqu’au maintenant. Je vais continuer à faire les efforts, petit à petit. Chaque jour présents un monde de possibilités et je suis heureux d’avoir l’opportunité de les explorer.

Thanos was a member of the band Diafan Krina. Roughly two years ago, I wrote an interpretation of one of their songs: https://protesilaos.com/interpretations/2024-06-29-krina-idle-days/.

Coral tear preserves some of the melancholy that characterises the work of Diafana Krina, which makes me think that Thanos was the soul of the band.

At any rate, this is a wonderful piece with inspiring lyrics. Below is the Greek text, my faithful translation of it, and further comments.

Δάκρυ κοραλλένιο

Ερμηνεία:  Θάνος Ανεστόπουλος
Στίχοι:    Θάνος Ανεστόπουλος
Μουσική:   Θάνος Ανεστόπουλος


Κοίτα να ντύνεσαι καλά
ήρθ'ο χειμώνας, πιες ακόμα μια γουλιά
Σου'χω φυλάξει μια αγκαλιά
και μια χάρτινη βαρκούλα μια σταλιά

Κοίτα στους τοίχους το λίγο φως
Είμαι η σκιά σου που σου χαμογελά
Τρέξε στην πόλη και βάλε φωτιά
Θα είμαι δίπλα σου όπου κι αν πας

Κοίτα να χτίσεις μια φωλιά
κι εκεί να κρύψεις λίγο ήλιο απ'τα παλιά
Σου'χω φυλάξει μια θάλασσα
και ένα δάκρυ κοραλλένιο μια σταλιά

Κοίτα τα χέρια σου, αντέχουν πολλά
Διώξ'τα σκοτάδια σου και κοίτα ψηλά
Μείνε στην έρημο μες στη φωτιά
Θα είμαι δίπλα σου όπου κι αν πας

Coral tear

Singer:  Thanos Anestopoulos
Lyrics:  Thanos Anestopoulos
Music:   Thanos Anestopoulos


Look to dress well
winter has come, take another sip
I have stored for you a hug
and a tiny paper boat

Look at the faint light on the walls
I am the shadow smiling at you
Run to the town and set a fire
I shall be beside you wherever you go

Look to build a nest
and there to hide a bit of sun from the past
I have stored for you a sea
and a tiny coral tear

Look at your hand, they have endured a lot
Cast away your darkness and look up high
Stay in the desert within the fire
I shall be beside you wherever you go

I imagine the poetic first person as a guardian figure. It is the one who cares deeply about the wellness of the poetic “you”. The guardian appears to be reminding the unnamed second person of its own moments of respite, of its achievements, and its innate capacity to be hopeful.

In the song, hope is represented as feelings that can be stored, the past which persists as a matter of choice, and even the teardrop which may solidify so that it is not lost.

The titular coral tear is the symbol of this hope. In that which is ephemeral, the tear, it identifies the potential for permanence. Perhaps this cannot be done: teardrops do not transform into corals. Maybe impermanence is all we experience, though one can still reason about transcendence and thus the poet employs the metaphor of the teardrop to remind us of what we can at all times fathom.

Hopeful is the person who does not rush to early conclusions. Do not say “this is impossible” when you cannot have a definitive answer. Let the tears flow in earnest, as you accept impermanence. The honesty of your experience may leave such an impression on you that permanence no longer seems alien: it stays with you and it defines you thenceforth.

I suspect many a poet employs “you” as a proxy for their self. We can interpret Coral tear along those lines as well. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves to take it easy, to not fixate on what is troubling us, to recognise that hope remains with us and that we have the potential to think of our case anew.

As I have implied in cryptic fashion in my publication Welcome to my world, which is your world (2026-09-06), the creator cannot share the totality of their world with anyone. If my creativity is a fountain whose waters flow downstream, you may trace everything back to the source, at which point you find that the spring comes from the depths of the mountain. You are so close to the source, yet forever away from it.

In the innermost world of the creator, at the depths of this loneliness, hope manifests as a belief in the possibility that someone attracted to it, someone who has had another taste of those waters, can align their mind perfectly with the creator’s. Only then the two are one.

Should that happen, however, the creator has not found another: the you is the I and the distinction collapses into itself.

UPDATE 2026-09-08 08:19 +0300: I appended a section about economic reforms and debates about groups of people.

UPDATE 2026-09-07 11:04 +0300: I appended a section about the programmatic agenda of socialist feminists.

This is a collection of comments to the feedback I received regarding my article titled The lie of socialist feminism (2026-09-05). I group them by topic.

Women can decide what to do

Indeed. I never made an argument to the contrary. Actually, I wrote about harmony in the family and also talked about solidarity in general. You do not have those under conditions of tyranny. I wrote about love. Love is consensual. Unless you know of love through brutality, which is an alien concept to me.

What I do is point out that “socialist feminism” is the trojan horse that brings individualism into socialist discourse, first as an ally and then as a usurper. If I am seeing it and you are not, then I ask that you think things through and tell me exactly how I am wrong in this assessment.

My comment that feminism’s main target is womanhood is descriptive. I am describing what feminism says in words that are more direct. They tell women that your problem is you can have kids, your problem is that the man sees you as a baby machine, your problem is that kids relegate you to secondary roles… Your problem is that you are not a man. This is the logical conclusion.

So what will happen when the woman tries to be a man? She will be pushing against natural limits. Can she work at the construction site day in day out? I have done that for years and never saw a single activist show up to prove her feminist case. If you are saying things that can happen, then I expect you to be doing them. Otherwise, I grow suspicious. Yes, there is the woman who can do this sort of work, but not the average, no.

And the same is true for limits the man faces, of course. Either you accept that there is a baseline of biology or you do not. If it is a thing, then why are you effectively blaming women for being women? And if it is not a thing, then why are you valorising women for something that is made up?

Furthermore, this assumes that the man is having the good life out there. This is a topic I did not cover in my last article, though I had plenty to write about it in the post I wrote about the war in Ukraine in relation to narratives of manhood. I linked to it in my essay about the lie of socialist feminism, so please check it out. In short, men are not having the good life you imagine and you will not have fun when you try to do what the man does while being a man manqué.

Patriarchy as the domain of the abusive man

A key term in feminist discourse is “patriarchy”. It can mean all sorts of things, as each thinker will fasten upon the construct their own significations. At its core, it is the dominion of the man over the woman.

As I also noted in my article about the lie of socialist feminism, the argument basically is that the household is the woman’s hell. There she is ensnared by a man.

This man, we learn, is an abuser. He uses violence and mental pressure to force the woman to do whatever he wants. In other words, the woman is just an object; an object of pleasure as well as an instrument for some work.

This abusive man, the story goes, is not allowed by the patriarchy, which now represents all other men, to show emotion or to recognise that he might not be as strong as he pretends to be. In other words, each man is abuser and abused by himself in isolation and by all other men in concert.

If we accept this narrative, then by definition every father out there is a psychopath. We are dealing with monsters, my friend, fiends who will enslave women and who have no emotion whatsoever. Those ghouls will teach their boys to do the same, so the boys are also little monsters. And so on.

Given this, I expect to walk into a random group of men and find complete psychos. Are you telling me this is a representative sample of ~50% of society? Is the surgeon who saved your life a psychopath? Is the musician whose songs you enjoy a perennial abuser of all other people? Do the men who hug and kiss their mother, who show love to her, to their aunts, to their grandmothers, to their sisters and cousins, are all those men actually hating their family? Is there no man who just loves his girlfriend or wife?

I do not accept this premise, sorry. Yes, there are abusers and yes those men are insecure. But there are secure men who have no need to remind themselves how tough they are by picking on easy prey. The secure man only wants a challenge greater than him, which is how he contributes to civilisation. He thrives in difficulty. You know this if you have done sport, for example, or rigorous thinking. The easy mode is not interesting.

My position is that there is nothing inherently evil with manhood. If there are individuals who are abusive, then we have a problem of individuals, which we can manage collectively in the context of a community—and we will definitely need other men who talk tough and mean what they say, if we are to contain the bullies. Though we do not have a problem with men as such, which is what feminists ultimately claim.

Patriarchy as a precondition for capitalism

Which brings us to the next part of what patriarchy does. This system of abuse normalises exploitation at home, which then normalises exploitation in general. Whence comes capitalism.

If this is the case, then we should expect to see less capitalism in modern Western societies which have long now conformed with various feminist demands. Sure, not the entire feminist programme but parts of it. If patriarchy and capitalism are intimately linked, then reducing the one must reduce the other. Is this happening?

What does it even mean for there to be “less capitalism”? If we define it as exploitation, then all the single parent households, by virtue of breaking free from the aforementioned men/psychos have cumulatively led to less exploitation at home which must have translated into less exploitation elsewhere. Did it? Are those single mothers better off now?

There is, however, a more pressing concern. If patriarchy, which basically is the household, is tied to capitalism, then we cannot have households for as long as we are living under capitalism. Those will always be patriarchal, else capitalist. It follows that to undo capitalism we have to nudge all the women away from men. Once we do that, capitalism will collapse, because the transmission mechanism from household to the rest of social life will be interrupted.

I find that self-destructive because of the toxicity it will create in society everywhere. In other words, it will not work.

But this transmission mechanism is problematic in a different way as well. If men are inherently abusive and if we are here because there have been generations of households through the millenia, it follows that capitalism has been there all along. Capitalism now becomes this “make your own story” kind of term, where you can use it to describe manhood and any kind of conditions manhood creates in the world. Capitalism becomes essentialist as inseparable from the man.

As such, the end of capitalism necessitates the end of man.

So we already learnt how feminists blame women for their womanhood and now we have the other piece of the puzzle of them blaming men for their manhood. The feminist must be neither of those, of course, while the feminist thought is necessarily culminating in transhumanism at stage one and posthumanism at stage two. All in the name of undoing capitalism. And all this wrapped in socialist parlance. How convenient that you do not see the trojan horse!

The importance of hierachy

This is a point I made at length in my article about broken relationships and rootlessness, where I also commented against the modern antipode of feminism which is masculinism (or the “masculinity merchants” as I have described them before). It is a general point about a human’s behaviour.

[ Also read an unrelated, non-political entry of mine on managing curiosity, which I also published yesterday together with the piece about the lie of socialist feminism. ]

Every person needs structure in their life. Otherwise their potential is wasted. They fall into self-harming habits, lose sense of their commitments, and so on. Structure means that you are reminded of your duties and your goals.

A disciplined person brings structure from within. “I shall do X because I said I will do X and my word is sacrosanct”. This is how discipline is in practice. There are degrees. The most disciplined person operates this way in every aspect of their life. They can afford to live without much feedback because of how they already behave within constraints. Everybody else is better off having people around to give them guidance. But, fundamentally, every person needs structure.

When you are studying, your teacher will point out your errors and guide you to the correct method. If the teacher does not do that, you will embed the errors as second nature, which makes it much harder to change them later. As soon as you recognise the teacher’s superiority of skill, you are consenting to the emergence of a hierarchy. In its simplest form it is you and the teacher, but there can be many levels to it.

For every aspect of life there are such hierarchies. Families have hierarchies as well. Grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts, elder siblings. Depending on the specific community, there is the neighbour, the sage, the police officer, the doctor… All those people contribute to some form of structure around the individual.

The generic term is “hierarchy”. If we are talking specifically about a male figure because for whatever reason their masculinity is relevant then we say “patriarchy” and if we are talking about the female tutelary figure we have “matriarchy”. There is nothing wrong with those words. In every society we find patriarchs and matriarchs because every society has structure throughout.

Now, feminism poisons the debate by making patriarchy a necessary evil. It follows that a certain aspect of the social structure will have to be dismantled. So either feminism will replace patriarchy with some other hierarchy, such as matriarchy or the rule of the feminist, or it will abolish structure altogether. The latter means that every single person will be left to their own devices to make decisions they are not prepared for. Imagine the child having to navigate the world without any feedback from its parents or other tutelary figures. That will be disastrous. And if it is some other hierarchy, then the feminist has to tell us why that is superior to what is in place, to what has stood the test of time? Is there no value in a father figure? Does the man who has discipline and integrity not serve as a role model for other people, including other men but also women? Do women not admire a skillful man in whatever his area of expertise is, such as a guitarist?

I think that hierarchy cannot be removed. What matters is to have harmony. It is neither patriarchy nor matriarchy because it is both of them complementing each other for different aspects of life. Sometimes you have to give people a warm hug, while at others you have to call out their nonsense. If all you have is warm hugs or judgement, then you are doing them a disservice: you need both.

Yes, some feminists are problematic but read this one instead

Once we go into the details, we end up with a common rhetorical practice of positing a more true version of the subject matter which has the potential to radically shift the debate. In this specific case, we have to contend with decadent feminisms while there exists a virtuous one. The Jacobin piece I was commenting on was also unfolding along those lines in juxtaposing neoliberal versus socialist feminisms, with the latter being the virtuous one.

I have two principal objections here.

1. It posits a true feminism. It then needs to explain why are all the non-true feminists not switching to the authentic version. Are they traitors? Is this a psy-op of the CIA or some other shadowy forces? Whom shall we trust and how should we go about telling truth from falsehood? What means do we have to confirm that our choice of true feminist is the most true? Do we run each opinion piece through some “true feminist checker” program? Do we monitor discussions between people to confirm they are in line with the truth? This sounds silly, but I am serious: will you police all discourse?
2. If we accept that there is a more true feminism, we are going down the slippery slope of fundamentalism. There can always be something more true and more authentic than it. The history of leftism is full of sectarianism. The radicals will not be radical enough. This pits one group of people against another in a competition of self-righteousness. The “self” here will have to be a person in the end, because the generic category of “women” is the contested group already and also because of point 1 above. As such, fundamentalism leads us once again, willy-nilly, to individualism.

My commentary is about the common in the multitude. I am not trying to find truth in the words of one person or some authoritative source. I am examining the trends and am telling you where they are going.

The truest feminist is counterfactual. We can run the thought experiment to indulge our curiosity, but we are no longer describing phenomena.

My commentary on feminism concerns the irreducible part of it, which is the victim narrative of a group of people, namely women, being exploited by another group of people, namely men, on a binary of good versus evil. There are layers of complexity built on top, but this core idea persists. In my original article I explained why this leads to individualism in how it undoes the family. I also made several clarifications here.

The socialist cause under feminism switches from a class issue to a gender issue and from a gender issue of women as a whole to a “me, me, me” contest of individualism writ large.

Elon Musk also talks about children, so you support him

No, I do not and you have to be more careful with your analysis before you cavalierly make me a villain for something I did not say. What Elon does in his life is not my concern. I do not have to apologise for what others say.

What I write about are communities. My language is clear. I mention intergenerational solidarity several times. I talk about the grandparents being in the same space as the grandchildren. I discuss how the parents are in harmony with each other. I comment how there are tutelary figures to guide people in life and to instil in them values. I elaborate at length on hierarchy and on collectivism. I even comment on the basis of campaigning against billionaires, which is the authority of the group over the individual.

That I mention children is only in relation to the feminist discourse of effectively asking the woman to be a man so that she can move away from so-called “secondary roles”. I say that there is nothing secondary about motherhood.

Now, the point about Elon Musk is problematic also in the way that we can always find some billionaire or otherwise questionable figure who has said something right. It does not mean that if there is a coincidence of views on one point that there is complete agreement on everything. This is dangerously simplistic.

In my article I mention refugees, for example, which I admire for their resilience. George Soros, another billionaire, has also done projects that support refugees. It does not mean that I therefore endorse George Soros in his capacity as a billionaire.

I still am secure in my independent thinking to say “I agree” or “I disagree” with anyone on any given statement, while maintaining the ability to have a different view of their conduct in general. I do so in accordance with reasonableness, not whether I vibe with the person or not.

Feminists just want equal rights

Then why are they calling themselves “feminist” and are making blanket statements about men, the patriarchy, et cetera? Why are they not egalitarianists? If this is what they want, then they can start by joining the army en masse, for example. There are so many wars they could go to get fed to the cannons. You know this is not happening.

If you are an egalitarian, you cannot be à la carte about it. This is a topic I covered in my article about the war in Ukraine in relation to manhood, by the way.

Equal rights is a laudable idea. Though if you call it “equal rights” but actually mean “special treatment”, then you are not being honest, or self-aware, or consistent.

The programmatic agenda of socialist feminism is socialist

I was told that I did not fully get the point of the 1972 publication I was quoting from Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women’s Movement. What they want is not like what other feminists want, because they have the socialist agenda to address problems within the household. They are socialist throughout.

This I contest because I think through the implications of their position. Their argument is basically this:

• There is a core problem at home.
• The problem is not solved at the individual level.
• We need collective solutions for it (i.e. socialism).

Then they elaborate on what those may be. We can even think of many ourselves (of which we have plenty across the European Union, for instance) in one way of another, such as public healthcare, strong networks for childcare, longer maternity/paternity leave, and more. Those would be in line with the socialist programme.

Now what happens if we do not have those? Absent the socialist state’s pampers, the “socialist+feminist” construct becomes just “feminist”. Which means that the household is a problem. And if the household is a problem that cannot in the meantime be solved collectively, then it is addressed individually. Hence the individualism I have already covered at length.

This is exactly why I bring in the case of the Syrian refugees (they live close to where I am, by the way, and I see them every day). Materially they are in the same situation as me, namely, marginalised. But they have a different mindset than our society at-large, which allows them to endure the challenges and thrive regardless.

I recognise that the individualist/atomic-family kind of childcare is a burden on parents. I comment more about that in the other article I linked to which argues against Andrew Tate, among others: About rootlessness and broken relationships (2026-08-21),

What the Syrian woman has, in short, is the vaunted “socialist childcare” at the local level: her extended family. She does not have to wait for the reconstitution of society.

Consequently, we as a society have a problem of expectations, which I also comment on in another thread: Comments on material conditions, expectations, and community (2026-09-06).

My view about communities can be summed up as this: “I can have socialism at the local level together with my extended family and neighbours”. It has solidarity, it has resilience, it works for the Syrian refugees, it has worked for millennia.

Economic reform and debates about group of people

My critique of “socialist feminism” essentially is that you are replacing a class or democratic issue with a gender issue. Pick, for example, the project of nationalising key industries in the economy and having them be controlled by worker councils.

My concern with the overall project is that once you introduce suffixes and qualifiers to socialism which subdivide the people, you create the conditions for your own failure.

The nationalisation of industry is straightforward if you are doing it along class lines or democracy, if you will. It is no longer clear once you introduce extra requirements as you stop talking about “the people” and move into the territory of “some among the people”.

Will women be in charge of the industry, for example? Should it be a 50/50 split? I do not seek answers, but this is the sort of discussion that follows/precedes the economic reforms (and if it always precedes them, then my belief is that the reform never happens because sectarianism weakens the movement).

This, in turn, sets a precedent that others will contest. Why divide people into male and female, masculine and feminine, and not other genders? Why make it sex-centric at all? So the 50/50 split will have to look very different—and that problématique on sex and gender is not a discussion with a quick resolution, so factor all this debate in to your original project of nationalising industry.

And, then, why not factor in race or ethnic background so, for example, we have half Greeks and half Syrians (speaking relative to my immediate surroundings, but generalise accordingly). Following the implications will lead us to individualism.

These are real-world experiences, as you know, not some thought experiment. I am also writing this, by the way, with intimate knowledge of party/power politics (I worked at the European Parliament, among others).

Introduce one special group and now everyone wants to be special. Add one prerequisite to your ultimate goal and now you have a million prerequisites because why would this one be more special than that one. If you get involved with party politics or social movements which are not strictly tied together ideological groups you will observe this fracturing.

Actually, you can observe this even at the smaller scale with individuals. I even observe it with dogs (I am an experienced dog handler): treat one specially and others will become aggressive towards it. We are talking about something foundational here.

To distil my point: do not go far off the economic/democratic debate, because you will never come back to it.

Patterns of behaviour and the nature of people

One of the arguments of feminists is that patriarchy teaches people to behave in certain ways. Men are taught to be aggressive, for example. I have a different reading of these phenomena altogether. Those patterns of behaviour have cultural features, though we observe commonalities across cultures. Those have to do with the very nature of people.

Perhaps you have met someone who, for example, gets frustrated easily. Observe them carefully. When do they become emotionally unstable in everyday activities? Something does not work the way they expect and they feel pressured to do it while believing that time is running out. This pressure builds up rage or disappointment. They might explode in anger or implode in depression.

More generally, you will notice that the impatient person is more likely to become emotionally charged in some way. You can think of the capacity of patience as a fuse, so less patience yields a shorter fuse. The person who has a lot of patience is also in control of their emotional state. This does not mean that they have the stiff upper lip that “patriarchy” taught them. No, they have learnt to be in control of the situation.

I am here thinking of their association with other people, because emotionally charged people say or do things they later regret. They can be physically or verbally aggressive, else abusive. They shall break stuff literally and figuratively. We know of the physical aggression a man is capable of, but we must not forget the emotional tension, the death by a thousand cuts, that an quick-to-complain woman creates. Both “break stuff” by being emotionally charged.

Be a keen observer of people and you will find that culture is not relevant to much of what they do. I work with Emacs, for example, and I know for a fact that it attracts a particular kind of person on a spectrum of personality traits (myself included). This is not taught, nor is it undone. It can be harnessed or framed, which is why I write about “structure” here and in other publications.

Those patterns of behaviour extend to other feelings, such as enthusiasm and one’s attention span more broadly. You will find that the kind of person who has a propensity for gambling, for example, is prone to addiction in general. Whatever they do, they do it without control of their impulses. Those people need others around to hold them accountable, such as a male friend who will call out your bullshit.

I can keep going, but I think the direction I am pointing towards is clear.

The topics relate to two recent publications of mine and there are references herein, which assume knowledge of these texts:

1. The lie of socialist feminism (2026-09-05).
2. On managing curiosity (2026-09-05).

First of all, I see in my milieu that the feminist ideology has indeed made us more individualists. But another powerful reason for the young (and not so young) people to not have a family is simply because here in Spain we can’t even afford to have a house (I know it’s the same in your country, hence your Hut). And because the prevalent ideology, the few people that can afford a house are thinking that they don’t want to do more sacrifices, so they just prefer to not have kids and have more money to themselves.

The material realities are there and I am well aware of the numerous difficulties. My background is of poverty, which was made hard by successive financial downturns. Though I also suspect that those are a convenient excuse to not review our modern day expectations.

I can live at the hut because I have accepted the frugal life. I do not go on vacation, for example. I do not visit fancy places and dine at posh restaurants. I do not own a luxury car. I have no chance of competing with anyone on that front. But I do not feel the need to do so, because I did the demanding work of changing my expectations: I do not play that game.

I realise that I can live with less and accept this fate. In paying attention to my environment, I also learn how less is more. I find beauty in nature, which fulfils me. I also have emotional stability and regularity in my everyday life, which allows me to be incredibly creative and productive. There are no distractions because there is not much competing for my attention, not much which I have a desire to acquire as an impulse buy.

The hut is a house, though it also is the symbol of a lifestyle as well as the possibility of a new beginning; a beginning that has immense potential of meaningfulness. The Syrian refugees in my vicinity are the same in this regard: they make more with less, despite their own harsh fate.

Maybe we as a Western culture got used to the bonanza we had before and are now made inflexible. We yearn for the cornucopia of the American dream. Our mind is set on the life of the Disney royalty. We do not wish to adapt to the new realities and choose instead to believe that we have no options whatsoever.

I am the kind of person who likes to make things happen. If the world is too rigid, then something must break. I will not die without trying. And I will fight to the best of my abilities. Sometimes the rigidity is in our own head and sometimes it is in the institutions that frame us.

Whatever the case, we have to identify its source and then figure out how to change it. This we do by being proactive and thoroughgoing. We do it by finding the essentials that we can live with and/or by trying to connect with others in order to rebuild networks of solidarity that every member can benefit from.

I also observe that the few people that decide to have a family coincidentally are the ones that have more rooted Christian values. I think that in this regard religion helps towards the building of the extended family. Maybe that’s why there are other ethnic groups here in Spain growing even more than the native population, which is typically less religious (something akin to the Syrian Muslim people you mention).

It is not a coincidence because religiosity gives you a framework that is not about maximising material possessions. Compare that to the prevailing secular cult of money, which measures your worth in terms of how much you have of everything you can purchase.

The root, though, is the local community, not Christian values per se. Our societies are nominally Christian throughout. Go to every corner of Cyprus, for example, and you will find a church, a monastery, a priest, a monk, and crowds with hundreds of people ready to partake in some event. This, however, they do while living the big city life, which is a daily experience of individualism or of atomic families in a sea of strangers.

I am writing this on a Sunday morning. There will be a liturgy at the closest church soon. I have been there several times and used to visit other such places in the hope of finding simplicity of spirit. Outside the church, there is a parade of opulence.

The most expensive cars carry people with the fanciest of clothes. They all gather to speak about the paradigm of Jesus, which is frugality and the ethos of not keeping to oneself. They will praise the lord while inside the church. Then they will leave to continue with their want for overabundance, with all that entails about their one true god, which is money.

I sound cynical, I know. “Cynical” is another way to tell me “I acknowledge this is descriptive, but I still do not like the reality you are pointing towards”.

My view, in short, is that “values” is not an abstraction. It has to be embedded in everyday conduct. Otherwise it is tokenistic.

So those who practice the values, they have the community as a result. You cannot buy a community. It is built over time and is a multigenerational phenomenon. Those who embrace the ethos of sharing and of giving away are contributing to the collective they are members of and are doing their part for there to be a common good beyond their own private interest.

Which leads me to the article about curiosity. To become successful, you need a goal. If you want to be happy with who you are, you need to set a clear objective. Maybe this is the key that religions have, they lead the people towards an objective and thus make their lives fulfilled. With curiosity is the same, if you laser-direct it as you explain in your article you can feel accomplished.

Yes, I think religion has that immense potential. It is why religious communities endure through the centuries. Whereas the various ideology clubs come and go, as do those trends which are based on fashion.

I do, nonetheless, think that religion has this effect only when it is expressed through a community that has intergenerational solidarity. The grandmother teaches the grandchildren her values, while also raising them in a spirit of love. Upbringing and acculturation happen simultaneously. The kids will grow in a stable household. They have fond memories of what they lived through, so they eventually become tutelary figures to their own grandchildren. This is social reproduction and this is when religion is done right.

The cycle is broken as soon as the grandmother is not around the grandchildren. The extended family is reduced to the atomic family, which inevitably becomes the single parent and ultimately the singular person who is strictly individualistic. Even if this person is keen on spirituality, they cannot go anywhere with it while remaining confined to the logic of individualism. Either they will submit to the needs of the collective, which leads to communities, or they will have their own private god, which is an alias for their ego.

Religion cannot have this effect of enduring the test of time when it is reduced to a private affair of spirituality, of one’s relationship with god. Nor can it have it when the church is yet another venue for materialist competition. This kind of spirituality dies with the individual.

This is where we are now in much of the Western world. God is your talking buddy because you have no friends. You seek to learn more about the precepts of your tradition because what you really want is the community that vivified that culture. The tradition itself does not have a life without the people that make it. It comes to life when it is enacted as daily experience.

By reading the corpora we deepen our understanding of the various topics. Though we do not build communities this way alone. We have to actively seek people and we must work to bring them close together. This is what I am working on right now, though it is a big project that will take a long time to be realised. It is especially challenging since I must contend with people’s expectations, as I noted above.

There is a high chance that I will fail, but as I already mentioned, I am not the kind of person who gives up without trying in earnest: I will do my best and see what happens.

When you read my articles, you gain access to my expansive thoughts. I write at length on a variety of topics. Sometimes I amuse you, at others I trigger you. At all times, I make you think. And if you pay close attention, that thinking will take you much more time than you initially expect, because what I write is a distillation of considerably more words than those you receive.

You will eventually notice that there is a consistency to my thought, whether I am commenting on colour themes, politics, dogs, mechanical keyboards, everyday life issues, or abstractions with no obvious application. This is my integrity of thought, which is a reflection of my character: focused while also capable of moving in many directions.

There is a pattern that identifies me. It is my creativity, whose vital force joins thoughts into coherent structures, which form greater architectures, each with a world of its own. My publications are mere footprints. They hint at my adventures. You know where Protesilaos was. You might feel the calling to check out at least some of those tracks to learn where might they lead to. Perhaps you will find me sunbathing by a fig tree.

You might read about one facet, expecting that it is self-contained. Therein you will inevitably discern hints of my multifacetedness. There is a river of conscience running through entire continents of words. You drink from its waters, yet you can tell that what you get downstream is coming from high up the mountains. There you can find me again, hiking where the eagles fly.

You too can explore the space I have covered. The portal I have opened remains accessible. I call it “my world” but there is nothing about it that I can keep to myself. I have no exclusionary power over it. The moment I speak of it, I transfer it to the collective awareness. If I keep it private, I have still incorporated it in my broader thinking, which I will eventually hint at by virtue of talking.

As soon as I say something—anything!—I will make you realise that I am an iceberg. This I cannot hide from you. So I instead give you as much as time allows. Were you to ask me, I would share even more. No matter how much you drink, you will not deplete this fountain.

This world can be yours to occupy. You are welcome to inhabit it. I have taken care to leave plenty of fruits around. You do not have to do the hard work to acquire those. Though if you stay here for long, you will become me and so you will assume the habit of collecting fruits for others to enjoy.

I could stay there to tour you around. I could even hold your hand, if you were unsure about what lies ahead. But I probably should not. I will instead hide in plain sight. If you wish to find me, you will and then I will join you, friend. Our paths shall converge.

Until that moment, you will be there and I will be someplace else. That place might be too far for you right now. It may appear inhospitable and uninhabitable. There are no monsters though. I am the only dragon in these parts and I am benevolent. If you have already felt welcome in any one part of my world, you know that the same spirit that guided you here will bring you there. Follow the flying fairy.

My world is how I connect to the cosmic mind. This is where I have met you countless times already. We have never talked and I have not seen your beautiful face. Those eyes I could stare at for a lifetime. You know I mean it because you sense that I do not build anything on a whimsy.

I already know a lot about you without ever hearing your name. My thoughts have anticipated you in all of your manifestations. I saw you in me as potentiality because I had the courage to look inside. I then encountered you everywhere I went, a pair of eyes in a crowd of strangers. I hereby take a fistful of soil and raise my hand towards the sky to signify that the two are three, which are one, which is two, which are three.

If there is me and there is you, there necessarily is a space that envelops us. The two are three. If there is such a space that can envelop the two, it has in it a quality which is shared by all of them. It is that quality which is common in the multitude. So it is one. And the one is many. My world is your world, your world my world, this is our world. Do you understand where we are, dear?

You are me, yet another mind connected to the cosmic mind. Entering my world means that you are either already aware of our connection or shall figure it out soon. You do not know what is the ulterior end. It is not for you to know. Your embodied presence conditions you to a life of constraints. I will be there, walking beside you, even though I have stayed at the hut this whole time. Such is the capacity of the mind to transcend the boundaries and to visit you wherever you are, shape-shifting as stray cat to remind you that far and near are bound in togetherness. Should I hold your hand now?

In light of Gloria Steinem’s death, Jenny Brown writes in Jacobin how Gloria Steinem Was the Godmother of Neoliberal Feminism:

The establishment’s favorite “radical” feminist, Steinem worked with the CIA to promote reactionary propaganda and helped direct the women’s liberation movement into a corporate-friendly, anti-socialist direction.

Jenny tries to emphasise the shortcomings of neoliberalism by commenting on its feminist manifestation. She juxtaposes neoliberal feminism with the supposedly benign form of socialist feminism. The notion of a socialist feminism sounds appealing until we think it through, at which point we uncover the familiar individualism that undermines society.

Collectivism or individualism

The essence of socialism is its collectivist ethos: the group is above the individual. This does not mean that individuals do not matter or that they have no rights, but only that the common good takes precedence over the individual interest in cases where the two are in conflict. This is the basis for arguing that, say, a billionaire should not profit at the expense of society.

The consistent collectivist cannot subscribe to a view of the world where the individual has inalienable rights. Such jurisprudence necessarily reifies the singular person as the supreme good and, by extension, does not recognise any social body as an agent of political will.

To the collectivist, all individual rights can, in principle, be forfeit, including one’s life, if the common good demands as much. This is because the individual is ephemeral, whereas societies—and, by extension, cultures—subsist through intergenerational solidarity.

There will be cases where this tension is necessarily oppressive from the perspective of the individual, should the individual be pulling towards a certain extreme away from the midpoint. Such are the demands for the society qua organism to survive long-term: it has to maintain its integrity, which is a function of the roles it enforces among its members, the rules it embeds, and the hierarchies it establishes.

An organism cannot be heteroclite. Indeed, organism essentially is the spirit that is discerned as the organising principle which sets together the otherwise disparate parts into a system. “System” literally means “jointly standing”. There is a superordinate goal of resisting entropy for as long as possible to which everything else is subordinate.

A society, then, forms an organism through the organising principles it generates. The national interest, the want for energy and resources more broadly, the cultural expression… These reveal the overarching objectives which no longer account for the feelings or wants of individuals. Each person is subject to the workings of the whole, whether they like it or not.

The individualist does not recognise any body that is superior to the individual. In its most honest expression, individualism fully rejects collectivist thought, for it does not treat anything as a public good. There is no group whose interests are above those of the individual.

The individualist will be in principal agreement with notions of inalienable rights, such as human rights or a very strong conception of property rights as the foundational codex of collocation. Consequently, the billionaire is not a problem in principle: that is just shrewd entrepreneurship.

A country of individualists inevitably develops into an association of marauders and pillagers, who will seek to exploit other lands to make up for the fact that they are living beyond their means. They do so because they put private interest above anything else and, as such, think only of short-term gain.

The group, then, is an aggregation of selfish opportunists. It cannot be allowed to have a life of its own, the way an ethnic community does, as that gives rise to the collectivist ethos. The individualist must actively sever ties and break roots to remain individualistic.

The common good starts with the extended family

To the collectivist, the common good is understood as concentric circles that extend from the family, to the local community, to the homeland, to the nation.

The collectivist will argue, for example, that someone may not cut down the oak tree that lies within their property, since cutting down trees will be harmful to the community long-term. Monoculture begets disease and endangers the ecosystem, for instance, while the absence of trees and other vegetation makes soil erosion more likely and floods more devastating.

In this example, the individualist will cut down the trees indiscriminately because the only relevant person and thus the supreme good is that of oneself. Their own short-term interest reigns supreme. The individualist cannot live in harmony with a tree’s lifespan, which often goes on for centuries. “Whatever can happen, must happen now, and may the others be damned”, is their rationale.

The common good starts with the extended family in present time as well as intergenerationally. The elders, for example, will plant trees whose shade they will not sit under. They do it for their grandchildren as well as for all the children that may live in that land. Their plans concern the long-term, which is no longer about their individuality. They are interested in the conditions that may favour the next several generations.

We may describe this longer-term outlook as “patriarchal” or “matriarchal” or, simply, “responsible”. Within the confines of a single extended family, the patriarch and matriarch are the masculine and feminine tutelary figures who together uphold and pass on the cultural norms. They are examples to be followed. Through their leadership, which happens in a spirit of love, they give life beyond their own by creating the environment for social reproduction: reproduction in biological terms within the framework of a culturally defined society, else ethnicity.

There is no patriarchy that is opposed to matriarchy. The two complement and invigorate each other for there to be ethnic continuity. What the man does, the woman cannot emulate, and what the woman does the man is incapable of doing. Both are necessary for the collectivist ethos to be understood through one’s sense of duty to the commons. The man is a good man when he tends to his family instead of, say, gambling away his money. Same for the woman whose attention is on her offspring instead of various kinds of plastic.

The common good starts by sacrificing the individual interest. One’s own convenience has to be set aside for the collective to prosper. The parent must for a while accept fewer hours of uninterrupted sleep, for example, so that the baby may survive. The child, in turn, must learn that not every capricious want of theirs is satisfied because those can be self-destructive once realised. Children conform with the norms of the society and are not allowed to do only as they wish.

Whatever good, then, may be experienced at the local level is made possible by the good of the wider space in which locality is understood. There has been a past for there to be a present and this cycle continues into the future through responsibility. The collectivist thinks about the homeland and the nation at-large, not merely their parochial gain.

The individualist is not conditioned to serve any common good. They will continue to pollute the environment, for example, because fundamentally they believe that whatever happens to the planet long-term is not their problem to deal with.

Such is the midpoint of our modern world, especially in Western culture. Its values are individualistic, its real god or moral lodestar is the ego, whence come all the patterns of behaviour that are detrimental to longer-term wellness.

There cannot be a socialist feminist in earnest. There will come a time when they have to decide whether they are socialist or feminist, else collectivist or individualist.

To the feminist, family is hell

Which brings me to the lie that is socialist feminism. Consider the following statement from the 1972 publication Socialist Feminism: A Strategy for the Women’s Movement. Emphasis is mine.

Many analyses have identified various institutions (e.g., the family or sexual relations) as the crucial contradiction of sexism. However, these contradictions reflect the social relations of a sexist society, or institutions in which sexism occurs. Eliminating these “prime factors” would neither eliminate sexism nor necessarily create supportive alternatives for women. As the factory may be the locus for capitalist exploitation, it is not the basis of that exploitation. Private ownership and profit is the basis, giving rise to the class relations. Similarly, the family is a crucial locus of sexist oppression but it is not the basis of that exploitation. Control by men over women and the relegation of women to secondary roles is the basis of sexism, giving rise to a sexist society.

This is the irreducible storyline of the feminist narratives. According to it, men are oppressive qua men, men effectively enslave women, and the immediate domain of their tyranny is the household where family life happens. This family life is dismissed rhetorically as “secondary roles”. It follows that the emancipation of the woman comes at the expense of the household, familial ties, and manhood as such.

By extension, the most free woman is the one who is not under the control of any man and recognises no family. If the woman has children, even if she is a single parent, she still has duty towards them, so children will become a problem as well that needs to be externalised for the mother, now the individual who matters above all, to be free.

What will the woman do once she gets rid of the “secondary roles” of the household? She will pursue the presumably primary role of the girl boss, or socialist agitator, or, if she is so inclined, will find an inadequate outlet for her maternal instinct in the form of some ideology that seeks to rescue the forlorn; an ideology that will sooner or later be her own enemy, though her bleeding heart will not let her recognise the danger ahead of time.

Feminism is insipid poison for society. It is the ideology that seeks to render shameful and eventually eliminate the single skill women are peerless at: motherhood. It works to make the woman an enemy of the man, which will not only destroy intimacy or reduce it to a ruthless transactional exchange but also tear asunder the social fabric. Once the ground is saturated with enough toxicity, there will be no family, no communities, no nation, no hierarchy whatsoever.

Feminism effectively argues that the problem for women is womanhood, which consists in the fact that they are endowed with the disposition to raise children. Feminism treats womanhood as the core evil and encourages the woman to effectively become a lesser man in pursuit of some stupid “primary roles”.

The feminist only thinks of children as a burden to be managed through deferral to some impersonal “childcare”, which supposedly relieves the woman of her maternal duties although it actually encourages her not to bother with children at all. Continuing from the same publication:

A second problem we faced was in our understanding of our oppression as women. We knew that childcare was an issue for many women, but failed to take into consideration the problems such women face. The very women we hoped to involve (those with young children) were among the least likely to ever be active in any kind of social movement. They simply don’t have the time (because they don’t have childcare), are less mobile, and don’t think of themselves as active community members. The prevailing notion that women need something to do after their children are in school also makes these women less likely to consider becoming involved.

Later we find other snippets, like:

With material changes such as children, a mate, a home, one often becomes more circumspect because such a person must be able to provide for others (by law and social pressure).

So the women could not be activists, which presumably is the apogee of this vaunted freedom of theirs, because they were performing the vital function of motherhood. The publication goes on to argue for some superficially socialist scheme by which funds are directed towards childcare. Make no mistake though, the essence is not socialism, else collectivist ethics, but to sever the mother from her children in phase one, to make her detest motherhood in phase two, and to render her a rootless individual in phase three. Socialism is just the vehicle by which hardcore individualism proceeds.

The feminist enterprise dehumanises both men and women. To the woman, it denies her of her nature by making her think of her potential of motherhood as innately burdensome and of her femininity as proof of the fact that she is not man enough. To the man, it treats him as inherently malevolent, owning to his propensity to enslave women. The man cannot escape his manhood to be seen as something more than a penis with a penchant for tyranny. The composer, the poet, the painter, the engineer, the philosopher, is still a man, after all. Whatever intellectual qualities and sensitivities he is endowed with, no matter how pro-social his integrity and discipline are, he still is the primordial enemy. When it comes to manhood, the feminist tends to interpret everything as a phallic symbol of power and control.

The feminist must have never heard about the mother-in-law, for example, or never met one of the countless men who are wrapped around their girlfriend’s or wife’s little finger. Only men do the controlling and the abusing. They must have never heard about the lengths men have gone to in order to be seen favourably by a woman. As such, they have not bothered to understand the psychosynthesis of the common man; the man who finds fulfilment only through female validation and who lives broken by self-loathing while he is single—not because there is anything wrong with him, but simply due to how nature makes him seek out the female counterpart as the ultimate end. The man who is strongly independent is a rarity in this regard and effectively irrelevant to any discussion about numbers.

Yes, there are men who are tyrannical and abusive, just as there are women who would rather destroy society than accept lifelong duty towards others. But we cannot reduce everybody to a simplistic “men/women are bad” kind of formulation.

The gist of the aforementioned is that “socialist feminism” is a walking contradiction. Once we read past the generic socialist talking points we find gendered individualism that teeters on sociopathy. In present time, this gender talk also comes from the side of men, as in the case of Andrew Tate and friends, that I have commented on recently in About rootlessness and broken relationships (2026-08-21), as well as to a lesser extent On the war in Ukraine and social expectations of manhood (2026-07-20).

Family is the natural unit of solidarity

The collectivist ethos is about serving the common good. Put differently, it is expressed as solidarity in the form of people supporting each other.

The natural unit of solidarity is the family. Within the family exist bonds of blood which are held together by mutual feelings of love. The vitality of the family culminates in solidarity between generations: the elders are in the same space as the children and all are enveloped by a community of such extended families who know each other’s lineage. They have a defined homeland for their clan with a culture that is preserved across the centuries. Put differently, they are not rootless and will seek to grow roots even when forced to emigrate. Solidarity is thus organic.

In the countryside of Cyprus where I live, there is a growing number of people of Syrian Muslim background. They found refuge here from the civil war of the 2010s that sent their country into disarray. There were only a few of them back then. Now the women have five children each and are young enough to have another five. They support each other and live close together, from the little ones to the elderly.

These communities are the only ones which are vital in the Cypriot hinterlands. By contrast, the locals are walking dead. Old people whose posterity daydreams of the princely life that Hollywood promised them away from the countryside; a posterity that has turned radically individualistic and thus only finds excuses to not have children and to not take on the mantle of social reproduction.

The Syrians are neither rich nor are they enjoying some legendary “childcare” that was brought about by the socialist reconstitution of the state. They thrive under the prevailing conditions and their future is bright regardless. They simply understand that you have to put the common good above the personal interest: you submit to the authority of the collective.

Here, the Syrian man makes a basic salary by working in the construction sector. He spends his day at the construction site. He labours under the punishing Cypriot sun to provide for his loved ones, which he returns to as soon as the workday is over. The woman stays at home with the rest of the extended family, tending to matters of the household and keeping everything together. She is the cornerstone of the community. Her work is not “secondary” in any way. She is best person to raise her children together with her relatives and, while doing so, to instil in them a strong sense of honour so that they too go on to do the same.

These people do not outsource the most important of duties to some faceless “childcare”, nor do they have faith in the abstraction of the nanny state. They make things happen through the resilience of their collective character. Their meagre income is enough to raise several healthy children, all of whom have good manners and are eager to provide a helping hand to their neighbours. By contrast, the zombie nation of the Greek man and the Greek woman, and of the Western man and woman in general, finds it too bothersome to even have a single child and will complain to no end about it.

Muhammad was a supremely gifted leader because he understood the essence of religion as a framework of rules for life on earth. Forget about the angels: Christians have plenty of those too. Muhammad’s project aims, in practice, to have strong communities whose vitality is intergenerational. Whereas the Christian world gradually turned religion into a private escapist affair about one’s relationship with some effectively voiceless father in the sky. This has transmogrified into the various brands of individualism that are ravaging our societies.

Muslims are going from strength to strength because they accept that the collective is above the individual. They will lose their momentum as soon as they forget what grants them vitality. Christianity, on the other hand, is becoming the spirituality of the undead; people whose last hope is that there exists a better afterlife, as this life they have already forsaken.

The particularities of the Muslim quotidian paradigm need not be emulated. The collectivist essence is what matters. I cannot cosplay the Arab man. I can, however, seek to rekindle the essence that we had only a few decades ago, the essence I was raised in, and which have since been sacrificed to the altars of overabundance, of individual profit at the expense of rapid ethnic disintegration.

Now, I would like to ask how you manage your curiosity.

I have questions about almost every subject I encounter, which I don’t necessarily need to answer at that time, and tend to immediately search for answers.

For example, I was once curious about system calls, so I grabbed an OS book and read about them. I could’ve just stopped here, but then I was curious about how they actually work in Linux; I wasn’t satisfied by just knowing the theoretical aspects of it. Eventually, I was able to find out how they work at the assembly level. Although it was fun, this deep knowledge wasn’t actually needed for my project.

This also happens to non-CS fields like pure mathematics or science, which for me is impossible to gain deep knowledge right away.

In summary, this tendency to go down rabbit holes does more harm than good, especially when I have tasks I’d planned to do during the day.

So recently, I’ve been trying to steer myself towards focusing on the projects I chose, to achieve my goals in the long term. When I have a question, I first ask myself whether it’s relevant to my current projects, and whether it’s okay to seek answers right at that time.

However, it’s often painful to do so, and it almost feels like a punishment for my curiosity. I blame myself whenever I try to satisfy my curiosity instead of doing the task. I’m afraid I’ll gradually kill my curious mind if this continues.

I’d love to hear your opinions on this as well as your experience.

Curiosity has immense potential. Though it cannot realise it without a structure around it. Generally, talent reaches its finest expression once it is placed in the right framework. Otherwise, it gets wasted or falls short of what it could have been.

There has to be a goal for the curious mind. Something greater than curiosity for the sake of curiosity, which provides immediate guidance on whether a given path is worth exploring or not.

The goal is like the lodestar. It is a fixed position in the night sky. You know whether you are moving towards it or are deviating from it.

The curious mind is akin to the seafarer. Imagine the sailors who hop on a ship to explore some uncharted waters. Nobody knows what they will find there. Maybe there is some exotic island, filled with nice fruit, which has the conditions for a decent collective life. Or maybe there are untold horrors there that nobody is prepared to deal with.

Those explorers are extra useful to their people when they eventually make a clearing for some settlement. They will build a port and some houses, which will gradually grow to become a community. What they discover thus becomes available to those who are not as exploratory in nature. The community is the resulting common good which others partake in.

The curious mind is the mind of the pioneer. Though those who venture first into the unknown also are the ones who take on the greatest risk. They are the most likely to suffer whatever pain awaits them. Curiosity can be disempowering and will then feel like a curse. This happens when the goal is not clear or, as is usually the case, when the goal is something the person is not passionate about.

Goals can feel empty when they are not embedded in the conscience as important. In other words, they are not connected to something greater still. For example, a student might not understand why it is useful to study because they have not connected the fruits of studying to some concrete lifelong benefit. Having sight of the immediate target of the study is not enough: it has to be contextualised in something that gives it meaning.

This brings me to the point of purpose. You may find yourself getting distracted away from your immediate projects. At first, this seems like an undesirable outcome. Though consider the possibility that your body is effectively asking “why am I even doing this?”. It is wondering where the lodestar is.

When you go down a rabbit hole, which appears to be pointless, you can interpret it as a self-harming indulgence, which it might well be, or you can try to understand whether there is something deeper in you, something sincere that is being suppressed, which seeks clarity about your purpose.

Some people have a direct path to their purpose. The curious mind does not. It explores all the time in what effectively is its way of understanding itself through its relationship with the world. Think of the curious mind like the bat which sees itself in a space formed by echoes.

It is possible to kill curiosity. Sometimes people die inside and are forever broken, never to find their zest again and make any meaningful contribution that fulfils them. Though I do not expect this to happen merely by directing your curiosity. It will have to be something more injurious.

Now, what does “directing your curiosity” mean in practice? At first, it means that you have to accept that you may not yet have the experience to know who you are because you have not figured out where you are. To reuse the bat metaphor, you need to generate more echo, which you do by letting your curiosity lead you where it must.

In the second phase though, you have enough experience to know more about yourself. You can tell with confidence what your strengths are and how you may harness them. You will have at least an inkling of what it is you want and which is the figurative haven you will stay at. You thus learn to channel your curiosity like a laser beam. It is so concentrated that it is supremely effective in its results.

This is where I come in. I too have a curious mind. This has a purely intellectual dimension, expressed as inquisitiveness to figuratively clear the path towards a more complete understanding of a given subject. Though it also has a physical expression in how I literally cleared the land where I built my house, for example.

When I was a student at school, I did not understand why studying was important, so I did not study. I always had the mind I have now, but I was not directing it in ways that were intellectually inclined. I was not doing anything noteworthy on that front. Indeed, I was surprised with myself when I started to realise that I could be a thinker. I was reading some book and my thoughts were racing in all directions, trying to compute the implications of what I was learning and then to connect my findings to other thoughts in what was a network of sequences that all made sense. It was an explosion of coherent ideas, even if their initial expression was not as refined.

There was a point where I was reading too much about everything I could get my hands on. Eventually, I realised that I could not move in all directions. Over time, the immediate goal I had, which was to keep the job I got in the field I studied (European Union politics), proved to be something I was not passionate about. That was a moment of crisis.

The word “crisis” has the meaning of a difficult situation. Though it also means “judgement”. It is, in other words, an opportunity, however painful, to critically assess the situation and move forward from a position of knowledge. I realised that my calling was not to be met in the world of day-to-day politics. I moved permanently to the countryside I had lived in before. I have stayed here ever since and have become a philosopher in the process. Being a philosopher is something that could not be anticipated by my trajectory as a teenager: I was not intellectually inclined at all and was merely interested in football (soccer).

My curiosity became a sharp tool. I directed it at Linux, for example, and learnt enough to be highly productive on the computer, despite the fact that I only got my first laptop in my ~mid-twenties. I learnt Git and the command-line well beyond what was absolutely essential for my everyday tasks. I then shifted my focus to Emacs and understood it reasonably well, to the point where I even taught myself how to program in Lisp, despite not having any formal training in this or neighbouring fields. Same idea of all the other activities that form part of my life: the house I now have, dogs, agriculture…

I let my curiosity take me far enough. Though I have a sense of what is “too far”; a sense that I got through experience. “Experience” basically means trial and error. You will have to feel some pain to know when to stop. The body is an excellent mechanism in this regard. It is why you want to put ideas to the test. Do not keep them in your head. Try things out, give them a material expression, which will then allow your body to give you the fine feedback it is capable of. If we are talking about computer science, write some application, do some reverse engineering, explore some algorithm. In general, put your thoughts to the test.

Overthinking is how you waste the potential of the body. You let the brain test everything without realising that the thought experiment is not the right tool for reporting feedback at a deep level. You want to be “out there”, living your ideas. This is how the curious mind best understands itself, acquires the experience it needs, and is then equipped with the skill of channelling its immense power wherever it wants.

My curious mind remains curious about everything. Though it is embodied in a body that has recognised its limits. Concretely, I know not to go down rabbit holes whose end result I cannot justify. For example, what will I actually do if I learn about the inner workings of the Linux kernel? Yes, I do have the intellectual curiosity to seek an answer to that question, though I know that in practice any answer is not enough, in isolation, to make me a kernel developer or, generally, to give me some concrete long-term value.

There are so many topics I would like to learn more about. But because I have developed the attitude of living my ideas, of embedding them in everyday conduct, I can anticipate how many otherwise interesting topics are not viable for me. This makes them not interesting in practice, although they are interesting in theory.

This is the key then. Continue to experiment and to explore. There will be ups and downs. You will feel lost at times and wonder whether there is any meaning to what you are doing. Learn to gradually integrate your findings into your corpus of knowledge. You do this by putting ideas to practice.

When something happens in practice, it creates consequences; consequences you normally have to live with. Where there are enough of these consequences, they effectively form a framework around your actions: you cannot do whatever you want because the scope of your choices has been narrowed by your prior decisions.

For example, if I have 4 hours of free time in the day, I can indulge my curiosity or commit to something I already have put a lot of effort into, such as to write an essay for my website, deal with my correspondence which I greatly enjoy, maintain my Emacs packages, work my land, play with my dogs…

Which brings forth the issue of caring that I hinted at earlier when I mentioned how one is passionate about something. For example, I love my dogs, so spending quality time with them is not a generic entry on my wishlist, but a major part of my life that I want to safeguard and continuously nurture. Same idea for my other projects. The website, for example, has been going since 2011 and I publish long-form, hand-written text continuously: I do it because I love it. And “I love it” is something that grew over time, as I kept trying until I realised that it was something I wanted to live with long-term.

Learn, then, to trust your feelings. Do not just do what reason dictates or society expects. For example, do not say “I should be making money, but instead here I am reading about THING”. Of course, money is useful up to a point, but if you are doing it without any kind of love, then you will burn out. By trusting your feelings more, you will discover what reverberates in you and you will then be more likely to recognise it, to commit to it, to understand it in depth, and to become who you are capable of being.

Remember that the many commitments naturally contain your curiosity, which is how they may then make you more picky and adept at using your curiosity in a laser-like kind of way.

If you want maximalist themes in terms of colour, check my ef-themes package. For something in-between, which I would consider the best “default theme” for a text editor, opt for my modus-themes.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): doric-themes
• Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes
• Backronym: Doric Only Really Intensifies Conservatively … themes.

Below are the release notes.

Version 1.3.0 on 2026-09-04

New theme screenshots

All sample images are updated to the current version and cover all the Doric themes: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures.

New doric-lilac and doric-borage themes

I drew inspiration for both themes from plants that exist around my house. They both use the same colours in different shades and sequence. doric-lilac has a light background while doric-borage has a dark background.

More commands to load a theme

The commands doric-themes-rotate-light and doric-themes-rotate-dark are convenience wrappers of doric-themes-rotate. As their name suggests, they are restricted to one kind of theme in the collection.

Similarly, doric-themes-load-random-light and doric-themes-load-random-dark are variants of doric-themes-load-random.

Thanks to Lucas Jiménez for making this suggestion in issue 28: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes/issues/28.

Broader face coverage

The following packages have some new faces or I tweaked them to look better with the rest of the theme.

• completion-preview
• elfeed
• erc
• flymake
• gnus
• mu4e
• query-replace

Minor refinements to palette values

I made several small tweaks to several themes. The changes are probably too fine to notice or they should now look correct enough to be unnoticeable.

When we think of something as a false idol, we are either referring to an inaccurate representation or to an untrue subject.

The former case can happen if, say, I purport to show a selfie of me which turns out to be a picture of one of my dogs. The idol is false insofar as it does not represent Protesilaos. But as a representation it is true in its indirectness and it is also true in accurately representing my dog. More generally, it is accurately describing something even if it is not that which is supposed to be represented. For example, an abstract painting of me may not be accurate the way a photograph is, though it can be accurate in expressing a feeling in a manner that the photograph cannot. Or it can even be accurate in showing what expression can be made manifest.

The latter case of the untrue subject is more nuanced. Suppose I show you a sketch of philosophyman whom I consider the one true philosopher. You may argue that philosophyman is sheer fantasy or some fallen angel or, anyhow, not the one true philosopher. If “untrue subject” means that there is no person who is philosophyman, then we are focusing on one specific interpretation of the representation. Philosophyman may not be referring to a person, however: it can be an abstraction, such as a set of qualities that are found in all philosophers hitherto. Philosophers think things through and so, philosophyman must be the most intense thinker. To think things through, one must be patient. Philosophyman is thus the most patient. If philosophers are indeed thinking things through and are patient, then philosophyman is an accurate representation of the philosopher as such, though not of any one person in particular. And if this is inaccurate, then we are back to the previous point.

The only way for the subject of a representation to be considered untrue is for that very subject to be impossible. Though what does it even mean to have a representation of that which is impossible? If it is impossible, there is nothing that can be predicated on it, as it does not occur. If it does occur, then it is possible qua occurrence. For example, I cannot say “nothingness is beautiful” because the very conception of “nothingness” is already reified in my mind as “somethingness”, which then acquires the quality “beautiful”. I hold, then, that strictly speaking anything that can be represented cannot be false in the sense of being impossible.

How about the representation of an imaginary being then? Suppose we have a blue dragon on the mountains of Cyprus that types on the keyboard with telekinesis. Such a being does not exist in my area, I promise. Yet in describing this dragon, I have already rendered it as a representation of a thought. It already is a figure of the thinkable and, ipso facto, it always was in the potential of the thinkable. You can picture it in your head now, using your imagination and you can add your own qualities to it. The being is not real, in the sense that we cannot go out there and meet it, but it also is real, actually and potentially, in the sense that it exists and can exist as thought.

Now blue dragons may seem far-fetched, so let me use a practical example. A program I imagined is not real in the sense that I cannot go find it somewhere out there. Before implementing it, it is a thought or series of thoughts, if you will. These thoughts are real: they did happen. Furthermore, these thoughts can create material consequences through their application. Through the program I connect the thoughts in my head to material consequences, realised through the computer.

In broader terms, every plan that is carried out from idea to application is a program, already in the literal sense of that which is “pre-written” (πρόγραμμα, προ (prior), γράμμα (letter or that which is written)). The house I built existed before I built it, though not as materials pieced together but as a clear plan of all the disparate pieces coalescing around an organising principle, which gives us an organism by the way.

At the time before the program is implemented, we can say that it is not real in the sense that there is no instantiation of it beside what is in one’s mind. Here, “real” is understood as matter. Though, again, it would be real in the sense of being a mental presence and thus of having the potential to become or otherwise contribute to something other than the idea itself.

There is no untrue subject thus far.

False idols are then understood as an alias for false gods: people are worshipping something that is not true. This, however, requires a definitive notion of truth. For example, I may think that money is a false god and, by extension, people who worship money are doing something wrong because money is not the highest value in the world. “False idol”, here, does not make money unreal nor the worship of it and all derivative patterns of behaviour: those are happening. The appeal to “false” then is not literal. It is a shorthand way of formulating an exhortation such as “there are higher values, and there is the value which is the highest of all, so worshipping the lower value as the only one that matters disqualifies other values and thus makes people not think of them, which in turn conditions their behaviour in a manner that causes longer-term problems”.

I could keep elaborating on this exhortation, though what I wrote is already enough to demonstrate that the phrase “false idol” is itself an idol, for it too consists in indirectness. We have a short phrase which we employ instead of the much more verbose statement. The compact form thus symbolises the expanded form. Idols are symbols and symbols are idols. We can use the words interchangeably, unless we focus narrowly on the meaning of “reflection in the mirror”, as I noted above (though even that is pictorial, else symbolic).

Consider again the reflection in the mirror. A reflection of me is a symbol of me in the sense that it is a facet of the entire world that I am: it does not have feelings, for instance, which means that it does not have my multifacetedness. If I show you a selfie of myself, I am showing you an idol which points to the actual person but which nevertheless has a life of its own. The idol is its own presence. When you check the picture of someone you have never met, the idol still engenders in you a reaction: you might for example find the person attractive and you might further imagine that this person is polite as well as funny. We then notice how idols are as real as a punch in the face: they too can produce material consequences.

That which produces an effect is real at least insofar as it exhibits the capacity to form part of the cosmic structure by which cause leads to effect, effect leads to cause. The idol of me is of the world as much as I am. The difference between us is one of degree: I am more complex.

Now think again about money as a false idol. We realise that it too, qua idol, is as real as you and me. Dismissing it as “false” is a figure of speech, for we cannot affect its state, as aforementioned.

Which brings us to the exhortation against the false idol; an exhortation which itself employs an idol, else a symbol. The exhortation rests on the notion of an absolute value and, thus, of a ranking among values. For there to be a ranking, there has to be something that is common to all values which we can discern. The relationship between the lower values and the absolute value must then be one of reflection, else representation, else one facet versus multifacetedness. All the selfies of me and all the words used to describe me are symbols of me, yet neither individually nor collectively do they exhaust me and nor do they amount to me as such. The same for values: the lower values are idols of the absolute value insofar as they consist in indirectness.

Can we have directness? Can it be absolute? Can we even have it for the banal case of a personal relation? Do you know anyone fully? Do you even know yourself fully? To know one person fully means to know not only its actuality but also its potentiality. If I know myself fully, then I must know what each of my constituents is and to also know it fully. I have to have full knowledge of every cell and of every process within it and between them. And so on. Factoring in the potential, I must know it fully, since if I learn something new about myself through experience, then I necessarily did not know myself fully. This potential extends to all of my constituents in isolation and in their interplay.

If I know myself fully, I am still not dealing with directness, as there is knowledge about something. To be direct, the knowledge of the thing would be the thing. As such, the potential me would be the actual me. The future me would be the present me. You understand this is no longer a human being.

The absolute value, which we may describe as ineffable, essence as such, supreme God, or whatever we choose, can only be known through a representation. The reason is that to know the absolute absolutely we too have to have knowledge of its potential. In other words, we have to be omniscient. Though knowledge which is absolute must coincide with presence which is absolute, for it cannot be about something else or outside or, anyhow, indirect. Thus omniscience is ubiquity. And absolute ubiquity demands that there is no cause for it, as that is indirectness, so it always is. There is no before it, no after it, no outside of it, no it and something else.

To not belabour the point I am making, here is the gist: those who fight you on the premise that they are against your false idols do not realise that idols is all we have in a state of indirectness.

Sample configuration

(use-package completion-preview
  :ensure nil
  :demand t
  :bind
  ( :map completion-preview-active-mode-map
    ("M-i" . completion-preview-insert-word)
    ("M-n" . completion-preview-next-candidate)
    ("M-p" . completion-preview-prev-candidate)
    ("M-<return>" . completion-preview-insert)
    ;; With TAB we effectively defer to the *Completions* buffer to
    ;; show more completion candidates at once.
    ("<tab>" . completion-preview-complete))
  :config
  (setq completion-preview-minimum-symbol-length 2)
  (with-eval-after-load 'org
    (add-to-list 'completion-preview-commands #'org-self-insert-command))
  (global-completion-preview-mode 1))

;; I have a more detailed configuration (and explanation) that works
;; with Emacs 31 built-in completion capabilities:
;; https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-07-29-emacs-default-minibuffer-completion-overview/.
(use-package minibuffer
  :ensure nil
  :demand t
  :bind
  ( :map completion-in-region-mode-map
    ("M-i" . minibuffer-choose-completion)
    ("M-n" . minibuffer-next-completion)
    ("M-p" . minibuffer-previous-completion))
  :config
  (setq completions-format 'one-column)
  (setq completions-max-height 12)
  (setq completion-auto-help t)
  (setq completion-auto-select nil)
  (setq minibuffer-visible-completions t)
  (setq completion-eager-update t))

Finally, the newcomers-presets theme is an excellent way to start your configuration. It is available as part of Emacs 31. Put this at the top of your init.el:

(load-theme 'newcomers-presets)

L’expérience est toujours le même: au début nous avons l’enthousiasme pour commencer, nous disons que cette fois nous concentrer tous nos efforts à ce projet là, les premiers jours tous vont bien, et après les premiers difficultés nous quittons.

C’est toujours possible de justifier notre décision de quitter. Il y a quelque fois les raisons objectif. Mais c’est possible de rationaliser notre chois et ne prenons jamais le responsabilité de notre actions. Pour moi, ce qui est plus important est d’être sûr pour la raison originaire. Pourquoi voulons-nous commencer à apprendre cet chose?

De mon côte, je veux pratiquer à écrire, parler, lire, et écouter en français pour avoir la capacité—et la possibilité—de créer les connections avec les gens francophones. En général, je veux faire des amis, pas seulement en français mais aux autres domaines aussi.

J’ai de patience. Je veux aller petit à petit: faire un truque ici, lire un article là, écouter à cet chanson, et cetera. Comme nous disons en grec «je vais doucement pour arriver rapidement».

The Bravely Default II characters are colourful and the land looks as pretty as a watercolour painting. Good guys talk with a British accent, while even the bad ones are masters of etiquette. I am surprised there was no 5 o’clock kap-à-tee at any point in the adventure. Or, if there was, I missed it because us Greek savages only understand café frappé and have no sensitivity for that milky tea gimmick. And, of course, the dragons have Welsh-sounding names. This is the most believable part. Wales is truly inhabited by dragons. I know from experience. Just tell them they are English and see them breath fire!

It looks adorable. Yet underneath that thin layer of kawaii lies a primordial evil bent to subsume the entirety of existence. This is the final boss. It is the generic “darkness” that has no personality or backstory whatsoever. Sure, we must drive away the darkness with extreme prejudice because I need plenty of sunshine over here to take irresistibly attractive selfies. But games, especially of such high technical acumen, can do better. Compare this to Tales of Berseria, which has a nuanced antagonist and an overall interesting dynamic between the main characters: https://protesilaos.com/games/2026-06-11-tales-of-berseria/.

Generally, Bravely Default II is not strong on characterisation. Where it excels is in its gameplay, specifically, the battle system. Fights are turn-based, as is typically the case with JRPGs. The titular Bravely and Default mechanics form a credit system where you can play future turns in present time (Bravely) or defend and stock up your turns to spend them at a later point (Default). The credit system works on a per-character basis. One character can, for example, perform an attack three times at once and then just hang around doing nothing for another three turns while the rest are holding on to dear life on their normal one-action-per-turn basis.

It is simple and super effective! In the common case, this system lets you blitz through random enemy encounters. Go full Bravely on the monsters and you will most probably consign them to oblivion before they have a chance to fight back. A single turn is enough to win the battle, especially once your party grows in skill.

The Bravely and Default mechanics get much more interesting once you invest the time to specialise in the various “jobs” on offer. Each job allows your characters to learn skills they can bring to the battle arena. Many jobs complement each other nicely and can affect how turns are played out. You can, for example, have two fighters maximise the damage output with Bravely and then two spellcasters render everyone immune to all types of attack for a few turns. As such, you do not have to suffer during that downtime. Do it right and even the most fearsome boss will not stand a chance against you.

In addition to its fun and strategic gameplay, Bravely Default II also has settings to make fights more tolerable. You can control how often they occur and how fast they are played out. I like this because most fights require virtually no skill to be overcome and there is nothing interesting happening in them.

By contrast, the average JRPG opts for realism on this front: everything is a grindfest. There are random enemy encounters everywhere that take forever to overcome, the overworld has as much depth as a theme park, cities give the illusion of choice while your life still is on rails, and nobody is interested in doing that inane fetch quest they have for you. Bravely Default II understands it is an otherwise shallow game, so it has the decency to provide options to cut through the nonsense.

And, to be fair, the story is okay overall. There are nice parts to it and high points that can keep you invested until the end. I enjoyed it, while recognising that it is nothing groundbreaking either.

In conclusion, I have to highlight the exceptional soundtrack composed by Revo. Combined with the visuals and the underlying mechanics, they make Bravely Default II a piece of fine craftspersonship all around. Do not listen to the soundtrack if you have not played the game though. Do it after the fact to relive memorable moments, such as the intensity you felt while powering through the phase when the Urgent Tidings piece was playing.

À demain!

Lhasa était une chanteuse extraordinaire. Le plupart de ces chansons sont en anglais et en espagnol. Lhasa est mort très jeune, mais son travail continue nous inspirer.

Les connections interpersonnel sont plus fortes quand il y a des intérêts, conceptions, et mémoires où expériences commun. Les arts sont très importants de cette façon. Si les autres aiment écouter à Lhasa de Sela, par exemple, nous avons un sujet pour converser.

Je pense que je n’apprends pas beaucoup des mots en écoutant les chansons en français. Mais ça n’est pas l’objectif. Ce qui est important est d’avoir la capacité pour converser avec les autres et pour connecter avec eux.

Pour pratiquer la langue, je continue à lire l’édition française de France24. La qualité de les reportages est bon et c’est plus facile pour moi de comprendre le texte même si je ne sais pas tous les mots, parce que je connais les sujets en général.

UPDATE 2026-08-25 17:37 +0300: Included reference to Weaver track.

People who visit me make the same kind of remark: “quiet, huh?”. Their ears are used to a different environment. Their first impression is informed by their prior conditioning and is true given that state of affairs. Though the mountain is not silent. Nature never rests. All that is present, is dancing.

There is ambient music all around, yet you cannot notice it right away. You must first slow down and adapt to your surroundings. Only then do you begin to hear the melody of the wind blowing against the leaves, of crickets and frogs singing in concert until the early morning hours, of birds flying right above you during the day and of owls heralding another nightfall. Stand next to the canes where aromatic roses grow and the honeybee busily prepares for wintertime. There by the creek, where the water flows while gentle breeze touches your face, close your eyes and let the outside become the inside. You shall begin to walk along the coast, listening to the waves, as you remain still in these mountainous hinterlands.

You do not have to travel far to experience the world. A small slice of it is enough, provided you examine it attentively. What I describe applies to my specific locus. It also is true metaphorically for how one comes to terms with who they are. Even if you travel to the furthest edges of the universe, all you can ever find is that which is present right where you are now. It is always there, yet you cannot discern it because you are not paying attention. Just as there is no running away from your shadow, there is nothing else to be had than what you have.

In our inexperience, we seek to connect with that which we call great or transcendent or true by searching for it somewhere else. We underestimate what is here and believe it cannot possibly be special in its banality. “Maybe I should visit the Parthenon and the Pyramids and all the great monuments of civilisation to understand how people reached their pinnacle” is how we might go about it. “If only I do this spiritual practice long enough, then I will ascend”. This is the mind of the idolater in action: it grows attached to tokens, appearances, allegories, and believes that the divine consists in the vainglory of grandeur or shininess or that it is limited to representations and customs.

And, indeed, there is nothing wrong with proceeding thus as you cannot go anywhere that is not already here: the idolater can still find that which is beyond the idols. Though turn your attention to the ground and observe this little flower. Do it with your full focus. Forget about the works of empire and the deeds of humankind: can you create a single flower? Have you contemplated what it takes for there to exist a flower?

Once you understand that the flower is because the world is and the world is because the flower is, you are ready to travel without moving. There is no single way to arrive at this realisation. You might do it by savouring every taste to be savoured. Or by paying attention to the small and the humble in your milieu. The path does not matter. The destination is the same: to exclaim “you are, thus I am; I am, thus you are”.

If you want to know how to go from Paris to Berlin, you might be tempted to think that there is one or a few possible routes: there are infinite. You can go directly by plane. You can do it by train with a connection through Brussels. You may travel by bicycle or even on foot. You can go by way of first touring the planet. It is not even limited to the planet: you can orbit the moon and then visit Berlin. And so on. For as long as you insist that there is only one true way, you are not willing to experience the consistency of the world and thus that which is ever present in your midst.

Even before we are born, we subsist in an immediate symbiotic relationship with our mother. Once we are born, we continue to subsist symbiotically by being fully dependent on others. As we grow, we develop faculties that empower us to act independently. The transition to adulthood is experienced as the shift from symbiosis to independence. And for a while we might think this is indeed the case and that we actually are independent. Though we are misled by the appearances into thinking that we ever become as much. Our presence is always symbiotic. For a single presence to exist, the entirety exists.

One becomes a philosopher by studying philosophy but also by not studying philosophy. This is because of the consistency of the world. We can go to different places, seeking unrelated things, only to discover exactly the same. One way to appreciate this is by reconsidering what I mentioned about the mountain ambience. When you notice the silence, you are effectively admitting that there was and is something beside you. And when you discover that silence is not actually the absence of presence, you again admit that there is a world. Everyone knows this, though not everyone remembers.

Here is an example from when I was a child. I always worked with music in the background. It helped me immerse myself in the project I was committed to. Music effectively insulate me from the rest of the world. This practice started when I was around ten years old. At the time, I discovered trance music, which is about the most niche genre you could get in Greece, at least in those pre-Internet times. Here are three examples, which I consider masterpieces:

• Weaver by Star Children https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGRyt4O-J50 (I first discovered it as part of the album Transistance 3).
• Milky Way by Space Odyssey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yU5L3tdsRI (I first listened to this in the album Trance Wars 2).
• Megamix by Soundreamer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKqk6KhScI8 (I remember this from the album Shiva Space Technology 5).

Listening to trance music can feel unsettling. There are no lyrics and no easy way to catch the tunes. The patterns are abstract and the possibilities seem endless. Most people will not enjoy the openendedness. They prefer clear-cut instructions that reduce their discretion to the point where they do not have to think at all. Trance invites you to have situational awareness while relinquishing the want for control that comes from your fears. It teaches you to be there, where the melody is as it happens, and to adapt to its transitions. As such, trance music is one way to both insulate yourself from your surroundings and become one with your surroundings through the engrossing experience.

I eventually stopped listening to music while working. I only play it when I have the mental space to give it my undivided attention. What I have achieved with this change is essentially nothing. Behind every rationality there is an emotion. I simply chose to blend in with a different environment, which is my mountain. I have more words now, which gives the impression that I have achieved something greater than my younger self, but that is a mistake. I still consist in symbiosis and have not gone anywhere else in the meantime.

Couched in those terms, consider what I wrote last week in criticism and the Internet friend (2026-08-16):

One time I was having a chat with someone who shared with me their experience with psychedelics. I have never done psychedelics because I never felt the need to. Though I am not against them in principle and am always eager to give my undivided attention to any topic. What I am against is abuse and recklessness: the freedom to ruin yourself is a freedom I have no respect for. I am, if you will, opposed to “heroin-ising the LSD in your ignorance” as Nikolas Asimos correctly points out in one of his songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW6ucfl36m4.

As we were talking, I expounded on some of my thoughts about the interconnectedness of the world. The person eventually exclaimed how “I feel I am tripping right now”. This is what you get when you let me connect the dots from the most practical consideration to the greatest abstractions. I probably never felt the need to do psychedelics because I am like Obelix: I fell in the cauldron of Kykeon as a child, so I have that perspective built into me ever since.

I do not do psychedelics because I have taken a different path to the same destination. Whether by your own means or assisted by substances, you cannot go elsewhere. You will travel far or dig deep to ultimately discover what children experience as immanent spirit and inexhaustible wonder. Your adventure is the discovery of self through others, else the initial overcoming of self through its dissolution into the communion of selves, which becomes the aggrandising of self. In the process, you might realise that even inanimate objects have something to tell you. Hit a piece of wood and you quickly realise it is endowed with musicality: it is not just the birds that sing.

When I publish something, I am effectively recognising as well as seeking the others. The article is a note in a bottle that I toss to the waves. I will probably never talk to the recipient of this message, let alone meet them face-to-face, yet I still want to tell them that I too was there to experience companionship in solitude and loneliness in company, and that no matter where you go you tread beaten paths.

I have had several false starts with reading fiction. The stories are interesting, I know, but I never feel invested in them. A friend recently persuaded me to read Anton Chekhov. I though it was time to give it another try with my reading practice and, indeed, I read The lady with the dog. “How was it?”, she asked. “Okay” I responded and then we went on to discuss the story as well as my thoughts about relevant issues.

That experiment did not last long. Fiction bores me, as do virtually all books. It reminded me how I do not easily connect with people at the emotional level, which sounds odd to those who have seen me in action. I am sociable, can talk with anyone, will speak in front of an audience even without a script, am able to do people-oriented jobs, tell jokes, am easygoing and do not take offence, am aware of sensitivities and boundaries, have emotional intelligence, and, generally, show strong social skills. Still, I take a very long time to grow attached to anyone.

I have a propensity to go in depth with everything I enjoy: I give it my undivided attention. This is why, for example, I reached a high level of competence with Emacs even though I have no background in programming or neighbouring fields. This “digger” behaviour has a great cost though: I cannot cover a lot of ground at the same time, the way a “scrapper” would. Concretely, I want to understand a person well, which I cannot do with everyone I encounter due to time/energy constraints.

This is why, perhaps paradoxically, I remain at the surface of the emotional connection with practically everyone that does not actively try to reach out to me. Those who keep returning I naturally notice more and begin to appreciate. It also is why I have learnt to tame my curiosity. When I am introduced to a new concept, I do not try to quickly inform myself about it. Never! Instead, I ignore it, promising myself to only pay attention to it if life unfolds in such a way that knowledge of it is pertinent to my activities. A relevant example is with AI: I do not use myself and do not follow the news about its technicalities. This is not because I have an ideological predisposition against it. No! I simply do not indulge my curiosity.

As a kid in primary school, there was a stationery shop from where I would buy what was needed for my homework. I always went there by myself. My parents trusted me as I was responsible even as a child. At some point, the shop owner told my father that “your son knows exactly what he wants”. I learnt this anecdote many years later and was not surprised with myself. The owner tried to get me interested in all sorts of products, such as that colourful pen and this slightly thicker drawing pad. He did not manage to sell me anything I was not already decided on. This is the same digger trait in action: I picked something, went in depth, and thus knew I had no need for anything else to achieve what I was committed to.

Put differently, I am very conservative about who or what I focus on. Once I make a choice, I stick with it indefinitely and am unequivocal about it. When I lived in Brussels, there was this hairdresser I visited the first time and continued to visit even after I had relocated to the other side of town.

For another example that covers my publications, I started my website in 2011. I keep writing long-form articles as if this is the first time I am doing it. My passion remains the same. It is not enthusiasm, however, as that is short-lived. Mine is inexhaustible zest that comes from the depths of the earth, like a fountain. I write so much yet feel as fresh as ever, like I have not even started.

In English we use the expression “falling in love” to describe the exciting kind of romantic connection. The equivalent Greek concept is erotas (έρωτας), which is distinct from what I would describe as “growing in love”: that is agape (αγάπη). We also say “love at first sight” to speak of erotas. My experience has never been of this sort. Whatever I love is the result of repeated exposure to it; love at the 1000th sight, if you will.

There are many kinds of mind, informed by the uniqueness of each person’s experiences, to produce an incredible diversity among people. My mind does not attach to specificities by default, though it can to great effect. Ordinarily, it shifts towards patterns. When I converse with someone, I discern in them something that is not specific to their person. Same idea for landscapes. I do not merely observe, say, a mountain range but identify in it a scheme of shape, of colour, of rhythm.

This is why I am a philosopher, after all, but also why I have a way of thinking that draws linkages between fields of endeavour that have no obvious connections: I do not fixate on one detail and there is no box that can contain me. That may be described as my artistic side. And I am an artist literally, anyway, given all the poems I write. Though art is as diverse as the people who make it: I am not the flamboyant or virtuoso type.

I could probably do painting and music as well, maybe even at a high level, though these require special practice with the hands. My dexterity is not as finely developed and I do not have enough time to do that as well as what I am already invested in. What is nimble is my thinking faculty, which I continue to improve. Words are my pigments. Meanings form the palette I rely on. I blend them with ease and arrange them into structures that form sentences, which grow into paragraphs that become essays, with a coherent message from start to end, and a shared psyche from one entry to the next. My writings are clear and orderly as a reflection of my inner world.

A professor of mine once told me while we were taking a break from class: “you have a lot of common sense, which is not common”. This describes my brain. My personality, part biology and part second nature that I cultivated, complements it. As I do not commit on a whimsy, I neither get excited nor frustrated, and am very patient as a result, which helps me think things through.

Coming back to fiction, I do not read it because I am aware that I will not fall in love with any of the characters. The kind of reading I do is thus of the impersonal kind, such as on politics, which I also tend to study with the goal of identifying patterns that extend beyond the individuals involved. Opinion pieces I publish will therefore have the quality of commenting on what is yet to be or what is beyond the specifics of the case I am concerned with.

What I do is not special and has no advantages in the grand scheme of things. The world is consistent throughout. No matter where you stand, you witness a singular reality. There is no elsewhere. No outside or inside. No before or after. It is here and there and everywhere the one in the many, the many in the one. If you do not experience as much, it is due to the dizziness you get when you look around without seeing, when you hear without listening.

Cosmic consistency means that the digger and the scrapper are fundamentally exposed to the same experience. I understand one thing so deeply that I can find in it patterns which are present in every other thing. It is thus the same as me touring around the cosmos, while staying at the hut.

The most personal connection is in essence impersonal. Whatever its quality, it cannot be specific to it as it too is an instance of personal connection as such. On the flip-side, the impersonal becomes personal once understood, for it forms part of a connection. And the most profound understanding is the strongest connection which is the most personal one.

Even if you take an irreplaceable relationship, such as with your mother, she is at once the embodiment of a specific person and mothehood in general. In her you identify the general and the particular as an expression of oneness: the mother you have and all possible mothers at once.

This is how the world is. You search for something far away only to realise it was always right in front of you. You keep seeking something and once you acquire it you understand that you never needed it.

This crime story is a microcosm of the modern Western world. It has everything from getting rich quick, putting money over people, selling an exaggerated version of oneself through social media personas, producing explicit sexual content of oneself, being a ruthless entrepreneur, understanding male worth as a function of personal wealth and status, thinking of female worth as a matter of looks, seeing women as objects of entertainment, propping up masculinity as a facade for sociopathy, all against the backdrop of broken relationships with their rootless individuals.

In this world, there is a level of analysis in which there are perpetrators and victims. Though at another level all participants share a common set of values. The men qua traffickers who measure their worth by their business acumen are on a continuum with the women who are perfectly fine, at least initially, with selling their body for some easy money, where “modelling” is just an acceptable form of porn. And they are all in principal agreement with the simps who otherwise consume the pornographic material.

From victims to perpetrators

In both of the aforementioned links there are many references to Andrew Tate, even though he is not involved in the criminal case at hand. Andrew is the embodiment of a wider phenomenon as bully and bullied himself: the victim of dysfunctional parenthood and hostile urban living conditions who becomes the means through which abuse is normalised, propagated, and valorised.

Andrew recycles age-old ideas of manhood while continuing the capitalist practice of commodifying every facet of life. His message internalises the social structures he was raised in and suffered from, blending them with the materialist mindset of incessant grinding for enrichment and upward social mobility at the expense of all intangible values.

As such, Andrew necessarily communicates something that is truthful about his society. Though he does it only as a way of private gain, hence his masculinity merchant gimmick. Fundamentally, he is not interested in institutional reform. Rather than abolish slavery, he is content with being the master of slaves and a god in their eyes. To this end, Andrew fulfils the destiny of the bullied to become a bully as soon as the conditions are favourable.

It is, nonetheless, an analytical error to blame Andrew Tate for what is happening in this case and others. Even if he himself is contributing to phenomena, he is but an instance of wider trends. Communities are broken not because of Andrew’s meme-grade rhetoric but due to the very structure of modern economic organisation.

Cities breed distrust

The vast majority of people in industrialised countries live in big cities as individuals or atomic families, where they are expected to be away from home most of the day while they do some kind of work. At their workplace they are all treated as expendable “labour force” or “human capital” and are thrown under the bus whenever it is expedient for their employer to do so. There is no mutual sense of togetherness. Their everyday experience is thus one of distrust. This is the baseline normality of the modern world.

The perennially jaded individual does not have the time or energy to commit to family affairs, no matter how kind or conscientious they are. Even in two parent households, children do not spend enough quality time with family. More so in single parent families. The lack of quality time with loved ones forces young people to seek connection in imaginary friends, with whom they develop parasocial relationships. Their role models are not actual, flawed individuals, whom they experience day-to-day, but exaggerated figures of seemingly impeccable quality on magazine pages, TV shows, and Internet sites.

The city is an inherently dangerous environment for the vulnerable. In the common scenaria, this includes children, women, and the elderly. Though gangs bearing weapons appear with increased regularity in many countries, meaning that even the strongest man is ultimately just as easy of a prey. No place is safe for kids to play care-free and for parents to get a moment of rest, all while the elderly are effectively rendered irrelevant to social reproduction by being left to wither away in some facility among strangers. Neighbours come and go, as they are typically renting the place they live in. So there is no sense of trusting those around one’s own place either. By extension, one does not know who they are dealing with: everyone blends in with the anonymous crowd and is a potential vector of attack.

Consequently, there always lurks some danger right around the corner, which makes everybody more tense. Parents do not let their children go out while they themselves suffer from chronic stress due to the rigours of work, the disproportionate burden of parenthood placed on the atomic family, and the pervasive sense of threat in their milieu.

Kids staying in closed spaces all day is an understandable protection mechanism, though it still is detrimental for their longer-term adjustment in society. They are not socialised properly, not with friends their age and not with elders in their community. They are trapped in a tiny physical space, which becomes a restrictive mindscape that is an extension of their own fears and overthinking. They are eventually get sucked into the fabricated world of parasociability and concomitant distorted images, whether those originate in legacy publications or online media, and seek happiness in what effectively is some form of pernicious escapism. Furthermore, they have unrealistic expectations about their own self and their relationship with others, which has far-reaching implications for every aspect of social life, including romantic experiences which are pertinent to the criminal case presented in Ezra Marcus’ journalism.

It is not only the vulnerable though. Cities are meat-grinders that make no exceptions. Such is the pace of life they dictate, such is the environment they necessarily create, that everyone eventually falters.

Anonymity and the lack of honour

At its core, the big city is akin to the jungle, for it engenders a default combative behaviour of the individual or tiny group against the rest of the world. The city cannot instil a communitarian, collectivist ethos because there are no such social bonds to be experienced on a quotidian basis. Those bonds occur naturally in the extended family, which incorporates the neighbourhood and the entire village into a singular unit of shared trust and intergenerational solidarity.

Cities do, of course, offer plenty of opportunity. This is the byproduct of the anonymity they enable: you can essentially be whoever you want and connect with those you like, which sounds liberating until you realise that the same is true for everybody else who will now seek to exploit you with impunity. Those who play fair get abused by those who have no such restraint. Which brings us back to the baseline of distrust.

Anonymity makes it so that it is impossible to have an honour-based moral code. Only the law can dissuade people, though the law cannot be enforced to the same effect as a local community singling out one of its members. The law is less efficient because its locus of authority is away from the fray of the action. To put it simply, the police officer is not your relative or immediate neighbour most of the time. The law, in this regard, can only be close to events when the political order is totalitarian (which then creates conditions for centralised abuse on a monumental scale).

The lack of honour is the environment in which the vicious moneyman thrives and where the sociopath emerges as the master grifter. There is no incorporation of accountability in one-to-one interactions, which means that the most unscrupulous rise to the top. They are even celebrated for their success in doing so, since this is the ordinary operation of the system—the rules of the game, if you will.

Systemic problems and the importance of hierarchy

For as long as we are seeing the degradation of relationships as a “manosphere problem”, an “Andrew Tate problem”, or in other contexts a “modern women problem”, we are not being thorough in our investigation. There are system-wide forces at play that need to be understood as such and be addressed in a root-and-branch fashion.

In the Jacobin piece I mentioned in the introduction, Evelina Johansson Wilén and Meagan Day discuss events through the lens of feminism. While both of them are insightful, I think feminism cannot appreciate that itself is a product of this structurally individualistic world. In the feminist worldview at-large, hierarchy as such is what oppresses people in general and women in particular, which inevitably leads to individualism even when the discussion is along the lines of building social movements. Why? Because if your extended family, which is dismissed a priori as “patriarchy”, has no power over you, then nobody should: you are a rootless person who only understands the irresponsible logic of “my body; my rules” in all of its manifestations.

Hierarchy, which in a local community that spans generations always becomes patriarchy and matriarchy as one, is how an individual’s innate freedom is harnessed for the greater good. The harnessing is key. In the absence of hierarchy, each person has to rely on their own devices. Political correctness demands that we echo the notion that all people are equally competent at controlling themselves, but experience tells us that some individuals are fundamentally their own worst enemy: give them too much freedom and they will ruin their life together with that of others. The honest person who understands their propensity for self-harm admits that they are empowered when framed by others. Structure is always—always—what people need: it either comes from within, with unflinching discipline, or in community with other people. The latter is the only reliable arrangement from the perspective of social organisation.

Hierarchy is what holds individuals accountable. If this is not enforced by the extended family and immediate community, then it must be conferred as supreme authority to some nanny state or not done at all, which is where we are nowadays. The social fabric is torn asunder because at the micro level there is nobody to keep individuals in check, even when those individuals are religious or, anyhow, have a clear idea of what their society’s concept of righteousness is. America is a country of deeply religious people, for example, yet here we are commenting on its rampant porn-defined substrate. The issue is more basic, then, and has to do with the defective setup of face-to-face accountability.

In a vacuum of hierarchy, there is no collective power apparatus in place to guard against predators from a position of caring. The drug lord has easy access to your son. The pimp is one social media post away from your daughter. And so on. With the tutelary figures—hierarchy!—gone, what remains is a war of all against all, whose repulsive face we keep witnessing on a daily basis.

A crisis of values

Moving to the text of Ezra Marcus’ reportage, I find that the following quote reveals something more than the details of a human trafficking crime:

Another young woman, Sarah, moved into the lake house a week after her 18th birthday. She’d found the job through a Snapchat ad, which had promised $8,000 a month for bikini photos. She was pressured by Muhammad to quickly sign a contract. After a month streaming naked on Chaturbate, working 11-hour shifts, she had earned only $1,000; Connor told her the shortfall was her fault. One day, a fan sent $32,000 directly to her PayPal. She didn’t tell her bosses, only her boyfriend, Kaiden Kingsley, a recruiter who lived in the house. But word got back to Tyukalo, who ordered Muhammad to take her phone. When she got it back the next morning, her bank account was drained and the contacts for her family and friends had been blocked.

What we read here is descriptive of modern society at-large. Consider these general observations:

• Get rich quick? Check.
• Find a shortcut to the good life? Check.
• The good life is measured in material possessions and luxury? Check.
• An exploitative contract from your boss? Check.
• Blaming the employee for the lack of business profits? Check.
• No tutelary figure to hold teenagers accountable? Check.
• The girl boss who sells her body because those are her rules? Check.

What we read here is specific to organised crime, yes, and I do not mean to trivialise it, though we have to learn from the particular in order to appreciate the general. As soon as we abstract away the details of this specific case we realise that what is happening, in terms of values, is business as usual.

The polite society, the one which can no longer understand its political correctness as the shadow play it actually is, will, of course, condemn the crime. Though in reality its moral standing is suspect for as long as it normalises all of the above in its routine workings.

In this specific story, the simps end up helping the victims. Though their capacity as simps is itself part of the structural problem. If you are demanding pornography as a consumer, you are necessarily contributing to the formation of the supply chain for pornography through the incentives you reinforce. And with that comes rampant cruelty.

In this twisted world, where porn is mainstream entertainment and girls are encouraged to “liberate” themselves, your demand for pornographic content means that you have no principled objection to your child, sibling, relative, being on camera. And if you think that you are okay when strangers do it but not your loved ones, then you are echoing the individualist mindset with its attendant disregard for solidarity. This is the crisis of values that brings us here.

Contra feminism as hinted at in the Jacobin publication, I view modernity’s social woes as products of too little hierarchy. Andrew Tate and friends make a mockery out of patriarchy and manhood in general because they are not interested in the pro-social, responsible project of building communities; a project that always happens with women as equal contributors. They only care about maximising their earnings at the expense of everyone else. As such, they leverage parasociability, turbocharge the mindset of victimhood, amplify the latent distrust in society, and encourage people to fight each other as rootless individuals. Put differently they do business as usual minus the politeness.

I have been using a split mechanical keyboard for ~2.5 years already. It is the Iris from Keebio. Over time I have refined everything to be as I want. My preferred keycaps are the Cherry profile, specifically the Keychron Dolch Red set that I have had for ~2 years now. The switches I use are Cherry Silent Black since ~1.5 years ago. And the firmware has the exact mappings I like, which I settled on fairly early on. Details here: https://github.com/protesilaos/qmk/tree/master/keyboards/keebio/iris/keymaps/prot.

My personalised keyboard is the distillation of experimentation that unfolded over the course of several weeks. I tried a tall keycap profile, namely, MT3, as well as a uniform MOA set, only to realise that I prefer the Cherry profile. I further learnt that I am more comfortable with the cylindrical top surface of the Cherry keycaps as opposed to the spherical tops of the other options I tried. With switches, I used linears (Keychron Silver, Gateron Yellow) and a tactile variant (Keychron Banana), to ultimately understand my exact needs, which led me to the Cherry Silent Blacks. I want my keyboard to be quiet and firm to the touch. I had also figured out that I dislike low profile switches/caps, so the MX platform is what I am interested in.

What I have is not a “perfect” setup. If I start thinking about variables with margins for optimisation, I can produce the following non-exhaustive list of items:

• reduce the switch stem wobble;
• lower the sound profile even more;
• have switches that are about 10g lower on the force curve;
• have slightly taller keycaps at the topmost row, to make them even easier to reach;
• change the case of the keyboard to something more elegant that also affects the acoustics;
• use my own colour scheme for the keycaps and even the whole board.

This, however, is a slippery slope. To improve the stem wobble, I either have to modify all my switches by adding film to them or I have to buy new switches. Same idea for the springs to control the overall weight. My first choice would be to do market research in the hope of finding an existing solution. And if I do it myself, I might not like the results, so I will be back to searching for a commercial solution. But would, say, the extra 50+ EUR I would need to pay truly improve my experience? Or would I be buying something that might open up horizons for new optimality gains and thus a renewed commitment to experimentation?

Suppose I eventually lower the bottom out event to 70gf from its current 83gf level. Ceteris paribus, this brings down the actuation point by 13gf, meaning that I must now get used to the slightly lighter touch. I must also hold myself back a little bit so as to not bottom out hard. I can adapt, though it takes time. Imagine this takes me a couple of weeks or maybe even a month of being relatively sloppy. At the end of that exercise, I am left with a slightly lower force curve which, in theory, is less tiresome to type on. So I count that as a longer-term win.

Is it though? What about the restraint I am applying to not bottom out? If I am bottoming out hard, then I am wasting the extra force regardless. Can I reliably measure that marginal change to my setup to have an exact reading of the delta to my efficiency? How exactly to factor in the adjustment time? And if the prevention of injury is my primary concern, why not simply take more breaks here and there? A couple of minutes each time contribute to long-term wellness. Plus, if I do not even have any problem with the existing force curve, I am merely hoping that there are improvements to be made and then act with the wishful thought that I will somehow solve my unknown problems preemptively.

The same kind of thinking applies to every other factor. One tweak addresses a given consideration while creating a new one. Such is the nature of systems. The reason is that the process of optimisation is about finding the set of trade-offs you are willing to live with, given the constraints you have determined or must take for granted. Optimisation does not lead to perfection but only to a notionally imperfect state that meets your requirements. In other words, “good enough” is the closest to perfect you shall ever get.

The hyperoptimiser’s trap consists in believing that they can reach a point of perfection through continuous tinkering. With mechanical keyboards this practically translates into a money-intensive and time-consuming endeavour. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with buying stuff you like (what may be problematic is ruining your finances and other externalities, but that is a different discussion). Though understand that you are doing it because you find it fun, not because you will actually reach perfection.

This discussion extends to the number of keys a keyboard should have. I think the sweetspot is the 50% to 65% range, depending on priorities. Though this too is the kind of mire that you can avoid by accepting the “good enough” state of things.

In principle, I can work with fewer keys as I am adept at switching between layers. Though I can also be equally productive with a full-sized keyboard. This is because what I fundamentally produce on the computer is not governed by the input device: it is in my head and it involves clarity of thought as well as precision of statement. The fancy keyboard is a convenience that contributes, together with the overall desk setup, to a sustainable office arrangement. And, yes, it can be fun!

When I talk to people who are already into mechanical keyboards and who ask me about my opinion on the new custom board they plan to buy, my answer is always the same: admit that you are making a purchase for the thrill of the experience, as what you have is already good enough.

Whether you reduce the number of keys or move things around in your layers, you are not directly improving your productivity. You might add to your sense of comfort, which can indirectly affect your productivity. Though this is hard to measure reliably once we start talking about marginal gains and rigorous scientific methods of understanding them. Again, I am focused on marginality, not the big kind of changes whose effect is easier to notice.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the most efficient implementation is the least adaptable. This is because efficiency can only be realised within constraints, so the most efficient necessarily is that which has best adapted to its constraints. As such, even a tiny tweak to the constraints—constraints qua parameters—can have far-reaching implications, which undo the once present level of efficiency.

To be concrete, if you settle on, say, 32 keys on the assumption that you will be using Vim long-term, this will work well for you for as long as you are on Vim, but may give you trouble if you decide to switch to Emacs-style keybindings because those make heavier use of modifier keys. And if you have home-row modifiers set up, now you might want to reconsider their placement, tweak their timings, potentially rework your layers, et cetera. One small change to the system always becomes more than “one small change”. What once was the most efficient, then, will have to be remade anew (and so, did you actually gain productivity from all those roundabouts?).

In this regard, a keyboard with more keys does not need any further changes. Plus, you do not have to use all the keys, anyway.

This is not to argue for or against a specific choice. There is no clear right or wrong here, as what works for one is unsuitable for another. My point is that there always are trade-offs, diminishing returns, and the illusion of approximating perfection. The sooner you accept this fact, the easier everything will be.

As for buying new hardware, once you admit that you are doing it at least in part because you find excitement in the activity, then you are framing the issue in a way that gives you clarity. It is a consumer choice at heart, rather than the pursuit of some elusive productivity boost. Once it is impressed in the conscience as yet another purchase, you start asking financial questions. Do you really want to spend more money on this keyboard business to ultimately get nothing substantial out of it? What if you saved that money to, say, buy new clothes, or some furniture, or go on a trip abroad, or build a house?

My thinking is consistent for newcomers: you will have to play around with at least some of the variables to figure out what your preferences are. Be mindful of the trap though. Practice thoroughly to give whatever setup a fair chance. You want to get used to the keyboard the way it is so as to diminish the influence your prior expectations have on your present decision-making.

No decision need be final, after all. You might have different requirements in the future, so you can adapt accordingly. Do not make the mistake of trying to anticipate those requirements. Robust future-proofing is the kind of overthinking that can never yield reliable results as you are fundamentally trying to optimise without knowing the constraints. This is why there is no pressure to optimise your initial choices beyond the realm of the immediately knowable.

The appreciation of “good enough” will help you long-term.

• https://codeberg.org/nordlow/dotfiles.
• https://codeberg.org/nordlow/dotfiles/src/branch/main/.emacs.d.
• https://codeberg.org/nordlow/dotfiles/src/branch/main/.emacs.d/mine.

Sacha a déjà écrit à propos de cette réunion: https://sachachua.com/blog/2026/08/20-aout-emacs-chat-abdallah-maouche/.

I have made a few friends online through my activities. Generally, I care about deep connections: to talk about life and expand on shared experiences. I usually do more of the listening, because that is who I am, though still contribute with poignant remarks and relevant commentary.

My interests are diverse, covering the full spectrum of human experiences. I can connect on matters as far apart as mechanical keyboards and dog training, physical fitness and programming, art and farming. And because of my philosophical disposition, I always am open to new ideas, plus I find connections in patterns that are not obvious to others.

One time I was having a chat with someone who shared with me their experience with psychedelics. I have never done psychedelics because I never felt the need to. Though I am not against them in principle and am always eager to give my undivided attention to any topic. What I am against is abuse and recklessness: the freedom to ruin yourself is a freedom I have no respect for. I am, if you will, opposed to “heroin-ising the LSD in your ignorance” as Nikolas Asimos correctly points out in one of his songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW6ucfl36m4.

As we were talking, I expounded on some of my thoughts about the interconnectedness of the world. The person eventually exclaimed how “I feel I am tripping right now”. This is what you get when you let me connect the dots from the most practical consideration to the greatest abstractions. I probably never felt the need to do psychedelics because I am like Obelix: I fell in the cauldron of Kykeon as a child, so I have that perspective built into me ever since.

People need a safe space to speak their mind. They want to find somebody who understands them. Open-mindedness is a good starting point to feel the other person and relate to their lived moments. It still takes courage to open up, as it requires the emotional maturity to deal with feedback and potentially integrate it in your routines.

There is this common phrase nowadays that “I do not mean to criticise, but…”. It is a figment of political correctness and, when applied consistently, a disservice to those you care about. Criticism is not the same as shittalking or being argumentative: it is an informed opinion that is framed in the context of your contribution. You benefit from criticism as it helps you understand things from a different perspective.

Indeed, “criticism” shares the same root as “crisis” and “critic”, which means “judgement”. Judgement is prudential insight. As with matters of law, a judge is someone who knows what they are talking about. Some random fellow is no judge: they are a vociferous ignoramus at best and when there are lots of them, you have the rule of the mob, which is a form of tyranny and decadence (e.g. cancel culture).

Immature and mentally feeble is the person who cannot handle criticism. Instead of listening, they argue back before you have even completed your sentence. Instead of admitting to their shortcomings, they double down on their incoherent thoughts. And when you ask them to pay attention, they bring up their precious feelings.

Your vaunted feelings are your prison cell, friend. They confine you to a tiny space that can only feed your fears. You have gotten so used to that state of insecurity and attendant mediocrity to the point where you consider it comfortable. You are not taking any opportunity to grow and to become the most excellent version of yourself. Instead of using your feelings as a hardened carapace, learn to recognise things as they are. You do that by being attentive. This is the prerequisite to expanding your reach. As such, there are people who proceed through action and there are people who have feelings.

This is not about lacking emotion and about becoming this caricature of a man with a stiff upper lip. No. It is about understanding that we sometimes grow attached to the wrong things and that in those cases we fail to identify the corruption that gradually occurs in our midst like rot under the carpet.

The best kind of criticism involves emotional intelligence: you know what to say and when to say it. Sometimes the medicine will still be bitter. It does not matter if you dislike its taste though as it still cures you.

If your friend is never giving you feedback that would qualify as criticism, then they are not your friend. They may be your colleague, your teammate, your talking buddy. Those are all fine. But they are not friends. A friend shows love. Love makes no discounts both when it is gentle and when it is tough.

By the way, “philia” (φιλία), the Greek word for “friendship” is a specialised form of “agape” (αγάπη), which is why “philo-sophia” (philosophy) is sometimes translated as “love of wisdom”.

Coming back to the Internet friends, the medium is digital though the attitude is the same. I have not met any of the friends I have online and might never do so. Though I still treat them with care. One such friend was defending their dissertation the other day. I attended the video call, even though I have no face-to-face connection with this person or any of their family. I was among the handful of friends and relatives who were in the audience. And I did it at an hour that was inconvenient for me. My friend told me after the fact how they drew strength from our presence there and how that helped them do what they ought to.

A friend sometimes says nothing. Their deeds do the talking. You know that for as long as I can, I shall. And I will be there to inspire you to reach your highest peak. Why? Because I care about you in particular.

Some distant relatives visited me recently. I had not seen one of my elder cousins in roughly two decades, though I had kept in contact with the others. Cousin remarked that I have not changed at all. I happen to do a clean shave of my facial hair these days, which makes me look younger, so that story checks out. Me being a smartass around loved ones, I noted that I actually do not age: “I just gain experience”.

Cousin told me about their children. One of them is already an adult. I was aware of it but was still mildly surprised to piece together the facts. To my mind, a 20-year-old was born in the mid-90s. I guess this is what the stable mountain life does to you: you remain fresh, but you also lose sense of the years flying by.

I commented how I am eager to meet everybody and we will make that happen soon. My longer-term ambition is to reintegrate the family, buttress it with new neighbours, and rekindle the values that we almost lost to consecutive systemic crises.

With those and other relatives, we all agree on the importance of the extended family, which is a feature of traditional Greek culture. To which I emphasised that in terms of familial ties I do not do degrees: blood is blood.

The extended family has many benefits for individuals. The babies are raised by all their cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents, so the burden is not placed exclusively on the parents like it does in the atomic family. Same principle for the elderly. And everybody has people around to talk and do social activities with. This is a natural unit of solidarity that has stood the test of time. It does not rely on the state apparatus.

What the extended family also does is establish hierarchy and, by extension, enforce conformity with rules. The elders teach and demonstrate the values, while the rest embed those lessons into their behaviour.

These structures can, of course, be unfair, though that is a matter of how they are used. Hierarchy is not inherently tyrannical. The parents have, for example, power and control of their baby child, though this is used to help the child grow in a controlled environment until it is ready to rely on its own means. Too much freedom too early will definitely be catastrophic.

This is the essence of a virtuous hierarchy: to keep checks in place for those who need them because, fundamentally, not all people at all times know how best to exercise their freedom. Why that might be depends on all sorts of factors. They may not yet have the skills. They might be going through a tough period of emotional instability, which clouds their judgement. They are the kind of person who thrives when they get as much feedback as possible, but who otherwise hesitates to take the initiative. Or they simply have not thought things through to understand the consequences of their actions.

A right or obligation is balanced against the totality of rights and obligations. There is no such thing as an absolute prescription in a vacuum. Individual freedom, then, is not the only factor to be accounted for. The longer-term wellness of the individual as well as the group is equally important. For example, I will not sit around twiddling my thumbs while a relative is doing heroin: I do not respect your freedom to ruin yourself and to make your entire family suffer forever.

There is this Western notion of “my body; my rules”, which effectively does not recognise the externalities of one’s actions. When the junkie ends up living a lifetime of psychoses, there no longer is “my body” that is affected, but the bodies of everyone else. Lots of cases follow this pattern, but I will not belabour the point.

This sense of the collective good extends to matters of honour. A member of the extend family becoming a criminal is bad news for everyone, so we all have a strong incentive to enforce the moral code. We are not waiting for the bureaucrats in the capital to take action after the fact: it is our duty to preserve what we value. This arrangement creates the appropriate incentives.

Familial hierarchy is about love. Though love, too, is misconstrued nowadays to mean “you are perfect as you are, sweetheart; do whatever you want”. This is a license for complacency, which breeds the kind of feebleness that results in moral decay. Love needs to be tough sometimes: a “no” builds character and serves you well long-term. At other times, love will come in the form of emotional support and the appropriate gentle touch. What matters is the wellness of the individual through the coherence of the collective: the good of the place and the good of the space, as I often put it in more abstract terms.

Tough love is not tantamount to cruelty. It does not even involve corporal punishment (I think corporal punishment typically reveals a failure to lead by example or to be in control of the situation—put differently, it is part of the problem). One is tough when they are firm. And one is firm as well as equitable when they themselves embody the rules they are enforcing.

Indeed, what undermines hierarchy is the elders not following their own precepts. The uncle who tells you not to smoke while lighting up a cigarette cannot show tough love: it is ineffective because of the dissonance between words and deeds. What you need is the person who does not smoke and who actually follows through with their words. That is the toughest person around.

Your relatives calling out your nonsense in a spirit of love, or helping you cope with a difficult situation in a way that is empowering, is the best thing that can happen to you. They do it because they care. As such, they are preparing you for the much harsher world that is out there; a world in which certain strangers will blithely throw you under the bus.

Cousin was an athlete and remains as fit as ever. This is one of the embodied values I have in mind. If cousin comments on your habits, for example, you have to at least listen because you know there is some knowledge there that has been put to the test for decades. Thus emerges the hierarchy that holds you accountable.

The elders in an extended family are not necessarily the oldest people around. It is those who know what they are talking about and who exhibit it as part of their life. You become a hierarch organically by showing the requisite skill and responsibility. In practice, you are there when others want your advice. This will correlate with age, though age alone does not make you more prudent.

The extended family integrates friends and neighbours more easily. An individual cannot necessarily do that. For example, I am friendly, reliable, and talkative but I am also an introvert who tends to not contact anybody (though I am actively working on changing this). The integration continues naturally because, say, my friend may find others in my family with whom to be friends with and to do interesting things together.

As such friends and neighbours become de facto relatives and are treated as equals. There is a sense of togetherness and belonging, which builds solidity at the social level. I have experienced all of this before and am eager to contribute to it at the earliest opportunity. No matter the state of technology and how sophisticated we think we are, the ancient traditions remain ever-relevant.

I was able to build a house here, with material and financial help from locals and some people online. With my extended family around I would have the potential to build an entire civilisation.

This is a story-telling device that can be found in ancient and modern theories alike. Like a telenovela, the characters change but the plot is the same. Hesiod speaks of a lost Golden Age of man, the Bible tells us about the Garden of Eden, Hindus have the yuga cycles, Marxists describe the early humans as innately communist, nationalists take pride in their nation’s glorious past, pop culture fans will rave about how wonderful their favourite decade was, and so on.

At all times, the core descriptive statement is that we had something special that we lost. The prescriptive conclusion that sometimes follows is that we ought to regain what was once ours. I call this the “retrospective desire”. Its counterpart is the “prospective desire”, which is essentially expressed as a form of enthusiasm for the ever-moving future: a claim that things will naturally improve and all intermediate problems will eventually be sorted out. “Eventually” is the operative term in such an outlook, as it bases its faith on an indeterminate future that cannot be predicted with accuracy yet cannot be ruled out as a possible world either.

Both perspectives are correct in their own way in terms of describing what was and anticipating what may be, yet both can distract us from the present.

• The retrospective desire can make us feel powerless in the face of the prevailing conditions: how can we, as individuals or groups, cope with the challenges when even those who were in the original state of greatness, and thus superior to us, failed? This is a thought that forces us into inaction because it prefigures whatever immediate goal as futile.
• At the other end, we become complacent the moment we assume that there is an inexorable transition towards our betterment, however that is defined. The resulting inaction can make us sloppy and unprepared to benefit from what we expect to happen. This same complacency may in turn render us fragile in the face of various challenges.

A friend, who is a musician, once told me that you hear the base when it is not there anymore. The idea is that we recognise what we had only after it is gone. We otherwise take it for granted and, in so doing, underestimate it.

The person driven by the retrospective desire can fall in the trap of never enjoying what they have, for the past, literal or figurative, is always better and in a sense “real”, so there is no want to grow attached to what is available. Same for the other direction, as we can keep thinking about how better off we will become as soon as this newer thing or relationship becomes current, only then to daydream about the next iteration that promises to bring even more joy, and so on in what effectively are shifting sands that we cannot build anything on.

In both cases, we escape from the present to place our hope in something untainted—albeit not incorruptible—that exists elsewhere. A distant past, an alternative reality, a future history, some other plane of existence altogether, but never in the here-and-now. What we have is inherently undesirable, disposable, shallow, or anyhow not worthwhile compared to the putative truth that lies in that notional beyond that we believe in.

I am pragmatic, working with what I have. I draw from both perspectives, as I am neither a panegyrist of some glorious past nor a cheerleader for the blissful future to come. While I can reason about the decline and rise of a culture, I frame it in such a way as to inform present considerations, in line with practical reasonableness. For example, I appreciate face-to-face interactions and strong bonds, though I also recognise the utility of text-only exchanges. One does not preclude the other. What matters is to find a sustainable balance.

When we examine phenomena in our life, such as the pandemic of loneliness all around us, we can think of them as instances of imbalance: there is too much digital exposure and manufactured happiness, for example, and too little personal connection. Taking a retrospective view to claim something like “computers have destroyed us” would ignore all the gains we have had thanks to information technology, while the prospective view that “innovation will fix this too” downplays how it is technology that created the problem in the first place.

Media do not merely enable an experience: they condition it. Media cannot be neutral, as the conditioning is disposed a certain way. If I meet someone in person, the medium is the space where we are collocated. All the information that we communicate is informed by the space. Same principle for a chat application.

The question, then, is not one of abolishing the filters and of living without media, but of finding a configuration that is effective given certain values that we have. Knowing what the values are is key to both (i) be mindful of the objective and (ii) to avoid fetishising the medium.

If we think of technology as inherently harmful, for instance, we can only wonder where the limit is. Say we abolish computers and the Internet. Why stop there? Why not also get rid of beauty products as those too effectively put a mask on people? And why not do the same for equipment like basic tools, on the grounds that “real men” only rely on their own strength to get things done? Before we know it, we end up romanticising the average animal life. Only then we have to also accept the brutality of nature, which we tend to forget in such thoughts. Again, then, balance is the goal, not ideological purity.

The aforementioned plot underpins current debates about authenticity in the wake of Artificial Intelligence. You take the average message nowadays and you know it was written or at least retouched by AI. Salaried programmers are barely writing any code themselves. They still understand what is going on, more or less, though their grasp of the technicalities is rapidly diminishing, as the bots handle the implementation details (and increasingly every other part of the job). Same for the arts. It is thus easy to conclude that technical acumen both of the engineering and artisanal kinds is being eroded and, ipso facto, people are not as adept as they think: i.e. they are faking it.

It is thus tempting to conclude that a reversal would take us to a better place where people are real. Before AI, we can argue, engineers actually knew what they were doing and artists were truly masters of their craft. Except that we can find plenty of exceptions to qualify such insights as relative. Which year exactly should we go back to? Once we look there, we will find all sorts of other problems; problems that, by the by, AI can address. A reversal would, furthermore, imply that those supposedly authentic people of yore are more valuable qua authentic than whatever benefits this new world has in store for us. This is a claim that can, at the very least, be strongly contested if, say, AI helps us find a cure for cancer: how many would give up the remedy to have authenticity?

David Schmudde weighs in on this debate in an interview with Gareth King for the Ruined by the Internet? series: https://schmud.de/posts/2026-08-10-cowboy-clothes.html. The gist of David’s commentary is that authenticity is nuanced. It is not as simple as stating that the pre-AI days were about real people, as there was artificiality of varying degrees practically everywhere, from the boutique view of country music, to how people presented themselves online in flattering ways.

Indeed, if we commit to the valorisation of authenticity, there is no principled reason to stop at AI or digital media at-large. Does a person with a nice haircut fake it at some level? Do they not wake up with their hair all over the place? Are nice clothes fraudulent because they conceal the imperfections of one’s figure? Is an athlete’s achievement inauthentic owning to the use of specialised equipment, such as shoes? And how about the diet and training regimen one needs to follow to even be an athlete: are those fake in the sense that the average person does not live that way or that the athletic cause do not necessarily contribute to some real public good?

It helps us then to acknowledge what we are thinking when we make arguments for or against a state of affairs. We are making value judgements on the basis of some frame of reference. Those can even be unknown to us, as we have taken them for granted and never thought them through. Bringing them to our attention can make us identify our most realisable wants in the here-and-now, and thus potentially sort out the problems we have and for which we currently believe that solutions only exist in the “elsewhere” I covered above.

The Greeks cultivate tragedy because they accept the indeterminacy of the world we live in. There is no pure experience to be had. Whatever we get is in a state of admixture. If we invent technology to, say, keep us warm in the winter, we have also created the conditions of dying from suffocation, of burning alive, of starting wildfires, of polluting the environment which will then be harmful to us, of killing each other with more potent weapons, and so on. The wielding of fire, which is a metaphor for know-how and, by extension, technology, is neither good nor bad, both good and bad. We cannot have the nice parts without the ugly ones.

This state of admixture is true for our life as a whole, starting from the everyday things. To love someone, for example, means that you trust them, open your heart to them, at some point be in proximity to them, and thus expose yourself to the possibility of suffering immense pain from them. But you cannot both love and also not be exposed to that kind of risk.

What matters, then, is to apply judgement. To figure out where the balance is and how to subsist in moderation. When to be welcoming and when to be cautious. What to take and what to leave.

JTR asks about Solarized because I consider Ethan Schoonover’s Solarized an excellent project, given what Ethan was trying to achieve. I asked JTR if I could publish my thoughts and they agreed. JTR has also written the article Back to Solarized.

Note that throughout this article I am only commenting on Ethan Schoonover’s Solarized (the original Solarized). There are many Solarized-like themes out there with lots of additions on top, including higher colour contrast, which are separate themes as far as I am concerned.

I should also point out something I always mention: themes are a personal choice and there are many factors that go into what a person wants. Keep in mind that readability is also a matter of font size, ambient light, and the screen brightness you are using.

To give a simple example, modus-operandi in a very dark room with maximum screen brightness at a fairly large font size will most probably harm you and is thus a terrible choice. But the same setup on a sunny Cyprus day in my well-light house is how you can read the screen without distractions.

Generally though, people forget to adjust their screen brightness, so always do that and rely on environmental light to not tire out your eyes.

Be mindful of the context

Have your thoughts changed about Solarized since the creation of Modus themes? Later, did they change after you created the ef-themes?

In short, no as the technological realities for my case and for the original Solarized remain the same. Ethan Schoonover wanted to have a colour scheme that would work reasonably well with terminal emulators and, by extension, Vim. Most terminal emulators let you define 16 colour values. Then applications running inside the terminal can map those to the objects they display.

Applications running inside the terminal cannot change the 16 colour values of the terminal. This means that Ethan’s Vim configuration necessarily had to have a light and a dark theme that worked with the same 16 colours. Ethan could have developed two distinct colour schemes for the terminal, which would then underpin two separate Vim themes, but I understand how this is a more complex arrangement.

My older Tempus themes project, from my pre-Emacs days, is for terminals, Vim, and friends. Same idea for its predecessor, Prot16.

I think both of those older projects are fundamentally flawed because the technological constraints they are designed to work in result in all sorts of little compromises. To give an example that many Linux users may have noticed: if you use a light theme in a terminal and do apt update && apt upgrade you will get the progress bar with a green background and a black foreground. Colour schemes cannot change that combination, so they make that text virtually unreadable (in a terminal, colour combinations should always be ACCENT + BACKGROUND, not ACCENT + BLACK/WHITE, as the accents are always designed to be visible against the background).

There cannot be one Solarized

Even though the original Solarized was designed to be a single theme, in practice it is not and cannot become as much. There is Solarized Light and Solarized Dark, sharing those same 16 colours. Solarized light has a background that is closer to yellow, while its dark counterpart’s background is closer to blue. This means that accent values which are picked to work with both eventually do not work equally well as they do not evoke the same feeling.

Without even considering the specific values of the Solarized palette, a combination of blue/cyan, magenta, and purple as foreground colours will be on the opposite side of the spectrum to the yellow background and on the same side as the blue background. This means that if we pick blue/cyan, magenta, and purple as our main colours we have a light theme (yellow) with a completely different feel than the dark theme (blue) even though they are supposed to be the “same Solarized”.

Let me outline this for you:

So if we force the same mapping of foreground colours, then we have two themes with contrasting harmonies and necessarily distinct characters. In this context we begin to appreciate the importance of judgement: sometimes you achieve likeness through difference. For the table above, inter-theme likeness exists on the diagonals, so either have both themes with “same side” combinations or both themes with “other side” combinations.

This concerns the predominant colours. A theme that uses all accents in equal proportion will look very busy and thus run into other problems.

The designer can, of course, pick a colour that does not follow the overall pattern to produce an emphasis of some sort. Though they cannot start with emphasis as their baseline.

One set of values leads to compromises

Because Solarized Light and Solarized Dark are designed to share the same palette, individual values are picked as a matter of compromise, even though they are “equally good” on paper in terms of distance as measured by various luminance metrics. The blue used for the light theme, for example, must also be good enough with the dark theme. But “good enough” for both may not be optimal for either.

Concretely, the Solarized blue stands out more in the light version than in the dark version (because of the complementarity between yellow and blue). If the light effect is supposed to evoke sunlight on a surface, and if that is the reason green and yellow are desaturated, then the blue should not be as saturated for the light theme. It would have to be a considerably more washed out colour. Though the blue has to be fairly saturated to be readable on the Solarized Dark background and still look like a blue, hence the compromise.

Same idea for the green and yellow colours which are consistent with the light background but would require tweaks to be harmonious with the dark background.

The magenta does not fit any background: it stands out as an exaggeration. To be consistent with the light background, it has to be less saturated. To fit the dark background, it needs to have greater contribution from the blue channel of light (i.e. move closer to purple) or become more pink. But moving in either direction compromises the opposite theme…

There is no “bright green” (terminal colour 10), “bright yellow” (terminal colour 11), “bright blue” (terminal colour 12), and “bright cyan” (terminal colour 14). I believe this is because they would not fit both Solarized Light and Solarized Dark.

My themes are designed for Emacs

As noted, Ethan’s Solarized was developed with a specific technology in mind. The same is true for my case: I develop all my themes to work with Emacs. This typically means that I can rely on more than 16 colours and each theme can have its own colour values.

For example, if I choose to apply a green background colour to the “current match” in a search, its value is not the same green I would use for, say, a “DONE” keyword in Org. Whereas in a terminal with 16 colours what you normally do is invert background and foreground colour combinations, which results in things standing out more than they need to (and becomes overwhelming when you want to use many such elements).

Each of my themes relies on its own palette. If I tweak one theme’s colour values, I am only affecting that one theme. Because each theme is its own design, I can make things similar by making them different. For example, modus-operandi-tinted is a “yellow-red theme” (simplifying greatly now) but its counterpart modus-vivendi-tinted is a “blue-purple” theme. On paper, this description alone makes them very different. But in terms of character, they both communicate a similar feel, owning to considerations that follow from what I mentioned above.

Additionally, each theme has its own colour mappings. This means that I do not have to make every theme use, for example, blue for links. In Emacs, I have greater control over what each “application” does, by configuring the relevant faces. There still are constraints, as I cannot for example decide which faces are applied to what portion of text, but this is generally not a problem.

Differences between my theme projects

What’s the difference between prot16 and your ef-themes? They seem to cover similar ideas, but it doesn’t look like prot16 has been updated.

My older projects are for terminal emulators. It is why they were inspired by Solarized. Terminals only have colour schemes though, not themes. The designer cannot control how colours are mapped to objects, so they have no means of enforcing thematic consistency.

A colour scheme sets the 16 values, but otherwise has no mappings for things such as “here is an error message” or “this is a progress bar and things are going well”, or even to specify “I only want green and blue here, but never magenta”.

If a colour-coded message gets a style, it will typically be hardcoded to red, green, or yellow. And if the colour scheme wants to support users with blue-yellow colour deficiency, for example, it will have to add a yellow value where the nominal red is (terminal colour 1 and terminal colour 9). But doing so leads to weird issues because, fundamentally, we are conflating colour names with colour mappings (there may be an application that wants to use yellow text on a red background, but now that actually becomes yellow on yellow, so you get the idea).

In Emacs, a theme designer has more control. They can specify colour values and write exactly how they are used by the relevant faces. For example, we do not only define “blue” but also say “I want keywords in programming modes to be blue”.

The constraint in Emacs is which faces do packages define and how exactly they apply them to elements of the display. A theme cannot, for instance, dictate how many separate faces a programming mode will add to its text. Furthermore, a theme cannot govern how generic faces, like font-lock-variable-use-face are set by modes to do things they are not supposed to do (for example, a mode specifies that face because they like its green colour in the one theme the author is using, but the thing being styled is not a variable and that specific face does not produce an optimal result in its context).

Additionally, themes cannot determine the surrounding text. For example, the Org export dispatcher has keys wrapped in square brackets (and I sent a patch that was merged a long time ago to have decent colours there by default when no theme is used). The bracketing is something the theme cannot change, so it has to do strange things to produce readable text because in an [i] indicator it is hard to discern the i due to how the square brackets limit the perceived boundaries—and you need to apply a highlight so that the user knows which exporter they are picking. An [ i ] is somewhat easier in this regard and a variation of it without the square brackets is even more flexible as then the theme can apply all the colour and typography attributes it needs.

Another constraint with Emacs is that we do not have real padding and margins, the way those are understood in CSS. I think this is fine for the majority of cases, but can be a problem sometimes such as when we need to use a coloured background that spans a small portion of text (e.g. with the Org dispatcher or with the style of rendered keys like <home>).

The gist is that Emacs gives the theme designer more control and in a more integrated way than a terminal+TUIs arrangement. This results in a coherent experience. Terminal-centric environments cannot have that to the same level because of disparate applications trying to form one computing environment, each doing its own thing in the process. I tried inter-application consistency in the terminal, discovered its limitations, and is the single most important reason why I switched to Emacs.

Contrast and readability

My understanding is that the contrast for Solarized wasn’t good enough for you. I don’t know if you have my issue specifically (https://taonaw.com/2023/07/05/halatoion-and-accessiblity.html), but I’m curious: don’t you get halation as well? Doesn’t it bother you, especially if you switch from a dark theme to something lighter? (For example, you read something with a dark background and light text, then switch to a page that has a light background and dark text)?

We measure contrast between colours to have an imperfect approximation of what might work in the average scenario. Though readability is influenced by many more factors beyond the applicable colours. Consider the environmental light and the brightness of the monitor. In addition, check the font size and even the font family you are using. Many font families can produce a halo effect at different sizes, regardless of colour combinations.

Have an extra source of light beside the monitor’s. If you do not, the eye focuses on one spot, which is more tiresome. And always adjust the screen brightness to not be too bright or too dim relative to the environment.

As for fonts, you may benefit from a design that has more open shapes. The exact size is also a factor.

For example, I have a font called Aporetic that is derived from Iosevka. What motivated me to do my own thing is the original monospaced m of Iosevka (maybe it is changed now), which blurred into a box at small point sizes and was thus not nice to read.

The Hack font I used to use (and which I had also modified), had similar issues. The Ubuntu Mono font that Ubuntu and derivative Linux distributions rely on, can have a g with a very short descender at certain point sizes, as well as a dotted zero where the dot is off centre.

I can go on to great details but you get the idea: you have to check all the variables and find what works for you. I am confident in stating that this is never a theme-specific issue.

As for switching between applications, these days most desktop environments have a concept of a light/dark preference, which many websites also follow. For example, GNOME has a menu from where you can toggle the “Dark Style” on/off.

The specific problem you will encounter with Solarized is that practically no other application or website uses it or similar colours. So either you will have to set Solarized everywhere you can, or you will be switching from the yellowish/blueish background to white/black, with whatever context-switching friction that may have.

Thoughts on wallpapers

This is an extra one I’m curious about: what are your thoughts about wallpapers? I noticed, the few times I worked with you and on video, that usually you have a natural scene. Have you ever switched to something else (like a drawing, perhaps an artwork, or maybe even a technical scheme)?

I have used wallpapers of all sorts and find that pictures I take of landscapes or flowers are the best for me. The reason is that they avoid exaggerations. Many pictures that are used for wallpapers are designed to show something in a more pronounced way and are thus calling for your attention. That is fine when the object of attention is the art piece. But when I am doing work on the computer, I do not want other elements to be competing for attention with whatever it is I am working on.

“Avoiding exaggerations” is a principle that informs my lifestyle. It also is why I prefer to live in the mountains and to spend plenty of time outdoors. The mountains do not have the intense stimuli a city has. In a city there are bright lights everywhere, a faster pace to motions, and sharper noises all around. Whereas the mountains are subtle, even though they are full of life.

People who go on a retreat say “I went to this holy place and found peace”, when in reality what likely happened is that they reduced their exposure to exaggerated stimuli and were thus able to lower their baseline intensity for a little while.

Because we are also conditioned by our habits, we do not realise just how much we have gotten used to things in our milieu, even when those are not benign to us.

People want magical solutions when the basics will suffice. We are heavily influenced by our environment and the elements we are exposed to. A stressful place will increase our stress levels. A harmonious place will make us more harmonious. Inconsiderate food choices will disturb us long-term, a poor work-life balance will harm us, and so on.

People think they can brute force their way into calmness or focus by means of “truly believing” in their project. This is a fool’s errand. Changing the scenery and relevant lifestyle will be far more effective than whatever willpower one thinks they can muster on demand.

I treat YouTube as a video hosting platform: it is always online and does not charge me for the service. I know I am giving up other values in exchange. This is a pragmatic consideration on my part.

I record a video whenever I feel like it. I do it for any topic I like. I am not targeting a specific audience and am not optimising for what people think or expect (same for all my publications, by the way).

I am not motivated by Internet points, in the form of views, likes, comments, subscriptions… There is no analytics software running on my website and I do not have email subscriptions. My RSS feeds are configured to show the full contents of the article, so that readers do not even have to visit my website. I do not run advertisements and am not doing paid promotions. In short, I have no idea who reads what, unless they directly tell me about it.

I have nothing against people who use their website or YouTube channel to sell products, track clicks, show advertisements, and so on. For me, this is not a moral issue (and I do not consider myself “moral” or even “good” in the conventional sense). Rather, it is a question of creative freedom, which I value greatly.

I find that the pursuit of Internet points compromises your expressive potential. You have the powerful incentive to do some or all of the following:

• keep milking topics as much as possible, which diminishes the quality of each publication;
• employ clickbait techniques with misleading titles and thumbnails, among others;
• become a caricature of yourself, by saying things you do not really believe in just because of the expected virality/popularity they have;
• say what people want to hear, so you do not challenge them to apply judgement and to question what they otherwise take for granted.

What motivates me is to speak my mind in earnest. I do not want to dilute my message with distractions. To my mind, the pursuit of Internet points is one such distraction both when they are few and when they are plenty. In the former case, you feel disappointed in the results and become frustrated with your efforts. In the latter case, you inevitably indulge in ego boosting, which is the petty man’s drug.

Do not conflate popularity as such with vanity or shallowness though. I am referring to the pursuit of popularity as the primary objective, which is not the same thing as someone becoming known and respected for what they do. For example, in the free software space, Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds are major figures because of their significant contributions, which will stay with us long-term.

All of the above apply in varying degrees to social media in general. Circa 2011 when I fist started my website, I created a Facebook page for it where I would post links to my articles. It was effectively an announcement board. I was getting a couple of “Like” reactions each time. I initially thought they were innocuous little extras. Until one day I wrote a long, fairly technical article that would require several minutes to read and perhaps a few more to think through. Within seconds of posting the link on the Facebook page, I got likes and positive comments along the lines of “good stuff!” and “keep it up!”. I deleted the Facebook page shortly thereafter because I understood how fake and shallow it was and how distracting it could become. It took me a few more years to completely abandon social media, including Twitter at the time, but the understanding was clear.

I do not count myself as a Youtuber because I recognise that Youtubering has its own logic; a logic that I defy. Even when people give me money, such as donations or for coaching, they understand that they are not buying my consent or, indeed, anything that would compromise my creativity.

If you want to succeed as a YouTuber, you do what is necessary. This is a business approach, which is ultimately governed by the balance sheet. And if you want to be maximally creative, you just do what you enjoy. If there happens to be an audience for your musings, that is a happy albeit irrelevant coincidence—and is a distraction if you let it influence your decisions.

La semaine dernière j’ai parlé avec Sacha et Richard Bonichon. Aujourd’hui j’ai écris une note sur le sujet de écouter: https://protesilaos.com/french/2026-08-10-en-ecoutant/.

Richard a élabore sur son configuration d’Emacs et son méthode pour faire de travail à l’ordinateur. La version court est qu’Emacs est l’orchestrateur de tous ses computations. C’est comma ça pour moi aussi et pour Sacha. En général, il y a plusieurs gens qui utilisent Emacs pour la quasi-totalité de leurs besoins.

Comme j’ai écris «quasi», je veux souligner l’importance de écouter les gens parler. J’ai appris, par exemple, le mot «quasiment» qui Richard a dit deux ou trois fois. Le synonyme que je savais est «environ». En plus, maintenant je sais quelle est la prononciation correct de «quasi» en français. C’est comme «kazI», mais en anglais nous disons «kouAzi» et pour les américains c’est «kouAzai».

En général, j’aime écouter aux autres personnes. C’est toujours une expérience didactique. Pas seulement pour apprendre des nouveaux mots mais aussi pour savoir quoi pensent-ils. En écoutant avec patience, nous agrandissons notre capacité de compréhension.

Merci à Sacha et Richard pour cette discussion!

Code samples

(defun my-french-p ()
  "Return non-nil if `current-input-method' is French."
  (and current-input-method
       (string-match-p "french" current-input-method)))

(define-abbrev global-abbrev-table "welcome" "je t'en prie" nil :enable-function #'my-french-p)


(defvar my-notes-directory (expand-file-name "~/.emacs.d/abbrev-test/")
  "Directory where my notes are.")

(defun my-notes-directory-p ()
  "Return non-nil if we are in `my-notes-directory' or its subdirectories."
  (let ((current-directory (expand-file-name default-directory)))
    (string-prefix-p my-notes-directory current-directory)))

(define-abbrev global-abbrev-table "prot" "p’rǒt" nil :enable-function #'my-notes-directory-p)


(defun my-notes-keycast-mode-p ()
  "Return non-nil if `keycast-mode-line-mode' is enabled."
  (bound-and-true-p keycast-mode-line-mode))

(define-abbrev global-abbrev-table "prot" "Protesilaos, also known as Prot" nil :enable-function #'my-notes-keycast-mode-p)

In Halo: Reach you are tasked to defend a collapsing frontline. The planet Reach is being invaded by the preponderant Covenant forces. The best your side can hope for is to evacuate with as few loses as possible. Then, for reasons covered in other games of the collection, you work for a momentum changing event.

Unlike the other games in the collection, Halo: Reach never gives you the sense that you are the apex predator. The Covenant are winning everywhere, while their elite forces keep proving that they can overpower the otherwise formidable killing machines that are the Spartan units. Whereas when you are in control of the Master Chief, it feels like you have the means to destroy the entire Covenant army by yourself and then do the same for the other antagonists of the story.

In Halo: Reach your objectives are grounded in the unsettling realisation that you are sacrificing yourself to buy time. You are trading your life in exchange for a possible future; a future that others you care about may live to experience.

This dynamic better captures the heroic ethos because it (i) frames it as commitment to a greater cause, (ii) it makes it clear that the common good supersedes the private good, (iii) the individual acknowledges that their own life may be forfeit for the life of the whole to continue, (iv) the chances of success post-sacrifice remain slim, and (v) the individual acts in full conscience by accepting the consequences of their actions.

Since you are in control of elite soldiers known as “Spartans”, the best example of this heroic archetype is King Leonidas. He was in his 60s when he took a contingent of forces north of Sparta and even north of Athens, to effectively buy time for the main forces to potentially achieve victory at a later day. Leonidas knew he was marching to his grave, as did those who stood by his side. They were not going there to win. There was no promise of loot and easy women. All that awaited them was gruesome yet honourable death.

“Noble Six” is the Spartan you assume control of. From what we are told in the opening scenes of the game, he is an exceptional warrior. Team Noble originally consisted of 5 members, though one must have died and the 6th came in as a replacement. This fact alone prepares you for the campaign ahead. It teaches you that even the Spartans are vulnerable.

The game does a remarkable job of casting Noble Six as the pinnacle of the Spartan programme without ever idolising him or belittling the other fighters in the process. As the story develops, each member of Team Noble shows that they have the strength of character to be where they are. Their equipment makes them strong, though it is their mental fortitude that empowers them to fight for a greater cause.

We learn early on that Noble Six tends to operate solo, while the final mission is aptly titled “Lone wolf”. Why Noble Six ends up being alone in this story arc and preceding ones is an interesting discussion unto itself though secondary to the motif of solitude that goes together with excellence. We may think of the lone wolf as a supremely capable member of the pack that does not need the other wolves in order to thrive in the wilderness. This is one possibility. The other way around can also be true, namely, the state of solitude is what creates the urgency to become skilful, as there is nobody else to rely on.

Whatever the starting conditions, solitude and excellence exist in a self-invigorating cycle. The more skilful one is, the fewer their peers become, and thus the higher the chances of them being alone. Solitude turns into loneliness once the person is so far away from the norm that even in the presence of others and with ample forms of socialisation they continue to feel estranged.

As for the greater cause that Team Noble and the other forces die for, the game presents it as a matter of survival for humanity as a whole. This can give the impression that people were living happily together and are now defending themselves from the malevolent aliens. But as history teaches us, humanity has an inexhaustible capacity for inhumanity. Given the right triggers, people will gleefully set fire on their neighbours for causes that can be made to seem important but are actually trivial.

We can piece together hints from the games in the collection to conclude that there is no unified humanity. The regime is not just. The Spartan programme is one of probably numerous clandestine operations whose original goal was authoritarian in nature.

Sacrifices, then, are done for the immediate gain of the status quo. Though it also is the case that in the long run they are carried out in the name of humanity as a whole. This is because even the most egregious empires eventually fail. Patriotism can thus be considered distinct from other more specialised forms of affinity to the polity such as, say, royalism. The patriot may be a royalist on the grounds that this particular regime is already guaranteeing stability. It is a tactical calculation though, not a matter of principle.

The presence of a common enemy, especially one as devastating as the Covenant, makes such fine distinctions irrelevant. People will rally around the flag once they are threatened. Even the most brutal regime can thus enjoy increased popularity for a long time. In this dynamic, the establishment and its rival enter into a symbiotic relationship. Shrewd political operators know that having friends is good. Having enemies who are dangerous but not disproportionately so is even better.

Team Noble perish while defending the indefensible. The hope that Halo: Reach conveys is that even that effort of resistance is enough to contribute to a new beginning. We try in earnest and hope for the best.

Below are the original lyrics, my faithful translation of them into English, and further commentary.

Το κόκκινο ποτάμι

Ερμηνεία:  Ελεωνόρα Ζουγανέλη
Στίχοι:    Κώστας Μπαλαχούτης
Μουσική:   Χρήστος Παπαδόπουλος


Πριν σε βρω σ'έχασα
Μια στιγμή δεν ξέχασα
Το ποτάμι μάτωσε
Η αγάπη δάκρυσε

Η ζωή μας όλη ένας ποταμός
Αλλιώτικος Θεός που μας χωρίζει
Μία όχθη εδώ στην άλλη το θεριό
Σαν δάκρυ στο καιρό που με ορίζει

Η φωνή μου όλη έγινε κραυγή
Το αίμα στην πληγή στο νου αφρίζει
Μία όχθη εδώ στην άλλη το θεριό
Σαν δάκρυ στο καιρό που με ορίζει

Μη μου λες γιατί
Γίνε ουρανός και γη
Μες τη σκοτεινιά
Φώτισε μου τα κελιά

Πριν σε βρω σε έχασα
Μια στιγμή δεν ξέχασα
Το ποτάμι μάτωσε
Η αγάπη δάκρυσε

Σαν το ναυαγό αφού δεν είσαι εδώ
Που να'βρω ουρανό και που πατρίδα
Μέσα στη βροχή σαν το τρελό σκαρί 
Που σκίζει το νερό χωρίς ελπίδα

Νιώσε τη στιγμή πριν έρθει η αυγή
Με μίσος και οργή σαν καταιγίδα
Σαν το ναυαγό αφού δεν είσαι εδώ
Που να'βρω ουρανό και που πατρίδα

The red river

Singer:  Eleonora Zouganeli
Lyrics:  Kostas Balachoutis
Music:   Christos Papadopoulos


Before I found you I lost you
A single moment I did not forget
The river bled
love cried

Our entire life a river
Different god who divides us
A side here the beast on the other
like tear in the era that defines us ["era" could also be "weather"]

My entire voice has become a shout
The blood in the wound froths at the mind
A side here the beast on the other
like tear in the era that defines us

Do not tell me why
Become sky and earth
In the darkness
Lighten my rooms

Before I found you I lost you
A single moment I did not forget
The river bled
love cried

Like shipwrecked as you are not here
Where to find sky and where homeland
In the rain like the crazy boat
That cuts through water without hope

Feel the moment before dawn arrives
With hatred and rage like storm
Like shipwrecked as you are not here
Where to find sky and where homeland

The lyrics of The red river are fairly cryptic. I suspect it is due to the author’s profound realisation, which only occurs to those who pay close attention to their world: you can fall in love with someone who is unreachable. You lost them before you had even met them, in the sense that there was never a chance for you two to make anything out of your brief encounter.

The unreachable person is the one you meet on the street, on the other side of the road, with whom you somehow establish eye contact despite the boisterous crowd around you and the rapid pace at which you are both walking in while moving in opposite directions. You do not know their name, what language they speak, where they came from and where they are going. Nothing! All you have is eye contact so intense and so unlikely that it electrifies you. Such is the impression that you do not forget this person. You call them “Eyes” for short.

Eyes may be someone you would never like to spend time with. People eventually lose interest if the vibes are not in tune, no matter how powerful the initial force that brought them together. Though you choose to believe that Eyes is the one, the perfect match.

The river here reminds us of the momentary encounter that cannot persist. Each moment moves downstream as others take its place. You wish you had more time to realise what had just transpired. You would have done anything to change the course of things. You would turn around, stop the traffic, push the crowd aside, call the attention of Eyes, and express yourself in earnest: “I did not know I was searching for you my whole life”. Yet those thoughts occur too late. You realise that the currents have already pulled you away. You kept marching onwards and so did Eyes.

Bleeding comes from the wound left behind by this encounter. At first, it pains to know that Eyes was made manifest as a fleeting figure and not a companion. It is initially hard to accept that you too had the same quality: a nameless body moving along a nameless field of bodies. Your ego reduces to nothing as you come to terms with the fact that you are a droplet in the river.

Even if you think you matter greatly right now, you as a fully fledged person eventually becomes irrelevant. Hair recedes and turns grey. Wrinkles appear and you no longer shine. Your beauty for which you could have been proud turns into that which you may wish to conceal. Physical prowess and intellectual capacity eventually diminish, no matter how intensely you try to cling on to them. All goes until you are no more. The deeds for which you are known may persist in some form, though long-term your name stops pointing to a relatable person with feelings and all but to a symbol of authorship, a mere identifier for a corpus of work.

The mindful person will witness the bleeding of their ego fairly early in life. The rest will also experience it in some form later in life once they understand how they no longer are players in the game.

However, the river does not only describe the world that keeps changing. It also captures that which remains constant. The river is at once a symbol of change and non-change, constancy and non-constancy. The flowing waters tell us about continuous flow. Yet flux as such points to the common in the multitude of the flowing waters. Change as change is identity.

It is for this reason that Eyes remains Eyes in the poetic first person’s heart despite all these years that have gone by. Eyes, too, is a symbol: the authentic, the eternal in the momentary, that which is common in the multitude of all attractions.

This was the interpretation for today. Now a brief note that is tangential to the aforementioned.

A few months ago I met a fellow Greek person (Greek-Cypriot to be precise) who was excited to learn that I am a philosopher. A “Greek philosopher” who is actually alive already makes for inexhaustible meme-worthy material. I keep shaving though, which kind of ruins it for them, but they will have to manage.

This person was keen to ask me all sorts of questions. Though before we started our discussion, we had this brief exchange, which is relevant to the present song as well as practically every other piece I have interpreted:

• I am a philosopher.
• Wow! We [the Greeks] do not have philosophers anymore!
• And what do you think the [Greek] songmakers are?

I then went on to explain that once you listen attentively to a song, you realise that it opens up a whole world of possibilities, each of which is another world. Even the Eurovision style songs that you may underestimate will make you think much more than what the lyrics state. This is because one word is worth a thousand images (and an image is worth a thousand words, of course).

Not all songs will speak to you. The events they are inspired by and the feelings they communicate may seem alien. You can reason about them, though you do not experience them viscerally. For example, I do not feel anything special when I listen to the average Taylor Swift song. Her quality is undeniable. It just happens that I cannot relate to a heartbroken teenage girl (yes, Taylor Swift covers more themes, but you get the idea).

People make the mistake of searching for the eternal in that which is grand. Pay close attention and you will find it right in front of you.

Memorable and teachable

Any narrative that contributes to such a framework has to have mnemonic and didactic value. Stories that are hard to remember cannot spread through word of mouth and shall not be easily communicated to people. This is a major problem for intergenerational relations, because the parent will not be teaching the child as much as they could. Same principle for stories that do not contain lessons that are widely applicable: people will not find those stories useful and will eventually ignore them.

This approach emphasises the role of the tutelary figure: the teacher, the scholar, the priest, the hierarch, the shaman, always depending on the specifics of the culture in question. This person performs the vital function of harmonising the private good with the common good in what we may generalise as the wellness of the place with the wellness of the space. The tutelary figure is the person that uses religion as a system for their teachings, adapting insights to the particularities of present life as well as the individual qualities of each member of the social whole they are addressing.

A myth, for example, is not an event that actually happened. It is not a statement of fact in and of itself. The tutelary figure, owning to their experience, can discern the meaning of the myth, the moral of the story, to comment on quotidian affairs, such as to give personalised guidance on one’s struggles in life. Through this tutelage, the lesson drawn from the myth becomes relatable because it applies to immediately recognisable phenomena.

Facts and their constraints

Facts, then, are interesting details that can reinforce the effect of narratives. Though the totality of religion cannot be factual, as that necessarily means that religion must be filled with accompanying data sets or relevant resources: those are not mnemonic, for instance.

Facts may render stories specific to their context: if a story is tied to the given details of the place and people involved, then it may not be as generalisable. A story about an artisan’s craft in ancient China, for instance, might not apply to a modern European if it is all about details of that field of endeavour during that specific era. The generalisation will have to be done beyond those specificities.

Data sets about such details are no mere supporting material though. They are an integral part of a wider approach to how things are handled. Consider a scientific paper, for example: in principle, it is all about facts. The paper’s data has to be verifiable by independent means and its findings shall be reproducible elsewhere. Without verifiability and reproducibility, there are no facts that can be relied upon. They are, at best, curious artefacts potentially worthy of further investigation.

Imagine that if religion is factual, it too has to be consistent with the practice that frames the scientific paper, meaning that each of its claims is substantiated by details which themselves are peer-reviewed and thoroughly examined in independent settings. And those facts have to be applicable today as well as for the indeterminate future, so their reproducibility remains robust to changes in the environment.

I am not aware of any religion that is purely factual of the sort here considered. Religions claim to be factual on some accounts and admit to their allegorical nature on others. Though once this point is granted, then one can only wonder where exactly the boundaries are set and whether the goalposts will keep shifting if expedient.

From facts to ideology

My claim that religion is fundamentally allegorical is not to discount religion, but to salvage it because it is a potent tool for social cohesion. I wish to carve for religion a place that keeps it relevant long-term, given the obvious descriptive power and potential for innovation that science, its putative competitor, has. To me, religion and science apply to different facets of life and are thus compatible once each focuses on its strengths.

This approach also saves science from the trap of scientism, namely, the ideology of fastening upon the scientific corpus cultural teachings that themselves cannot be strictly aligned with the scientific method because they then lose their mnemonic and didactic value.

A defining feature of our era is said scientism. People try to find all-encompassing guidance for their daily life in tenuous factoids of the sort “a paper found such and such”, “scientists may have found how this and that are related”. People rush to use those preliminary findings as the basis for far-reaching claims that the data does not support. They do not even know how to treat the source material with the requisite scepticism.

It is common for those under the sway of scientism to rely on an implicit metaphysics while pretending to eschew metaphysics altogether, thinking they are practical and believing they are smart by avoiding “all that nonsense”. As a result, the average person overestimates their competence and ventures to do things that are potentially self-destructive.

Scientism debases both science and culture because it stands at an awkward intermediate state between the two, combining their parts in the worst possible way.

I want to help people find focus in their life instead of getting pulled in to futile squabbles over science versus religion, my religion versus your religion, and so on. I see myself as the figure who has responsibility to inspire—and at times to challenge—people to aim for a state of clarity, instead of giving them grist for the mill they are caught in. I am not converting anyone to anything: they will know what to do once they put things in order.

[ UPDATE 2026-09-15 15:52 +0300: The original blog post I was commenting on is no longer available. I am removing the link and inserting [UNAVAILABLE WEBSITE] where relevant. ]

Against this backdrop, I extend what I have written thus far with commentary on the article titled On becoming a magus from the [UNAVAILABLE WEBSITE] blog (hereinafter referred to as “the blog” in the interest of brevity). It gives me the pretext to expound on what I was anyway going to cover. Using excerpts from the blog makes my points more relatable, so I do not need to draw my own examples: I can rely instead on what another person states since it is representative of broader patterns of thought that I have encountered.

Metaphor and symbolism

From the blog:

The magician, in the tarot world, is represented as someone in robes (Jesuschrist) able to control the four elements: air (swords), fire (wands), earth (pentacles) and water (coups). He is shown displaying these things in a table, in calmness.

Tomberg is his Meditations on the Tarot, expounds about this topic and how occultist like Eliphas Levi said that Jesuschrist was the ultimate magician and that the rest of us mortal wouldn’t ever be more than warlocks.

Should we take this literally? Are the four elements a statement of fact? What does that entail for chemistry? Can I describe the desk and computer hardware I am now using in terms of the four elements and have this be a reproducible description? Can I, for example, have a precise measurement of the earth and wind present in my keyboard?

I think the four elements are metaphorical as a simplification of a much more complex reality. Using this metaphor, I can come up with lots of interesting stories about the world which may make people think about different parts of their everyday life. I like the four elements in that regard. If, however, I take the four elements literally, then I carry the burden of proof to demonstrate exactly what those elements mean, how do we study them, where do we use them, and so on.

Same principle for Jesus as the ultimate magician. If this is a statement of fact, then we have to contend with all sorts of questions that essentially ask how can we prove that any given person actually is who they claim to be (e.g. son of God, the trinity, etc.).

If Jesus is the ultimate magician who is, ipso facto, superior to all of us, then it is entirely possible that he is a pretender and not the real deal, without us ever knowing how to tell the difference. I do not actually believe this, but such is the possibility we have to entertain. A pretender could even be malevolent, such as to cause confusion, sow hatred, trigger holy wars, and sit back to see the world burn.

How would we, the lesser people, even have the acumen to correctly rank the magicians, so that we can tell who is the ultimate among them? And which even are the criteria for said ranking? Even in something as mundane as football, it is futile to define the “Greatest Of All Time”, “the best midfielder ever”, and so on. If you do not believe me, start a poll online and you will get all sorts of conflicting accounts. Who is right, who is wrong, and how do we make that judgement call? And this is just football, mind you, not “the ultimate magician”.

These and many more are questions that naturally follow from the basic notion that Jesus qua ultimate magician is a fact. We cannot hold back those questions because then we are no longer rigorous with our claims.

If, however, we take this metaphorically we again have lots of interesting topics to discuss about common issues, while recognising that we are formulating stories that fit our needs. Jesus as the ultimate magician thus becomes a valuable story-telling device for the present and the future.

When we admit that we are reading resources in a spirit of openness to interpretation, we remind people not to obsess over the specifics of what is in front of them. We emphasise the teachings and invite everyone to think for themselves or, anyhow, to not take every statement or symbol at face value.

Furthermore, we adapt the lessons to the prevailing realities. Interpretation becomes a tool that empowers us. We are not limited to the scope that the facts delimit.

Continuing from the blog:

I am a firm believer of the phenomenology of magick; as a christian it couldn’t be otherwise; Solomon had control over demons (or djinns), Elijah called fire upon the prophets of Baal, and my dear St. Theresa D’Avila levitated and mastered the inner self out of abandonment and trust; centuries of grimmoires have been preserved to this day, like the Lesser and the Greater Key of Solomon, the entire tradition of the Ars Goetia and the book of Honorius to talk with God amongst other tests.

Consider the story of Elijah here. If God literally rained fire on those who practised a different religion, why can we not believe that this is also happening nowadays in roughly the same part of the world for basically the same reasons? And if we cannot think of the modern day equivalent of Elijah, perhaps we will surmise that God skipped the prophets and opted for politicians this time? There are countless such questions, each with far-reaching implications.

Furthermore, if this is a literal event, then it raises questions about God, such as whether he has favourites among the people and why would that be, that he seems to have no problem with innocent children burning alive and their settlements reduced to rubble, and much more. Is fire the best way to convince people?

Plus everything I mentioned above about validating the claimed facts.

I am not searching for answers here. I am pointing out what happens once you commit to a literal reading of the stories.

If, however, we take it metaphorically then we have a useful story in our hands: for instance, we can speak about how one’s unflinching commitment makes them extraordinary, which is a practical lesson for everybody.

Same idea for St. Theresa levitating. What does that even mean in a factual reading of the story? Was she suspending the force of gravity? And if so, what was holding her body together? Was it some piece of equipment instead? Who developed it and what was the underlying technology? We can ask endless such questions and continue scrutinising the answers as we search for verifiable and reproducible evidence. Absent the evidence, the only charitable reading is that of allegory. Otherwise, we have to admit that we do not know the facts and are filling in the blanks with what we wish to see there.

If we say that this is all magic that we simply cannot comprehend, then we are faced with the challenge of putting forth a description about—and attendant belief in—something we claim is indescribable. If it can be talked about, it is describable. If it can be described, it can be done so with greater accuracy. If, moreover, it can be demonstrated, then it can be measured. So we are back to examining facts and building up the requisite capacity. And if it is not demonstrable, then the supposed events are allegorical, which is perfectly fine.

Symbols and practicality

From the blog:

I consider that everything is real when it comes to this kind of topics: I do not deny the existence of Hera, but her condition; for me it’s just a fallen angel or a nephilim instead of a goddes, and the same goes with the gods of my ancestors - Baal is just a minor nephilim, or son of the angels that left the sky.

What does “real” mean though? Metaphors are also real because they describe that which is common in phenomena. But we understand that the metaphor itself is not factual: its relation to reality consists in representing the abstraction from the multitude of relevant patterns.

For example, Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper pertains to everyday experiences of people even though we are neither ants nor grasshoppers. Aesop did not record a historical event but only a story he made up; a story with mnemonic and didactic value.

If, however, we claim something like “Hera is real” and by that we mean that she is a figure of some kind, be it an angel or whatever, then we again need to withstand the scrutiny of fact-checking. This would distract from the symbolism. It would be akin to saying “the story of the ant and the grasshopper actually happened”.

Hera is not a person. There is no lady in the sky waiting for us to do something for her. Hera is a symbol that we invent—and are open about our myth-making practice and our poetry—to encapsulate in a few words (again, mnemonic and didactic value) a long list of beliefs that a society may consider important because it has tested them through aeons of experimentation, such as:

• Children need a mother figure in their midst.
• Families benefit from having a just matriarch figure around (e.g. the grandmother in an extended family that everybody loves and listens to).
• The extended family distributes the workload, making it easier to raise children and take care of the elderly, while still handling everyday work.
• Societies are stable long-term when social reproduction (biological + cultural continuity) extends from the family, to the neighbourhood, and continues outward.
• Resilience long-term is about sustainable intergenerational relations.

We do not have to appeal to Hera to make those and related points. A secular teaching at some public school can have the same effect. However, history shows us that religious communities are the most enduring across continents. So, communicating this in religious terms will likely remain relevant long-term.

At any rate, Hera is a symbol: a name or alias for a long list of beliefs which themselves are about day-to-day issues. Anything else is going to engender countless questions like I hinted at in the previous section.

Names/aliases/symbols are part of our everyday affairs. Imagine if instead of “Protesilaos” we have to use all possible descriptors of me: that would make for an incredibly tedious discussion. Extend that to everything we name and you quickly realise how language will not be usable if it cannot employ these mental shortcuts.

We rely on names/aliases/symbols to keep things focused. At some level, we accept imprecision for the sake of usability. Strictly speaking, “Protesilaos” is inaccurate because it applies equally to a child and to an adult, even though those are different people in terms of their body, their interests, their knowledge, and more. Same idea for “Protesilaos” from yesterday and “Protesilaos” right now because there still are differences between them that the name itself does not capture. For example, yesterday’s guy had not written this article and thus had not created the relevant synapses in his brain.

Coming back to religion, metaphors empower us to keep things focused by avoiding unnecessary details. Otherwise, we exhaust the attention span of people and, as such, we cannot instil in them what they need to learn (again, mnemonic and didactic value).

Furthermore, saying that Hera is real, in the sense of a person or angel or whatever, we now introduce a discussion about otherworldly forms of being. This discussion is factual or metaphorical? If it is factual, then we have to have the relevant evidence. If it is an allegory, then we have to question what purpose does it serve and whether that is constructive or not in light of social affairs.

The significance of faith

From the blog:

For the magi not only needs discipline and knowledge, but also trust and faith, faith in something greater than himself, faith in a world that can’t be reduced to debt and GPI and politics, faith in the fact that, as Borges said, there are more things.

Indeed, there are more things. Such as other people in present time and other people on an intergenerational scale. There is the country and the environment, and all of the species, and so on. Recognising the others is a prerequisite for the aforementioned framework of sustainability.

The defining feature of our era is that “more things” are subordinated to the practice of ruthless short-term profit maximisation and its concomitant pursuit of perpetual growth, which is how forests are decimated and oceans are polluted, people are uprooted from their ancestral lands through structural poverty or brute force or the sabotage of drugs, waters are exploited in the interest of oligarchs, and so on.

Faith in other things needs to be couched in terms of the practicalities of sustainability within the confines of the world we live in. It is not about other beings in other dimensions. Faith in other people, for example, brings forth concerns for justice. Faith in generations embeds a sense of duty and of restraint beyond one’s self. This continues for other topics, but the core idea is the same: it is about recognising that we are not alone here and that we have to keep things orderly for the present and the indeterminate future. Sanctity, then, is a shorthand for saying at minimum: respect the person, respect the community, respect those who were before and those who will come after, respect the environment, live within your means. Et cetera.

Faith in Hera as a given figure, however, or the nephilim, or whether Elijah actually wielded fire, or if Jesus qua ultimate magician is literal and he actually controls the four elements, inevitably invites the kind of endless scepticism that disorients us from the goal of sustainability for our communities. Instead of taking the symbolism and adapting it to our life, to teach young and old folks alike, we run into controversies about the one and only truth; controversies that humanity has never resolved—and how could it when it cannot even define the best footballer ever? And, no, I am not joking.

None of this is limited to religion, by the way. It is how the curious and persistent intellectual shifts their attention away from the practicalities of daily life into questioning every possible detail they are aware of. Overthinking is guaranteed to happen if you are strict about “the truth”, because you need to be rigorous throughout and to apply the highest possible standard in your scrutiny. Overthinking is not a viable path because our body prevents us from withdrawing into a world of pure thought until we can figure out everything: the body demands action, so we accept our condition as embodied mind.

A sustainable option for the uncompromising thinker is to learn how to thrive in liminality: to live between fact and fiction, to study the data while also discerning in it abstract structure, with one foot in the world of practicality and another in the world of thought.

Those granted, faith performs the vital function of keeping people involved and committed to the collective good. This is what religion can do best. The average believer is not questioning their precepts: those are not negotiable for the very practical reason that the person who is not ready to think things through will make a mess out of their own life, just how the person under the sway of scientism does. The precepts are there to give people support on all those issues where they need it.

And here, too, the typical modern person errs because they conflate the freedom of opinion with the capacity to live with the consequences of one’s thoughts/deeds. Everybody can speak their mind, but few will actually commit to the unflinching pursuit of their thoughts and live accordingly. Fewer still will do it even if it involves great personal cost, like in the cases of Socrates and Baruch Spinoza.

An empty shirt

When we make a literal reading of symbols and names, we end up in a situation where we have insufficient evidence to support our claims. It is why such an approach tends to beget fanaticism, which escalates into coercion, as it lacks the means of persuasion through reason.

The 20th century Greek poet Giorgos Seferis alludes to pointless squabbles and campaigns in his poem Ελένη (Helen), which concludes with why would people do all this warfare and constant struggle:

για ένα πουκάμισο αδειανό για μιαν Ελένη

[for an empty shirt for a Helen]

“Helen” here is a reference to Helen of Troy. She is the stated reason for the Trojan War. Helen is not an actual person. She is a symbol, a metaphor, an artistic device to communicate something deeper. In Helen we find the recklessness of people, for example: people who kill each other over unattainable trophies.

Helen is a myth, which remains ever-relevant. There is such a Helen right now in the Middle East, where the United States is waging a war on Iran over unclear goals and with no coherent strategy. A Helen exists in Eastern Europe for similar reasons, for the Russians, the Ukrainians, and those in the European Union.

In the context of religiosity, Helen as the empty shirt is what we get when we lose sight of the teachings and insist on the reality of the names or stated claims. This is not mere distraction though. It is far more pernicious, as it begets the kind of fanaticism that says “my god is more real than your practices” and then brings fire and steel on them. It is the same fanaticism that in many parts of the world continues to haunt those who believe in something different; the fanaticism that makes the perpetrators feel righteous and justified about all the atrocities they commit.

We do not get such phenomena in discussions that stick to the facts or in those conversations which at the outset admit to their allegorical character. Where we find unreasonableness is when symbols are taken literally. This happens with religion, though it also happens with sport when our team’s colours become our identity that pits us against all other supporters via hooliganism, or in art when we wage culture wars over whether the Helen character in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey movie can be a black woman or not (again, Helen is fiction, not an actual Greek woman of antiquity). These are all empty shirts, which nevertheless have the potential to lead to actual harm.

The intellectual’s responsibility is to stay focused on the essence, avoid empty shirts, and communicate with others dispassionately so that they also focus on what is the deeper issue.

A matter of initiative

With those granted, we are left with how I originally concluded my previous article about the way of the wizard (2026-08-03):

Perhaps, then, the safest option is become a wizard yourself.

The wizard I have in mind is the philosopher (literally “friend of wisdom”) who learns to deal with that which is liminal; the person who goes beyond the apparent tension between fact and fiction, religion and science.

The point here is not to demand personal accountability for systemic phenomena as that would be unfair, but to suggest that those who are concerned about what is happening around them have to start from somewhere.

If we see the world that envelops us erode before our eyes and if we believe that we have the means to do something, then we act to the best of our abilities with the hope that others will be inspired to do the same. In the process, we recognise that there may be compromises along the way and that efforts will have to continue over the long-term.

This is how I approach it for my immediate environment: I have no material resources to donate and no army of volunteers to mobilise. I am just a dude with a blog living in a remote mountainous region. I have ideas that I am sharing without strings attached. Fundamentally, I remind people to not take themselves too seriously because that is how they self-destruct or destroy others.

Maybe those combined with my admittedly limited efforts to make connections and maintain a semblance of community can amount to something. Though there is a chance that they will not achieve anything because I simply am not the right person for this sort of initiative. I cannot know unless I try in earnest. Since there is nobody else I know who is leading by example, I will do my part and see what happens.

It is my style to not make promises or talk big: I do what I have thought through very carefully, live with the consequences of my actions without regrets, and then I comment at length on what I have learnt.

UPDATE 2026-08-11 12:52 +0300: There is a follow-up article on the [UNAVAILABLE WEBSITE] titled Seeker of the ancient beauty.

I do not have anything to add that is not already foreshadowed above, so I will only comment on the questions, which are contained in this quote:

So, the question is, without the technical scaffolding, if there is something we can do about a sky that feels empty but maybe isn’t, because we’ve forgotten how to be embraced by it.

[…]

I am asking you, sincerely, if you could help me understand why I feel like I do not have anymore what it takes to find that dearest beauty, so ancient yet so new, that rests within us.

My point comes down to saying that our fundamental issue as individuals and then as groups is that we have abstracted away the divine into something that exists elsewhere; “elsewhere” as in far away but also “elsewhere” as in some distant epoch that is not current anymore.

We find what we are always searching for when (i) we slow down to escape from the grindset of our times, (ii) start paying attention to our world around us, and (iii) join like-minded people to actively contribute to the culture we want.

We learn to respect our neighbours and extended communities. Not in the common sense of “I respect your opinion”, but in the deeper sense of valuing their innate humanity, expressing solidarity, and doing things in a way that is benign long-term (e.g. for the next generation to have a land with strong cultural ties to live on).

We respect our homeland because it is the space where our ancestors thrived materially as well as spiritually, plus it gives us the space for our own institutions/values to exist. This, too, is a deeper kind of appreciation than what is common nowadays, where “country” is an alias for property for sale and/or theme park for tourists.

God does not need our validation because god is complete. We are the ones who need spirituality and the relevant framework. By focusing on what we have to do, which in short is to seek/build/join the appropriate communities, I try to suggest that even in a situation that looks extra bad, there is still hope: we can change it, but we have to collectively try in earnest.

Putting the emphasis on the small scale is also an implicit political comment of mine. It is like saying “the big institutions do not exist on their own if the people do not get involved”. This applies to secular institutions like the government as well as spiritual ones. The Catholic Church, for example, is powerful on paper because it has billions of followers, yet capitalism shows that it is more influential in everyday life because, fundamentally, people have a nominal commitment to their faith and an actual commitment to the capitalist way of life.

This is not to suggest that the big institutions are useless, mind you: only to stress the importance of people having to do their part in the process.

Writing for the [UNAVAILABLE WEBSITE] the author comments on the death of magick:

I do not want to be performing sex rituals to summon demons á la Epstein, but I want to feel that not everything can be reduced to pure opportunity costs and ROI, that there is something beyond productivity and FOMO and anxiety-driven conduct patterns.

There is that “something” all around us, though we are not conditioned to notice it. The reason is that we get used to our quotidian routines, driven by the necessities of life. There is work and the preparation for work. Then there is the attendant competition for social standing, which improves the chances for work and for all its contributing factors. Thus arise feelings of ownership, jealousy, and so on. When we do not actively exchange goods, we trade in perceptions, and when those transactions break down we resort to violence to invigorate anew this cycle of work, goods, perceptions.

The cosmic continuum through pop culture hyperbole

From what I know, the magus is the high priest of Zoroastrian Iran, who was steeped in the study of the world as a continuum of science, mythology or art, and religiosity. Same principle for the Greek mystic, literally the one who goes through initiation (i.e. rigorous training of matters of deep knowledge (mysteries)) to become a hierophant (he who reveals that which is sacred). And same for the wizard, the wise person who is believed to possess supernatural powers owning to this same rare capacity of understanding the human condition and everything around it in a manner that is holistic.

I will be referring to this archetype as the “wizard”, though “magus” and “hierophant” are all interchangeable here. Note, further, that I am considering the one who is excellent, which excludes the average hierarch (“hierarchy” literally means the holy order/rule, so the “hierarch” is somebody who is high up on this order and, more generally, someone who holds a position of authority, hence the common use of “hierarchy”).

The pop culture view of the wizard is of a person, typically a man, who does things that are not available to normal folk. In many video games, for example, the wizard class has very little strength but can still dominate through the use of powerful spells. Give the wizard enough time and he will destroy an army of elite warriors. And even if the wizard is strong physically, their real strength is in their reality-altering mind.

This is all metaphor and hyperbole. Though it is rooted in fact. The wizard does indeed possess powers that the average person lacks. The wizard sees patterns that the average person has not even noticed and will find connections that are seemingly not there. But once the wizard explains those findings, they not only make sense, they are so obviously “there” that the average person will not even realise they are talking to a wizard: they think they are conversing with a normal fellow and so they will not even be aware that their reality has been changed by the wizard’s doing.

It is common to say that we are all under the influence of some long-dead intellectual. This too points to the same direction of how mind alters reality. Once you learn something, you see things accordingly. And so when the wizard “casts the spell”, which is a metaphor for saying that the wizard has made you aware of something, your world is no longer the same it was before.

When Kong Zi (Confucius), a sage in his own right, talked about Lao Zi, such was his impression of the man that he thought he had witnessed a dragon, i.e. a mythical creature. Lao Zi was a human like everybody else, yet his capacity to think things through was so extraordinary that he was, in a manner of speaking, superhuman: he was nothing like what you see every day.

So we take both the exaggeration as well as the underlying fact it is trying to highlight.

The global context

The wizard understands multiplicity on the continuum of oneness. This already sounds like gibberish. How can “multiplicity” also be “oneness”? If it is many, then it cannot possibly be one, right? The answer is that there always are many and one: all the particulars have something in common, like all the dogs you have met share the common nature of dog as such. Both dogs and dog are present. Where others can name only discreet presences, the wizard discerns the common in the multitude, going from the most concrete to the most abstract.

Why does this matter though and how does that make someone a “wizard” in the pop culture sense? It matters because it changes the frame of reference for any given thought. The wizard knows that how we frame things conditions what we discover in them: it foreshadows what is to come. Furthermore, the wizard understands that connections between otherwise disparate fields of endeavour become apparent once we couch them in terms of a context that encompasses all of them.

The wizard’s context is the global context, so the possibility of finding connections extends far beyond anything the average person can comprehend in their current state. To the wizard’s mind, this does not create any confusion whatsoever, as the wizard can tell how presences are at once different and the same. It is a matter of what needs to be emphasised, which the wizard is well aware of.

[ Also read: On the absolute other (2026-08-02). ]

Situational awareness

In practice, stupid people are not those who lack intelligence, but those who do not have structure in their life. They disperse their energy and end up running around like headless chickens, always stressed, always unprepared, always a few steps behind. Incredibly smart people can be stupid in this regard.

Having structure is beneficial to everyone. This consists of routines, hobbies, responsibilities. Basically, the arrangements that reduce or eliminate indecision: we do whatever we are supposed to do without thinking about it and getting distracted in the process.

Both the average person and the wizard benefit from having structure in their life. There is, however, one important detail that distinguishes the two. The average person faithfully applies the rules without thinking about the particularities of the case: “this is what the rule says, so this is what I do” is their approach.

Whereas the wizard is mindful and thus in tune with the particularities of the case. If there is a need to introduce an exception, the wizard will notice it and suspend the application of the rules. Not because the rules are not useful in general, but because committing to them independent of the specifics can lead to adverse results.

We may simply state that it is smart to have structure but it is stupid to apply it without judgement. Such judicious thinking is possible thanks to the appreciation of context in general.

The art of control

The wizard’s power consists in knowing when to suspend the rules. There is no one-size-fits-all kind of answer here, no specific formula that we can rely on independent of what is happening. It always depends. The wizard, then, knows when to make an exception, in what will seem like a completely arbitrary decision to the untrained person. This is because their context does not factor in all the considerations that the wizard has accounted for.

Since I mentioned rules, allow me another example, though the point is general. In the law, the wizard recognises spirit. Not as a figure of speech, but as an inherent reality: that which is present even as the circumstances change, else that which transcends the constitution of the case. Phrasing it this way shows why “spirit” is the correct term. By extension, there is “spirit” in everything.

As such, the wizard is able to find the truth through the specifics yet beyond the specifics. It is truth in interpretation, else in situational awareness. It cannot be limited to the letter of the statement as such or the given phenomenon in isolation. Again, context.

Because of this bigger picture view of the world, the wizard remains in control of the situation and is accordingly calm. Theirs is an awareness of the structure by which phenomena unfold.

The wizard is confident in their capacity to operate in the world. Like the physicist who does not need to continuously observe each specific object to know how a given action will produce motion through reactions given initial conditions, the wizard skips past the details to anticipate that which has not been made manifest and to fathom what may be.

The wizard has thus experienced far more than what their age or specifics of daily life would otherwise permit. This is not knowledge that is measured in quantity, as in how many books one can quote. It is mastery of conduct. When, for example, we witness an elite musician play music, we know that there is depth there but we also understand that to us non-elite-musicians the exact depth is unknown: it simply gets dark after a certain point.

The shifting sands do not bewilder the one who is in tune with shifting as such. Put differently, the wizard is not distracted and will not go down paths that lead to undesired destinations.

Notice, again, how all this makes the pop culture view of the wizard more realistic than it would otherwise seem.

Summoning daemons

Which brings me to the quote I have above from the [UNAVAILABLE WEBSITE]. Gods, daemons, spirits, or whatever you want to name them, do not answer calls. They do not hang out there waiting for us to show appreciation for them.

You know by now that the many and the one are not in contradiction, so “gods” and “god” are interchangeable.

God is immanent: here, there, everywhere. When you perform a ritual, supposedly to summon a god/daemon/spirit, you actually do it to focus on a task. You force yourself to slow down. In the process, you begin to get out of the tunnel you otherwise are in. The tunnel effect occurs naturally as you speed up: the pace of your life forces you to perceive only a tiny part of totality and, furthermore, makes you not appreciate how close you are to what you think is far away.

[ Also read: On the importance of rituals (2026-07-27). ]

The summoning that happens at a ritual is about your concentration. By slowing down and focusing, you begin to practice the skill of calling upon your own powers, collecting all that energy and channelling it in a focused way. God, then, is revealed to you not because god moved to where you are: you effectively put on your glasses to read the text that is in front of you.

Epstein and friends (calling it “Epstein+” here for brevity) were/are not summoning evil daemons in what is some one-off event at a specific altar: they have already focused their energy in such a way that their entire life has qualities that we can simply describe as “satanic”. When Epstein+ is trafficking people, he is already satanic, when Epstein+ is throwing everybody under the bus for profit he is satanic throughout, and so on.

The story is the same for what we typically think of hell, of the self-inflicted pain of Sisyphus, the tormenting greed of Tantalus, the lack of judgement of Procrustes, et cetera. The “afterlife” is a useful metaphor, though we have to understand its actual application: it refers to the life that occurs here-and-now as well as the life that happens right after any give act, else the consequences of one’s actions.

If, for example, someone is gambling, the “afterlife” is the new normal when they are finally broke, have committed domestic violence, and so on. It is the inescapable reality of the broken relationships and of the insatiable passion that eats away not only at the family fortune but also the lives of those involved. Extend this principle to all sins and you immediately realise how it is all about this life, not what happens after you die in some other dimension.

And the same for “summoning” the benign spirits, what the Greeks call “eudaemonia”, literally “good-spirit-ness”, which is clumsily translated as “happiness”. You are not actually summoning anything from another reality: you are channelling your energy in such a way that your life acquires certain qualities. And if you are consistent, then those qualities underpin your new normal. Think again about how I used “spirit” above. It is the same here: how you live has a “spirit” beyond the day-to-day details, so we can metaphorically speak of a good daemon that is taking care of you or has become you.

This is also why the concept of the exalted human makes sense. Whether we call this “apotheosis” (reaching towards godhood), “theanthopos” (god-man), “prophet”, or “dragon”, as I mentioned earlier, is not essential to my point here: what they have is rare and, of course, there are levels to it.

Immanent pattern

In conclusion, as you slow down, you begin to realise that there is pattern throughout and that all presences are the same qua patterns. This we know even from basic observations. Black and white are opposites, in a manner of thinking. Yet they also are the same once understood as points on the spectrum of tonality. The wizard works with colours and colour as such. Me and you, we are different if we account for all the variables that describe a person, but we are also the same once we think that a human is equal to another human.

It is thus that we are inspired to observe the world all around us. Everywhere we look, we trace pattern and we realise that there cannot be anything beside pattern as such. It is pattern of pattern of pattern. Whatever then we understand as distinct from the totality of known patterns is a manner of thinking about pattern as such (and thinking is also pattern): it is thought of as distinct in the same way it can be thought of in relation to another pattern.

The wizard comprehends this insight and embeds it as daily practice. If even the multiplicity of the multitude is subject to how we think, then we can think differently for everything. What superficially is the same case becomes a different case altogether once perceived from a new perspective. There is no case without scope, without the perspective that factors in certain things while leaving out others. What remains, then, is the power of reconstitution: thinking anew, else pattern reconfigured into pattern where configuration is itself pattern.

This is all sounding like pop culture magic, right? It is, though we have to distinguish these natural abilities, which are practical throughout, from poetic effect.

[ Also read: Beyond the temple (2026-07-27). ]

The wizard will not teleport to places, for example: this is a metaphor for saying that the wizard has understood things the way someone does once they live long enough in a certain place.

The wizard does not produce fireballs out of thin air: this, too, is a metaphor for the aforementioned reconfiguration, where we take something out there and turn it into something else in what is an exercise of empowerment.

And so, the wizard does not talk to god in the literal sense but only as a metaphor for describing how the wizard identifies spirit and then the spirit among the spirits and how, thus, the wizard employs those insight in pursuit of something practical.

There will always be pretenders. Those who claim to know more than they do, those who, in other words, will promise you fabulous stuff. And you will either believe everyone and suffer the consequences or you will not believe any of them, which means that you will live without the “magic” I covered herein (and, again, there are levels to it).

Perhaps, then, the safest option is become a wizard yourself.

UPDATE 2026-08-03 21:46 +0300: The author has a follow-up at [UNAVAILABLE WEBSITE] On the nature of magick which correctly points out that you cannot be a wizard as an individual and that there has to be a community in place.

How are we going to become mages if there is no magick, if the spirits of the land are dead, our God silent and our traditions and heritage forgotten? What is a mage going to do in an age empty of saints?

Is it a way for us to rebuild our communities? To get back our traditions? To be part of something unfathomably bigger than ourselves?

Indeed the wizard cannot exist on their own. As with the ancient priests, they are all members of a society that embeds in its culture certain values which then create the hierarchs and among those a wizard emerges of the sort I outlined above. Without the community, which is ethnic in its constitution as it exists across generations, there are no wizards.

To become a wizard, then, as I concluded with my original article, one needs to turn their attention to the immediate task of finding the community. Not all hope is lost. There are people out there who still care. There also are those who are somewhat interested but would not do the first step.

Courage is contagious. Once a few people make the initiative, others become more curious and want to check out what is going on. Many will come and go, but a few will stay. Eventually this can create the momentum that enkindles the community. It will be a lot of work though, because it has to be done as a counter-cultural movement that resists all sorts of forces from the dominant culture.

I am only now beginning to commit to this enkindling and I generally do not want to talk big before I do anything. I shall do it and then I can comment on it. My goal is to find the others, message them, meet with them, keep them active, and continue doing my part. My hope is that long-term this brings back the magic, even if it is one tiny bit at a time.

Is there a specific plan of action that will guarantee results? I do not have the answers. I am experimenting and will know more once I have enough experience.

1 The other is that which differs from the self in quality or degree.

1.1 Other and self with equal qualities in equal degrees are identical.

1.2 The other and the self constitute the dissimilar.

1.3 The constitution of the dissimilar is the formation of a relationship.

2 The absolute is that which has no degree.

2.1 The absolute other is that which differs from the self in quality.

3 Where there is a common quality, the dissimilar is not absolute.

3.1 The absolute other is that which has no quality in common with the self.

4 To have quality or degree is to exhibit pattern.

4.1 Pattern is that which presences have in common, regardless of quality or degree.

4.2 The absolute other is that which has no pattern.

4.3 The absolute dissimilar cannot be constituted, for relationship involves connection and thus similarity.

5 That which is reasoned about is connectable.

5.1 The connectable is the similar, at least in having presence.

5.2 The absolute other cannot be reasoned about and has no presence.

5.3 For as long as it is thought, the absolute other is not the absolute other.

6 The abstract is the common in a multitude of presences.

6.1 The absolutely abstract is that which is discerned in all presences.

6.2 Presences and abstractions, self and other, are on a continuum of pattern.

6.3 There is no absolute other as its absolute abstraction cannot be connected to the continuum.

6.4 The self and the other are equal in having pattern.

7 Pattern has no other.

The topic of our meeting revolves around how Christian uses NeoVim and Kitty to handle sessions and write fleeting thoughts. Then we will try to do something along those lines using built-in Emacs functionality.

Christian did a video a couple of days ago about this topic and here is my extensive commentary on it, with points that are useful in general: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-07-31-re-linkarzu-what-i-need-from-emacs/.

I am happy he has done this and am eager to discuss those concepts in further depth. In this article I will comment on the specific points Christian raises as well as on the overarching theme of his experiment with Emacs.

Emacs has “sessions” out-of-the-box

Christian has experienced friction with using Emacs. Much of it revolves around the notion of “sessions” that Kitty provides. At least for the way Christian uses sessions, Emacs has the equivalent concept of “projects”. Each project is a version controlled directory (Git in this case, though Emacs supports many others as well).

To tell Emacs where your Git repositories are, so that it can record all of them as known projects, do M-x project-remember-projects-under and select the directory at the follow-up prompt.

To switch between projects, use M-x project-switch-project. At this prompt, you use search to narrow the results and pick one among your existing projects. There is also an option to open a specific directory that is not yet a known project, which will thenceforth be remembered as a project if it is under version control (there are other options on how projects are identified, but the presence of version control system is the default check).

Projects also become known if you invoke one of the project-specific commands from inside the given Git repository. For example, if you call the command project-find-file, it will do what it is supposed to do (more below) in the current repository and store that repository as one your projects for future use.

Quickly find a file anywhere in the project

The find-file command (C-x C-f by default) is about manually navigating to a path. Christian finds this cumbersome and indeed it is if you are thinking in terms of selecting a file related to the current project.

The command project-find-file consolidates all the files into a flat list from where you can type a few characters to narrow the results and pick the file you need.

Similarly, project-find-dir lets you pick any directory in the current project, which is especially useful if you need to do something with many files (e.g. rename a bunch of files or change their permissions).

This principle extends to all other relevant commands. For example, project-shell opens a shell buffer at the root of the current project. If you are using something like the ghostel package (https://github.com/dakra/ghostel), it provides the ghostel-project command to open a fully fledged terminal emulator (i.e. not just a “shell”) in this project’s root directory.

There are many other nice things that can be done on a per-project basis, such as to run the relevant compile command, switch to the project’s buffers, perform a project-wide grep, and more.

And, generally, many packages will build on top of projects, such as the popular consult package (https://github.com/minad/consult) with some of its commands like consult-find and consult-grep (or consult-ripgrep).

The built-in projects can be combined with other features

These Emacs project capabilities can easily be combined with other features that Emacs also supports out-of-the-box.

For example, you can set things up so that when you switch to a new project it appears on another tab (displayed at the top of the Emacs frame) or, indeed, to switch to another frame, within which there can be tabs.

To augment projects, you can combine them with mechanisms that restore buffers and/or window/tab/frame arrangements after you restart Emacs. For example, the bufferlo package (https://github.com/florommel/bufferlo) covers this space.

Piecing together the system

Depending on one’s needs, there is a lot that can be done to not only recreate those sessions that Christian mentions but to do arbitrary things on top, with the help of packages as well as custom Elisp (and writing your own Elisp is very much in the spirit of extending Emacs to do exactly what makes sense to you).

Though here we get into the area of workflow and the overall approach. I think it is safer to try things one at a time from the ground up, so that you can understand how the emergent system is pieced together. This allows you to better reason about what you have and what you need. Plus, it empowers you to troubleshoot things because you already have a sense of what is there.

For example, you start with the projects as they are done in the generic Emacs. When you find something that does not quite work, you read the documentation to see if there is some user option to configure things to your liking. Then you can search for packages that augment the experience, based on your specific requirements and expectations.

Remember that Kitty sessions build on top of existing experience

Taking a step back, consider that what Kitty provides is not something you get up-and-running with as a new user of terminal emulators.

When you are a beginner with terminal emulators, you barely understand how things work and how you are supposed to interact with the tool. Over time you learn all the nice things about the shell and eventually you incorporate custom scripts and extensions that augment your experience (like fuzzy finding, multiplexing, storing/restoring configurations).

To remind yourself how austere the default experience is, launch an unmodified instance of XTerm. It will bring to the foreground the fact that what Christian is doing with his Kitty setup is many levels above what a standard terminal-based workflow looks like.

And the key here is that each level corresponds to a corpus of knowledge that took form through experience. In other words, it was done over time.

The same is true for Emacs and everything else: you cannot speedrun experience.

Capturing thoughts very quickly

Christian demonstrates how he quickly creates a daily note to record a reminder or fleeting thought. The equivalent built-in facility in Emacs is org-capture: it can do a lot of things, but to cover specifically what Christian wants, there is an org-capture-templates configuration that records an entry under a specific tree of date headings. Because there can be many such templates, the user can define any variations they need to match their specific requirements.

If the user prefers that those fleeting thoughts are always captured in standalone files, one per day, then the popular org-roam package can do that through what it calls “dailies” (one note per day). There are other ways to do the same thing, including with core Org, but org-roam streamlines this method.

org-roam also covers another need Christian has, which is about linking files together and finding the backlinks to them (again, there are many ways to achieve this, but covering all the options is not the topic here).

You do not necessarily need Emacs

What I say to others and will write for Christian as well is always have a good idea “why” you want something before committing to it. This is how you find the motivation to stick to a project despite the eventual setbacks. Without the “why” it is practically guaranteed that you will quit early.

NeoVim, Kitty, and friends can combine to provide practically all the features that Emacs has. Users may then argue over the relative pros and cons of each approach, which I personally consider a distraction because what matters is to have a computing environment that gets the job done. The gist, however, is that if NeoVim+extras works for you, then you do not really gain anything from switching to Emacs: it is a lateral step at best.

More importantly, if your current setup covers all your needs, you do not have a compelling reason and thus the drive to persistently try Emacs. It is the same for me: Emacs covers my needs, so I do not feel any enthusiasm—or, indeed, curiosity—to spend time with other options. Maybe those other options are excellent and maybe they can be configured to be superior to my Emacs setup. But what I have fits my workflow, so I do not have the emotional push to look elsewhere.

Without the “why”, it will be practically impossible to stick with any experiment: it will always make sense to revert to the state you are familiar with.

Careful with shortcuts in life

Allow me to elaborate on my claim that you cannot speedrun experience. I will use an example from football (soccer), as I played it at a high level and it may be a more relatable story anyway.

You watch the game and are excited to walk on the pitch right away to score some goals. It looks cool and feels amazing! However, you have not practised the fundamentals, like controlling the ball while running and having situational awareness. You believe you can figure those out while playing the actual match. As such, you overestimate your abilities and set yourself up for failure.

Then, things get real all of a sudden. Within the first minute of the match, you come up against someone like me, who makes no discounts and takes no nonsense. I will not let you ever get near that ball: I will be first on the challenge because I know how to position myself and, even if I am not first, I will regain possession of the ball with ease because I have done it a zillion times.

You will never get anywhere near scoring a goal and you will likely not get the chance to be involved in the flow of even smaller patterns of play like an exchange of passes. Whenever you are close to touching the ball, I will be there breathing down your neck, hounding you everywhere you go. Such is the gulf in experience that I will make your life miserable on that pitch.

In short, your initial enthusiasm will quickly turn into frustration because there will be no gameplay whatsoever for you. And the worst part is that it will only get harder from there, as I will also be competitive on top of being annoyingly better, with tough challenges, crunching tackles, constant shittalking to add insult to injury, and the overall aggression that shows a clear willingness to escalate further.

This is not about me: I am using myself as a proxy for the experienced player who grants you the honour of a true challenge. I am doing it to make it feel real and thus to emphasise the frustrating parts because this is exactly how life works when you are not prepared.

The morale of this story is that working on the fundamentals guarantees a better long-term experience and, above all, is a process you should not skip.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): tmr
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/tmr
• Change log: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/tmr-changelog
• Git repositories:
  • GitHub: https://github.com/protesilaos/tmr
  • GitLab: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/tmr
• Video demonstration: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-01-19-emacs-timers-tmr-demo/
• Backronym: TMR May Ring; Timer Must Run.

Below are the release notes.

Version 1.4.0 on 2026-07-31

TMR is an efficient package that has been stable for years. This new version introduces some nice new features as well as several smaller internal refinements.

Create a timer that repeats

The command tmr-repeat prompts for a duration, like the standard tmr command but also asks for a number of times to repeat the given timer. When called with a prefix argument (C-u with default keybindings), tmr-repeat will also ask for a description for the new timer and whether it should be acknowledged or not after all repetitions have elapsed.

Thanks to Óscar Fuentes for contributing the original implementation of tmr-repeat (with many extra changes/features by me). This was done in pull request 16: https://github.com/protesilaos/tmr/pull/16. Óscar has assigned copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

Modify the repeat count of an existing timer

The command tmr-edit-repeat-count prompts for an existing timer and updates its repeat count. If the repeat count is set to 0, then the timer is no longer considered repeatable.

As with all commands that operate on existing timers, tmr-edit-repeat-count automatically applies to the timer at point when called from inside the tabulated list of timers (per tmr-tabulated-view).

Modifying a timer’s repeat count does not start a new timer. It simply updates the relevant data. Use the command tmr-clone to start a new timer using the data of an existing timer.

The tabulated view has more columns and all of them can be adjusted

The tabulated list of timers, which is typically produced by the command tmr-tabulated-view, now has extra columns for the data that pertains to repeatable timers.

Users who want to control which columns are displayed, and in what order, can modify the user option tmr-tabulated-columns. Its documentation covers the technicalities. The default value is to display all columns.

Completion metadata for the prompt that selects a timer

Advanced users can now modify all the completion-metadata associated with the prompt that reads/selects one among the existing timer objects (the function is tmr-read-timer). The relevant variable is tmr-completion-metadata. I am not providing this as a user option, because regular users will anyway not be able to do much with it as it involves custom functions.

Timers in the completion prompt are sorted by end time

The prompt for selecting a timer now sorts candidates by their end time. The closest end time appears at the top.

This affects all commands that operate on a timer, such as tmr-edit-repeat-count, tmr-cancel, and more.

In the past, there was no sorting whatsoever. Users who prefer that style can add the following to their configuration:

(setq tmr-completion-metadata
      (list
       (cons 'category 'tmr-timer)
       (cons 'display-sort-function #'identity) ; THIS IS THE RELEVANT PART
       (cons 'annotation-function #'tmr-completion-annotate)))

Miscellaneous

• The manual is easier to read. I have rewritten it to group commands and user options under appropriate headings.

• Lots of internal refinements to the code. I tweaks things to make the code easier to maintain and contribute to.

• Thanks to Pavlo Lysov for adding a small example to the manual about using TMR hooks to send a custom notification on the macOS. This was done in pull request 25: https://github.com/protesilaos/tmr/pull/25. Pavlo does not need to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

• Thanks to Carlos Pajuelo Rojo for refining an earlier version of the function that produces a message about the repeat count of a given timer (I have since made lots of changes on this and other fronts). Carlos’ contribution is in pull request 20: https://github.com/protesilaos/tmr/pull/20. The change is small, meaning that Carlos does not need to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

• Thanks to f6p for use the appropriate face for the paused indicator in the tabulated view. This was done in pull request 17: https://github.com/protesilaos/tmr/pull/17. The change is small, meaning that the author does not need to assign copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

Below is the article I prepared for this video, with all the code samples.

Table of Contents

1. The default settings are usable but inconvenient
2. Tweaks for a more refined default completion interface
3. The completion-category-overrides for maximum control
   1. How to find the completion category
   2. Completion categories and all the other completion-metadata
4. The default completions and related packages

The core Emacs infrastructure for completions is quite capable. In a previous entry I covered the technicalities of in-buffer completion, the completion-at-point-functions, and related packages/modes like corfu, company, completion-preview-mode: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-07-19-emacs-completion-at-point-functions/.

For this article I will focus on the default user interface of completions as it is done through the minibuffer. Minibuffer completion is performed whenever we type, with default keybindings, M-x (execute-extended-command), C-x b (switch-to-buffer), C-x C-f (find-file), among many others.

The default settings are usable but inconvenient

They are designed to work like TAB-completion in a standard Bash shell. Insert some text, press TAB, and Emacs will interpret your input as a prefix to be completed against available candidates.

The *Completions* buffer pops up. At the top, it informs you about the keybindings you can press to select a candidate. The candidates themselves are presented in rows and columns.

If you type some extra characters or otherwise modify your initial input, the *Completions* buffer will not reflect the new list of candidates. To calculate that anew you have to press TAB again. As such, the *Completions* are static by default.

Tweaks for a more refined default completion interface

Lots of small refinements have been made over the years to expand what we can do with the *Completions* buffer (at least some are inspired by an old package of mine called mct). Here is the essence of my preferred configuration, with comments:

(use-package minibuffer
  :ensure nil
  :config
  ;; Do not inform me about the default keybindings to select a
  ;; candidate.
  (setq completion-show-help nil)

  ;; Do not print messages in the echo area that pertain to
  ;; completion---those are distracting.
  (setq completion-show-inline-help nil)

  ;; Show useful annotations in various minibuffer prompts (though the
  ;; `marginalia' package greatly improves this).
  (setq completions-detailed t)

  ;; Do not use rows and columns for completions: a single vertical
  ;; list is easier to follow.
  (setq completions-format 'one-column)

  ;; Put an upper limit to the Completions window, so that it does not
  ;; disorient me.
  (setq completions-max-height 12)

  ;; Rely on previous inputs to surface candidates towards the top of
  ;; the list (enable the built-in `savehist-mode' to persist
  ;; history).
  (setq completions-sort 'historical)

  ;; Show the Completions buffer if I hit TAB but there is no unique match yet.
  (setq completion-auto-help t)

  ;; Never switch to the Completions buffer when I type TAB, because I
  ;; want to select candidates while the minibuffer is still in focus,
  ;; per `minibuffer-visible-completions'.  This has the advantage of
  ;; auto-updating the completions as I type.
  (setq completion-auto-select nil
        minibuffer-visible-completions t)

  ;; Those two are also relevant for the `completion-category-overrides', which I
  ;; cover elsewhere in this article.
  (setq completion-eager-display t)
  (setq completion-eager-update t))

The completion-category-overrides for maximum control

The user option completion-category-overrides is for those power users who demand complete control of how the completions behave. Concretely, we target the metadata key of the completion-category to tell Emacs which completion-styles and other settings to use specifically for it. For example, we might want to have something like this:

;; Pattern-matching styles to interpret our input in every context.
(setq completion-styles '(basic substring initials flex))

;; An exception to the above for the `file' category, where we
;; specifically want to use the `partial-completion' style:
(setq completion-category-overrides
      '((file . ((styles partial-completion)))))

How to find the completion category

I am not aware of a built-in way to do this, so I have my own function:

(defun prot-common-completion-category ()
  "Return completion category."
  (when-let* ((window (active-minibuffer-window)))
    (with-current-buffer (window-buffer window)
      (completion-metadata-get
       (completion-metadata (buffer-substring-no-properties
                             (minibuffer-prompt-end)
                             (max (minibuffer-prompt-end) (point)))
                            minibuffer-completion-table
                            minibuffer-completion-predicate)
       'category))))

To use this, you need to enable recursive minibuffers, which means that you want to be able to bring up a new minibuffer prompt that will affect the one that was already open. Here are the settings I use for that:

(use-package minibuffer
  :ensure nil
  :config
  (setq read-minibuffer-restore-windows nil)
  (setq enable-recursive-minibuffers t)
  (minibuffer-depth-indicate-mode 1))

With that in place, whenever you want to know the completion category of a prompt, focus the minibuffer and type M-: (eval-expression). In the new prompt input (prot-common-completion-category) and press RET. In the echo area you will either get nil or the symbol of the category.

[ We can, of course, do this differently such as by defining a command that we bind to a key to ultimately copy the completion category to the kill-ring, but I wanted to keep it generic. ]

Now you can write more entries for the completion-category-overrides.

Completion categories and all the other completion-metadata

When we modify the completion-category-overrides we can set the variable completion-styles as well as every single function specified by the documentation of function completion-metadata. Here is the anatomy of an override:

(CATEGORY . ((styles STYLES)
             (eager-update . BOOLEAN)
             (eager-display . BOOLEAN)
             (group-function . GROUP-FN)
             (annotation-function . ANNOTATION-FN)
             (affixation-function . AFFIXATION-FN)
             (display-sort-function . SORT-FN)))

• STYLES is one or more completion-styles.
• BOOLEAN is nil or t.
• *-FN are functions as explained by completion-metadata.

A concrete yet basic example, with comments:

;; To set `eager-display' and `eager-update' in the overrides, we need
;; to have these variables configured accordingly:
(setq completion-eager-display 'auto
      completion-eager-update 'auto)

(setq completion-category-overrides
      '((file . ((styles partial-completion)
                 ;; Do not automatically pop up the Completions buffer
                 ;; because, for example, we have private files we do
                 ;; not want to show while doing a live stream.
                 (eager-display . nil)
                 ;; But if the Completions buffer is already
                 ;; displayed, do update it as you type.
                 (eager-update . t)))
        ;; For buffers we do not care about showing them, so display
        ;; them outright and automatically update them as you type.
        (buffer . ((eager-display . t)
                   (eager-update . t)))
        ;; For this I want the completion styles to either be
        ;; interpreted as a prefix or a substring, but I do not want,
        ;; for example, the flex style here. And then I want the same
        ;; behaviour as for the buffer category.
        (imenu . ((styles basic substring)
                  (eager-display . t)
                  (eager-update . t)))))

And here is an advanced example with all the custom functions:

(defun prot-minibuffer-file-group (file transform)
  "Return FILE group name unless TRANSFORM is non-nil."
  (cond
   ;; Here we have the power to completely change how candidates look
   ;; under a group, such as to remove a prefix. But I just want the
   ;; group title and otherwise want to keep the candidates as they
   ;; are by default.
   (transform file)
   ;; Create a group for directories and give it the group title
   ;; "Directories".
   ((string-suffix-p "/" file) "Directories")
   ;; Create a group for dotfiles and give it the group title
   ;; "Hidden files".
   ((string-prefix-p "." file) "Hidden files")
   ;; Then group every other file by its file extension and name the
   ;; corresponding group like ".org", ".txt.", and so on.
   ((when-let* ((extension (file-name-extension file :include-dot))
                (_ (not (string-blank-p extension))))
      extension))
   ;; In every other case, just group the candidates under the "Other"
   ;; heading.
   (t "Other")))

(defun prot-minibuffer-file-sort (files)
  "Sort FILES to have directories first and the rest alphabetically.
Omit the .. directory from FILES."
  ;; Remove the implicit files from the candidates.
  (setq files (delete "../" files))
  ;; Sort them alphabetically.
  (setq files (minibuffer-sort-alphabetically files))
  ;; Now put the directories before the rest.
  (let ((directory-p (lambda (file) (string-suffix-p "/" file))))
    (nconc (seq-filter directory-p files)
           (seq-remove directory-p files))))

;; To set `eager-display' and `eager-update' in the overrides, we need
;; to have these variables configured accordingly:
(setq completion-eager-display 'auto
      completion-eager-update 'auto)

(setq completion-category-overrides
      '((file . ((styles partial-completion)
                 (eager-display . nil)
                 (eager-update . t)
                 ;; I am not including examples for the annotation and
                 ;; affixation functions because those are more
                 ;; involved and you anyway get the point.
                 (group-function . prot-minibuffer-file-group)
                 (display-sort-function . prot-minibuffer-file-sort)))
        (buffer . ((eager-display . t)
                   (eager-update . t)))
        (imenu . ((styles basic substring)
                  (eager-display . t)
                  (eager-update . t)))))

The default completions and related packages

The modern stack is vertico, marginalia, orderless, embark, and consult.

The default completion interface can be used instead of the vertico package. Though you can still benefit from marginalia, orderless, embark, and consult.

If you really want to customise everything extensively through the completion-category-overrides, then you can skip marginalia and maybe even get completion-styles that are still good enough without orderless.

But there still is no built-in alternative for the powerful embark and consult packages, so plan accordingly. Granted, you can be productive without embark and consult, but the advantage of those packages is that they make it easier to achieve those same tasks (plus extra features).

Ce va être la première d’une série de discussions avec le participation des membres de la communauté d’Emacs.

Tu peux contacter Sacha si tu veux participer. À lire: https://sachachua.com/blog/2026/07/voulez-vous-parler-d-emacs-avec-prot-et-moi/.

Je suis très content d’avoir l’opportunité de parler en français!

Still, I do something very well that few people learn and fewer still master: I slow things down, understand my surroundings, and am in control of the situation. I have the capacity for situational awareness that allows me to discern patterns and thus connections which are otherwise obscure even though they are always present in plain sight. This is not a matter of intelligence but of attitude.

This is because I have learnt through observation that perception is a function of speed. The faster our pace in life, the narrower our field of view, the fewer the details we can capture, the more superficial the reality we will be experiencing.

Speed is not even a metaphor here. I mean it literally, though an analogy helps communicate the point: while standing, you have a wide field of view, but as you pick up pace the field of view becomes increasingly narrow until its boundaries converge at a singular point. Speed creates a tunnelling effect. If you go fast, you are thus not seeing—literally “not seeing”—what is around you.

Life is high-paced when it does not allow for moments of mindfulness. In the present era, this usually happens when we work under the pressure to deliver results, log each second of the effort we put in, capture every datum that empowers our employer to assess our productivity, and do everything else beside our profession, including relationships and recreational activities, as if it is a task on a rigid timeline.

A life of high pace is a life of disturbance. There is an elusive void within and we do not know what is the cause of it. It will manifest as anxiety or some low intensity sadness or numbness and apathy. It may be expressed as disturbance that bursts into wanton violence or, simply, anti-social abrasiveness. This is the life of the person who, like a wolf in captivity, is denied of their open vistas, of the wide field of view that allows each one to stay calm.

In narrowness there is fear. It runs counter to our constitution and thus triggers in us the feeling of estrangement or disconnect from our roots. We are not meant to be super fast at all times. In going full speed we depart from our baseline and in making that our default we operate beyond the boundaries of the sustainable, hence the disturbance and the fear of that which remains undetectable.

The slow pace is how we regain control of the situation and effectively open our conscience to the world that envelops us. Any action that forces us to reduce our speed is benign. When done with intent, this will typically be embedded as a ritual. For example, if we spend 5 minutes praying before each meal, those are 5 minutes that we have forced ourselves to be patient: what the prayer itself says is irrelevant to the detunnelling effect that is unfolding.

Rituals with a spiritual significance have the advantage of establishing in our conscience the notion of necessity. If we think that we can always skip them, then we introduce cheat days and eventually come up with all sorts of exceptions that turn into excuses for not committing to the ritual at all. Whereas when the ritual is expressed as a matter of spirituality, it becomes non-negotiable. Only absolute necessity stops you from carrying out what you believe in.

To the disciplined person, such as myself, rituals and the overall structure for daily life come from within. I personally do not need anybody to force me to slow down. I am always patient and undisturbed because my own rules are sacrosanct: I do not have off days in how I apply them. To everybody else though, religiosity is the best way to make rituals, and thus detunnelling, happen with regularity. Within a religious setting, you have fellow practitioners that all commit to observing the rituals without taking shortcuts. And, if you believe in the divine, you also recognise that a higher power is involved.

God is everywhere, but to the person with the tunnelled conscience God does not exist even if they consider themselves religious. Belief as such is not relevant. One can make the casual claim “I believe in God”, which usually has the same meaning as “I do not believe in anything in particular”. The reason is that belief only matters when it is expressed as a lifestyle. It otherwise is tokenistic, an exercise in virtue signalling, or a parroting of precepts that are devoid of substance.

Belief in God means that you understand how you are part of the whole and, as such, how the widest possible field of view is the one that allows you to notice divine presence throughout. Your sense of self extends beyond the confines of your body to encompass increasingly more of your extended reality. You are closer to the divine when your mind is not racing anywhere and, conversely, you turn towards yourself, effectively deifying your ego, the faster your experience gets.

Through rituals we can get a glimpse of cosmic oneness by expanding our conscience. There no longer are indelible lines between the “me” and the “we”, between human and plant, animate and inanimate. All that is present exists on a continuum. Me, you, those who think they are great, and those who resent their failures while seeking to become somebody special, we all are equally partaking of the whole like folds of the same cloth.

Slowing down puts things in perspective. It empowers us to overcome petty concerns with their squabbles. It also frames our mind to understand the symbolism of our deeds, that the rituals and all the items we rely on are media for our detunnelling. Their value consists in slowing us down, in making us experience the oneness, but they are otherwise not worthy of our worship.

You do not need to spend 5 minutes expressing the most eloquent words ever codified as a prayer, for example. Even mumbling or remaining silent will suffice. Similarly, you do not require a theology or social apparatus of power, with high priests and opulent temples, to notice the vastness that environs you. Whether those structures are helpful or not will depend on your attitude: to see what they help you achieve, rather than to treat them as worthwhile in their own right.

The tokenistic mind is that of the person who speaks with impeccable political correctness and the most class-appropriate accent while actually expressing contempt for all those it considers inferior. It also is the mind of the idolater who misunderstands the function of sanctity at-large. There are no miraculous icons or temples or mountains or motions of the body or whatnot. All are designed to instil in us a sense of a world that extends beyond our self; a world we begin to notice through the openness of the slow-paced life.

Once we are conditioned to the extravagance of wealth, religious symbols are inevitably treated literally because we want them to be of higher production value until their grandeur of application competes for attention with the divine. Practitioners get distracted by the innate qualities of the materials. The shinny marbles of sunny Athens do not symbolise the light of Athena anymore, but usurp her exactly because they draw attention to themselves.

People of all backgrounds have a propensity towards idolatry. By “idolatry” I am referring to the valorisation of the item as such, instead of an appreciation of what it is pointing towards. They value it in its own right and then they want to ascribe to it supernatural powers, so that they can continue to admire it and feed their greed accordingly.

Similarly, people will worship power, manifesting as prestige or political authority, because it strikes fear in their hearts; fear which they mistake for the awe one experiences in realising the oneness of the cosmos.

Poverty is not virtuous per se. The poor man may still be daydreaming of becoming rich. He may be kissing up and punching down and will blithely throw his peers under the bus to get an appreciative look from the lord he both hates and reveres. “The lord” may be a local administrator, a rich businessperson, or a celebrity of some sort. The dynamic is the same. Furthermore, this poor man will take the first opportunity to pull the ladder behind him, in order to reinforce the feeling in his heart that he is not like “them”, like those for whom he harbours only contempt, those who remind him of what he once was.

What is safer is voluntary austerity, else simplicity. It consists in the recognition that God is not flattered by our offerings. One cannot bribe God to gain favours. That is a decadent attitude, for it treats the divine as a business partner. God is nobody’s best man and makes no exceptions.

Simplicity acknowledges that all tokens are meant to perform the function of reminding people to think of the highest and to aspire towards it. When presented with the statue of Apollon, for example, we do not pay attention to the statue but are inspired to appreciate cosmic harmony. We contemplate the muses and the enlightenment one gains from fully opening their conscience to the beauty of art. To this end, the statuette that is mass produced is more appropriate than the oeuvre of the master sculptor.

Temu Apollon is the best Apollon. The cheaper the design, the greater the effect. This is because people will likely not entertain notions of miraculous powers held by the effigy. They will realise that this item is a visual aid and nothing more.

Getting rid of icons in the hope of eliminating idolatry is not a solution, for the same holds true for temples. A basic building to protect the practitioners from the elements is enough. But when the places of worship are admired in their own right they create incentives for competition among the believers and towards others. The temple thus sets the stage for appreciating the materials. Those present will eventually attend the rites with the intent to impress their peers and, by extension, hope to make God notice them, analogous to the poor man’s want of gaining the momentary appreciation of their lord.

Even a modest temple engenders the wrong incentives when it is presented as the house of God, as if it has some kind of exclusivity or special relationship with the divine. There is no such thing. The divine is not containable. It does not need a house, nor can it be limited by walls. It transcends our boundaries. The moment we think that God favours a certain building (or a specific group for that matter), we attribute to it preference and bias and with it the potential for pettiness. Plus, we value the building for something more than what it is.

Religion beyond the temple is one that speaks of the ubiquity of the divine. All it needs is a rock or generic table anywhere to help the priests perform their rituals. Whatever one finds to get on with the task is sufficient. There is no shame therein. The ritual, then, teaches people to let go of their pretences, to show up in plain apparel, and to remember that the offerings they bring is for them to practice the attitude of letting go of the materials that humanity has a propensity to cling on to and to hoard with a burning passion. The ritual thus performs the function of broadening one’s field of view without distractions.

The rite itself was modest. I think this is how rituals ought to be, to direct people’s attention towards the substantive teachings rather than distract them with the glitter of material riches and the inevitable greed those engender.

We found a rock on which we placed all the gifts people brought. I offered samples of the two types of sage I have right in front of my room (salvia officinalis, salvia fruticosa) as well as some lavender. Others made offerings of wine and fruits. All gifts are symbolic, therefore it is appropriate that they are unassuming. Again, gifts that are spectacular misdirect the attention towards themselves, cultivate materialism, and ultimately idolatry.

The priests read out Orphic hymns. Going off of memory, those were addressed to the goddess Hera, the goddess Nike, the goddess Hestia, the goddess Athena, the goddess Mnemosene, the god Apollon, and the god Zeus. Most of the hymns were read in ancient Greek. There was also a modern Greek version. We even had hymns in Italian, to accommodate the Italiots present there. This, for me, is an important detail because it shows that we are interested in the substance, not the surface-level features of the hymns, such as that they supposedly ought to be read out in their original tongue.

Ethnicity is about the cultural framing of the people. It is a state of mind. One’s bloodline is not a predictor for what kind of person they will be. There are plenty of Greeks “by blood” that are not Greeks culturally, for example. And there can be biological non-Greeks who embed in their quotidian life the values of Greekness. This to me is what ethnicity is about, as opposed to nationality: the latter is a legal arrangement, while the former is a worldview that manifests as a way of living. To this end, I am Greek because I live the Greek life.

I had the chance to talk with everyone and introduce myself. In a small religious community like this one you get the sense that you are one among equals. I had in the past tried to join a more established group, which I do not want to name here, where I felt I was not wanted because I did not show up with fancy clothes, shiny shoes, and so on. Those other groups are de facto materialistic and idolatric even though their claims are to the contrary (and I would say the same for Greek polytheists who shifted their focus on the magnificence of temples, the quality of marble statues, and so on, which made them greedy and distracted them from spirituality). In that established group, it is a common secret that if you pay more, you enjoy greater approval. Their rituals are contests where people compete with each other over prestige and social standing. In this small community I am accepted for who I am, not rhetorically through virtue signalling but practically through camaraderie.

This is what I want to get out of such religiosity: the community of equals. I do not need anyone to tell me about the divine or, indeed, anything at all. I am the theologian here, I am the philosopher that will flesh out the relevant corpus of thought. I am the luminous star that emits light. Thinking things through is the easy part for me. And I realise that I am mistaken in even calling myself a “philosopher” because people assume that I am an instructor who presents the ideas of Platon, Aristotelis, and so on, or that I am interested in talking about the various schools of thought. No, I am an original thinker and I only speak for myself without appealing to anybody’s authority. I neither accept nor need such authority. The descriptor I should apply to myself is not important right now because, anyway, people who have not dived deep cannot estimate and thus appreciate how deep those obscure waters are. What matters are the deeds. I always talk through my actions. And I have a lot to do.

Going forward, I will meet again with those people. It is difficult for me to travel around the country, but I will do my best whenever I can. The gist is I am keen on contributing to the common good and I met people who have the same outlook.

Πρώτα απ’όλα, το CNN κάνει αναφορά στην πρόσφατη παραγωγή του Χόλιγουντ για την Οδύσσεια. Σε άρθρο στα Αγγλικά τοποθετήθηκα επί του θέματος (about the absence of Greeks from Hollywood’s Odyssey movie (2026-06-03)). Εν ολίγοις, η γνώμη είναι πως (α) να θυμόμαστε πως η τέχνη έχει χαρακτήρα παραπεμπτικό, ώστε να κατανοούμε αυτό το οποίο συμβολίζεται και να μην μένουμε στα σημεία ως ειδωλολάτρες, (β) να απορρίπτουμε συλλήβδην τι βγάζει το Χόλιγουντ καθώς οι τύποι ανθρώπου που προωθεί είναι κατά κανόνα φαύλοι, και (γ) η απουσία Ελλήνων ηθοποιών από την παραγωγή αυτή είναι επουσιώδης.

Τώρα στο θέμα μου περί θρησκείας και θεολογίας. Η θεολογία είναι κλάδος της φιλοσοφίας. Πρόκειται για την έρευνα περί του τι μπορεί να είναι το θείο. Η θεολογία συμπίπτει με την μεταφυσική καθώς αφορά την αφηρημένη δομή του κάθε τι. Ή, με άλλα λόγια, ψάχνει την σταθερά κατά την οποία ο κόσμος της φυσικής εκφαίνεται.

Συνεπώς, για εμένα «θεολογία» και «μεταφυσική» είναι δύο λέξεις που περιγράφουν την ίδια έρευνα. Ωστόσο, δεν έχω πρόβλημα να τις διατηρήσουμε ως ξεχωριστές έννοιες για τις ανάγκες της έμφασης. Για παράδειγμα, να πούμε πως η θεολογία επικεντρώνεται στο θείο ενώ η μεταφυσική ασχολείται μόνο με την αφηρημένη δομή χωρίς να αναφέρεται στην θεότητα. Βέβαια και μόνο το γράφω αυτό το παράδειγμα εντοπίζω την ματαιότητα του έργου, καθώς οι διαχωριστικές γραμμές αυτού του είδους πάντοτε θα τίθενται κατά το δοκούν.

Η θεολογία/μεταφυσική εντοπίζει το κοινό μεταξύ της πολλαπλότητας όλων των φαινομένων ως το προαπαιτούμενο τους καθώς κι ως το αναπόσπαστο στοιχείο της συγκεκριμένης παρουσίας τους. Στην Ελληνική παράδοση, το πλέον αφηρημένο το ονομάζουμε Λόγο: αυτό που υπερβαίνει και φανερώνεται μέσα από τα πάντα. Δεν είναι ανθρωπόμορφος ο Λόγος, ούτε συγκεκριμένος τρόπος συμπεριφοράς και προτιμήσεων (π.χ. καλόβουλος πατέρας στους ουρανούς). Η ίδια η λέξη «λόγος» σημαίνει τα ακόλουθα, όλα από τα οποία τα χρησιμοποιούμε στην καθομιλουμένη, κι όλα από τα οποία είναι σωστά για την αφηρημένη δομή του κόσμου:

• αιτία (ο λόγος που κάτι έγινε)
• σκέψη (ο άνθρωπος έχει λόγο)
• λαλιά και κατ’επέκταση γλώσσα (ο άνθρωπος έχει λόγο να πει)
• ρυθμός ή σταθερά (ο λόγος της αλλαγής)

Επίσης, υπάρχουν λέξεις όπου ο «λόγος» είναι συνθετικό μέρος, όπως τα ονόματα των διαφόρων επιστημών και ερευνών. Και σε αυτές τις περιπτώσεις η λέξη «λόγος» έχει σημασία που συμβαδίζει με τις πιο πάνω έννοιες.

Η παρουσία είναι τάση. Έχει ρυθμό, δημιουργεί δομή. Προκύπτει δια της δράσης και της αντίδρασης, που αποτελούν κύκλους ανάδρασης οι οποίοι είναι ουσιαστικά το ίδιο με την επικοινωνία κι άρα την γλώσσα.

Ο Λόγος είναι αμετάβλητος. Μπορούμε να γράψουμε πως «πάντα είναι» για χάρη της συζήτησης, αλλά δεν υπονοούμε πως έχει χρονικότητα ή τοπικότητα. Δεν υπάρχει πριν ή μετά του Λόγου, ούτε εντός κι εκτός αυτού. Είναι ολόκληρος και τελικός μες την ενότητα των όλων που φαναιρόνονται.

Ο Ησίοδος, αρχαίος ποιητής, ισχυρίζεται πως στην αρχή του κόσμου υπήρχε το Χάος. Αυστηρά ομιλούντες, χάος αναφέρεται στην απουσία της δομής ή της τάξης (κι άρα στα μαθηματικά η «θεωρία του χάους» δεν είναι το ίδιο καθώς μελετά κάτι που εντοπίζεται, άρα έχει τάση, κι εξ ου προκύπτει η θεωρία ως μελέτη του αναγνωρίσιμου στοιχείου). Το αρχέγονο Χάος είναι το είδος της τσαπατσούλικης πρότασης που ενίοτε θέτουν οι ποιητές και που οι φιλόσοφοι οφείλουν να διορθώσουν. Εάν κάτι προκύπτει από υποτιθέμενο Χάος, τότε αυτό έχει την δυνατότητα της δράσης και της αντίδρασης, κι άρα δεν στερείται τάσης και δομής.

Ακόμα και η περιγραφή του κάτι ως «απόλυτη έλλειψη δομής», που θα ήταν το Χάος, κατ’ανάγκη απαιτεί την ύπαρξη μοτίβου, το οποίο αναγνωρίζεται ως τέτοιο. Το να αναγνωρίσεις είναι το να εντοπίσεις, το να εντοπίσεις είναι το να ακολουθήσεις την τάση, το να ακολουθήσεις την τάση, είναι με λίγα λόγια το να βιώσεις μιαν έκφανση του Λόγου. Το αρχέγονο Χάος ίσως είναι χρήσιμο μόνο ως σχήμα μεταφορικό. Αλλά ακόμα κι έτσι μπορούμε να σκεφτούμε πιο αξιόλογες παραβολές (κι εδώ, παρεμπιπτόντως, ο Ησίοδος κάνει μεγάλη ζημιά στην παράδοση μας καθώς εκφυλίζει τους θεούς με πορνογραφικό τρόπο).

Που με φέρνει στο θέμα της τέχνης και της μυθολογίας. Η θεολογία είναι για λίγα άτομα. Όχι γιατί προσπαθούμε να αποκλείσουμε ανθρώπους, αλλά γιατί αυτή είναι η φύση των σχετικών ζητημάτων. Πολλοί λίγοι έχουν την υπομονή να ακολουθήσουν ως το τέλος, καθώς επίσης και την συγκέντρωση που απαιτείται για να σκεφτεί κανείς σε βάθος. Η προσεκτική σκέψη είναι δυνατότητα που αναπτύσσεται με πολυετή αφοσίωση και συνέπεια.

Οι θεοί των Ελλήνων καθώς κι όλη η μυθολογία μας είναι ανθρώπινα έργα, ονοματοδοσίες και καλλιτεχνικές αναπαραστάσεις αρχετύπων, παράγωγα της Ελληνικής παράδοσης που εμπεδώνει Ελληνικές αξίες και που αποτυπώνει την Ελληνική αισθητική. Τους παρουσιάζουμε τους θεούς όπως εμείς κρίνουμε, τους δίνουμε ονόματα και ιδιότητες, και λέμε ιστορίες που σκοπό έχουν να διδάξουν εμάς τους ανθρώπους κάτι χρήσιμο και πρακτικό. Ωστόσο τα φαινόμενα πέραν πολιτιστικής και καλλιτεχνικής έκφρασης είναι αντικειμενικές αλήθειες. Παράδειγμα, υπάρχει η αρμονία στον κόσμο, είτε την ονομάσουμε Απόλλων είτε όχι.

Μιλούμε για πολλούς θεούς διότι ξέρουμε πως το ένα και τα πολλά έχουν ως διαφορά τους την έμφαση, όχι την ουσία, όπως η μια ακτίδα φωτός διαθλάται σε πολλά χρώματα όπου πλέον και το ένα και τα πολλά είναι περιγραφές του κοινού. Η πολλαπλότητα των θεών είναι μέθοδος με μνημονική και διδακτική αξία: ο πολυθεϊσμός είναι πρακτικό εργαλείο. Δια αυτού κατανοούμε φαινόμενα, δίνοντας τους σχήματα και εικόνες που μπορεί να τις θυμάται ο κάθε άνθρωπος για όλη του την ζωή (ενώ, ας πούμε, ξεχνάμε τι ακριβώς ήταν τα νούμερα που μόλις διαβάσαμε σε έκθεση του υπουργείου για την οικονομία—αυτά δεν έχουν μνημονική αξία).

Για παράδειγμα, μιλούμε για την Αθηνά ως την θεά της σοφίας που είναι και σοφή αλλά και αξιόλογη πολεμίστρια. Η παράσταση αυτή κινεί την φαντασία και την περιέργεια, κάνοντας τους ανθρώπους να δώσουν προσοχή στο τι λέμε. Το κοινό θέλει να μάθει γιατί σχετίζουμε την σοφία με (α) μια γυναίκα και (β) μια πολεμίστρια. Γιατί να μην έχουμε κάποιον άνδρα ασκητή που διαλογίζεται μόνος του στα βουνά; Ή κάποιον ειρηνιστή βιβλιοθηκάριο και γραμματιζούμενο; Κι αυτοί οι άνθρωποι έχουν τον ρόλο τους, ωστόσο η Ελληνική συνείδηση έκρινε φρόνιμο να δώσει προτεραιότητα σε κάποια από τα ακόλουθα, θεωρώντας τα άκρως σημαντικά για την κοινωνική συνοχή και κοινωνική αναπαραγωγή των Ελλήνων:

• Οι γυναίκες δεν είναι αδύναμες, όπως ας πούμε υπονοεί η συζήτηση περί ασθενούς φύλου. Μάλιστα ο διαχωρισμός των 12 Ολυμπίων θεών σε 6 άνδρες και 6 γυναίκες συμβολίζει την ισότητα των φύλων δια των εγγενών διαφορών τους.

• Η ισχύς δεν είναι μόνο θέμα της ρώμης. Η σωστή προσέγγιση έχει περισσότερη ορμή από την γροθιά. Έτσι η Αθηνά δείχνει την δύναμη της και προκαλεί δέος δια της τέλειας της ισορροπίας ως νους ατάραχος.

• Η σοφία αφορά την κρίση και τον έλεγχο. Ακόμα κι αν δεσμεύεσαι σε κανόνες που επιτρέπουν την ειρηνική συμβίωση ξέρεις πως σε ορισμένες περιπτώσεις πρέπει να είσαι έτοιμος για βία. Κι εδώ το «σε ορισμένες περιπτώσεις» μας δείχνει την εφαρμογή της κριτικής σκέψης.

• Ο οπλίτης που φέρει ασπίδα πολεμά σε σχήμα φάλαγγας στις πρώτες γραμμή σύγκρουσης. Η Αθηνά λοιπόν δείχνει το θάρρος που απαιτείται για να βγει κανείς στο προσκήνιο, που αυτό άλλωστε είναι και η σημασία της παρρησίας (αρετή που είναι απαραίτητη για τον φιλόσοφο—και κάτι που κάνω τώρα δημοσιεύοντας αυτές τις σκέψεις που δυνάμει κοστίζουν για ευνόητους λόγους). Στην φάλαγγα η Αθηνά στέκεται μαζί με τους συναγωνιστές της, κάτι που τονίζει την σημασία του συνόλου και δείχνει πως το άτομο είναι πάντοτε μέρος της ομάδας ή κοινωνίας που το περιβάλλει. Η Αθηνά δεν ασχολείται μονάχα με το εγώ της, όπως κάνει η σύγχρονη φεμινίστρια, καθώς βλέπει την μεγάλη εικόνα κι έτσι εντοπίζει το κοινό καλό.

Μπορούμε να ερμηνεύσουμε τον συμβολισμό όλων των θεών με αυτό τον τρόπο, αλλά δεν θα το αναπτύξω περαιτέρω σε αυτό το άρθρο.

Ο συμβολισμός, λοιπόν, έχει σκοπό να χαράξει στην μακροπρόθεσμη μνήμη τα διδάγματα που εμείς θεωρούμε χρήσιμα για την κοινωνία μας. Τα διδάγματα αυτά τα προσδένουμε στο νοητό πρόσωπο που εμείς εκφράζουμε ως Αθηνά (και τους άλλους θεούς), για να εμπνεύσουμε τον άνθρωπο να δει κάτι το θαυμαστό και μεγαλοπρεπές. Με απλά λόγια, οι θεοί μας είναι τύποι αξιόλογοι, αξιοθαύμαστοι, κι ωραίοι, γιατί αυτό είναι που κινεί τους ανθρώπους.

Οι άνθρωποι κινούνται από την αριστεία και την υπέρβαση. Τις προάλλες όλος ο πλανήτης θαύμαζε τα επιτεύγματα των κορυφαίων ποδοσφαιριστών που έπαιζαν για τις εθνικές τους ομάδες. Ακόμα και στις κατ’όνομα μονοθεϊστικές χώρες υπάρχει ανεξάντλητη ζήτηση για ιστορίες ηρωισμού και ανδραγαθίας, είτε με πραγματικούς είτε με φανταστικούς χαρακτήρες. Πήγαινε όπου θες και θα βρεις εκατομμύρια θαυμαστές του Λιονέλ Μέσι και του Κριστιάνο Ρονάλντο, για παράδειγμα.

Σκέψου πόσα νέα παιδιά έχουν πλέον εμπνευστεί από τους νεότερους αστέρες, όπως τον Κίλιαν Εμπαπέ και τον Λαμίν Γιαμάλ, και πως κάποια από αυτά τα παιδιά θα αφοσιωθούν στην αριστεία δια του αθλητισμού. Ακόμα κι εκείνοι που δεν θα αθληθούν μακροπρόθεσμα θα αναγνωρίσουν την αξία του να κάνεις κάτι το θαυμαστό, κάτι που είναι δύσκολο να επιτευχθεί.

Κι ακόμα κι αυτοί που δεν θα ακολουθήσουν τα βήματα των ινδαλμάτων τους πάλι θα βρουν στοιχεία ηρωισμού που έχουν άμεση εφαρμογή στην καθημερινότητα τους. Λίγοι έχουν, για παράδειγμα, την πειθαρχία και τον αυτοέλεγχο του πρωταθλητή, αλλά όλοι ξέρουν πως έστω και λίγη πειθαρχία είναι ωφέλιμη.

Επίσης, η προσέγγιση του πολυθεϊσμού βοηθά στο να αναγνωρίσουμε και να αποδεχτούμε εκ προοιμίου την διαφορετικότητα μεταξύ των ανθρώπων. Κάποιοι είναι προικισμένοι με συγκεκριμένα ταλέντα κι άλλοι με άλλα προτερήματα. Δεν υπάρχει καλύτερος ή χειρότερος θεός, κατά τον ίδιο τρόπο που δεν υπάρχει άνθρωπος που δεν έχει κάτι να προσφέρει. Όλοι έχουν τον λόγο τους, ακόμα κι αν κάποιες φορές δεν μπορούμε να δούμε ακριβώς ποιος είναι αυτός. Κάποιος μπορεί να είναι πιο κοντά στην Αθηνά ενώ άλλος παραπάνω κινείται σε μήκος κύματος του Διονύσου. Στην πράξη όλοι έχουμε λίγο από τον κάθε θεό. Μαζί σχηματίζουμε σύνολο από το οποίο όλοι μπορούμε να επωφεληθούμε.

Οι φιλόσοφοι σκέφτονται αφηρημένα, αλλά οι παραβολές με μνημονική αξία είναι χρήσιμες για όλους, ειδικά αυτούς που δεν φιλοσοφούν.

Που με οδηγεί στην συζήτηση περί θρησκείας. Σε αντίθεση με την θεολογία, η θρησκεία είναι για όλους. Οι διδασκαλίες της πρέπει να είναι κατανοητές κι εφαρμόσιμες από τον κάθε άνθρωπο. Όλοι πρέπει να νιώθουν πως συμμετέχουν. Οι τελετές πρέπει να ενισχύουν το αίσθημα της συλλογικότητας και την ιδέα τις κοινότητας μεταξύ των θρησκευτών. Να το γράψω αλλιώς: θρησκεία είναι η κοινότητα με σαφές πλαίσιο για κάθε πτυχή της ζωής.

Η θρησκεία χρειάζεται την τέχνη και την μυθολογία διότι αυτά είναι αναγκαία για την ψυχαγωγία, κυριολεκτικά την διδασκαλία της ψυχής. Αναγνωρίζουμε, λοιπόν, πως δια της δημιουργικότητας του ο άνθρωπος αναπτύσσει τις δυνατότητες του και διευρύνει την συνείδηση του γιατί δεν αναλώνεται μόνο στα ζητήματα της καθημερινότητας. Όμως, όπως με κάθε πράξη, έτσι και η ψυχαγωγία χρειάζεται μέτρο ώστε να είναι παραγωγική. Συνεπώς, δεν χρησιμοποιούμε την ψυχαγωγία ως άδεια για τεμπελιά.

Ωστόσο, η θρησκεία δεν δεσμεύεται από τον εκάστοτε καλλιτέχνη. Επειδή το άρθρο του CNN κάνει αναφορά στην Οδύσσεια, να υπογραμμίσω πως ο Όμηρος δεν είναι θρησκεία. Χρησιμοποιεί τους θεούς ως χαρακτήρες για τις ανάγκες του έργου. Το σύγχρονο αντίστοιχό είναι κάποιος υπερήρωας, ή σούπερ σάγιαν, και τα σχετικά. Οι δημιουργοί μπορούν να ερμηνεύουν τους θεούς, αλλά πρέπει να έχουν επίγνωση της δύναμης τους κι άρα της ευθύνης τους έναντι των υπολοίπων: έχουν την δυνατότητα της σύνθεσης συμβόλων, που μένουν χαραγμένα στην συνείδηση για αιώνες.

Η θρησκεία πρέπει να διατηρεί αυτοτελή κλήση προς την παράδοση κι άρα την συντήρηση της. Έτσι μπορεί να σταθεί ως φρούριο που προστατεύει τα μέλη της κοινότητας από απερίσκεπτα ιδεολογήματα ή μόδες που πάνε κι έρχονται.

Η θρησκεία δεν μπορεί να είναι ομαδούλα από χίπηδες. Πρέπει να έχει διαχρονικό χαρακτήρα. Αποσκοπεί στην συνέχεια μεταξύ των γενεών και μένει σταθερή στις μεταπτώσεις και τις σχετικές ακρότητες των διαφόρων ιδεολογιών που είναι αποκυήματα της κάθε εποχής. Αυτό σημαίνει πως στον πυρήνα της θρησκείας βρίσκεται η ξεκάθαρη αντίληψη για την οικογένεια (που στην ελληνική παράδοση είναι η διευρυμένη οικογένεια) καθώς και για την κοινωνική αναπαραγωγή γενικά. «Κοινωνική αναπαραγωγή» αναφέρεται στην βιολογική διαιώνιση (δηλαδή παιδιά) συν την αναδημιουργία του όλου πλαισίου αξιών και νομισμάτων της εκάστοτε κοινωνίας. Όλοι είναι καλοδεχούμενοι, γιατί ο κάθε άνθρωπος έχει την σημασία του, ωστόσο όλοι αναγνωρίζουν πως ο κεντρικός στόχος και η τελική αξία της κοινότητας ευθυγραμμίζονται με την ανάγκη για επιβίωση και αλληλεγγύη μεταξύ των γενεών.

Έτσι λοιπόν, η θρησκεία καθίσταται εθνική υπόθεση (όχι να συγχύζεται με εθνικισμό, ολοκληρωτισμό, και λοιπές ιδεολογίες του σύγχρονου κρατισμού). Η εθνότητα περιέχει τον πολιτισμό και πολιτιστικές ιδιαιτερότητες του κάθε λαού. Είναι το συνεκτικό στοιχείο των ανθρώπων που τους δίνει χαρακτήρα αναλλοίωτο ανά τους αιώνες. Θρησκεία που δεν δέχεται την εθνότητα ως αναπόσπαστο κομμάτι της πάντοτε θα καταλήγει στον πνευματικό αχταρμά και τον πολιτικό ιμπεριαλισμό, που με τη σειρά του θα γεννά τον υλισμό της επιπολαιότητας, τον νεοπλουτισμό, κι άρα την απληστία (κι εδώ να σημειώσω πως ακόμα και θρησκείες που αποσκοπούν στην καθολική ισχύ τους έχουν στην πράξη ξεκάθαρα εθνικά χαρακτηριστικά, όπως η Ελληνορθοδοξία του Χριστιανισμού που δεν μπερδεύει τους Έλληνες με τους Ρώσους για παράδειγμα).

Πνευματισμοί του τύπου «όλοι οι αριθμοί κερδίζουν» δεν μπορούν να σταθούν μακροπρόθεσμα. Βλέπουν την εθνότητα και κατά συνέπεια τις οργανικά αναδυόμενες ιεραρχίες αυτής ως εμπόδιο. Τέτοιοι πνευματισμοί επικεντρώνονται στην βραχυπρόθεσμη καλοπέραση του ατόμου. Δεν μεριμνούν για τις αμετάβλητες διαπροσωπικές σχέσεις και δομές που (α) επιτρέπουν την συνέχεια μεταξύ των γενεών και (β) κρατούν τους ανεύθυνους ανθρώπους μακρυά από αντικείμενα ή ουσίες που οι ίδιοι δεν έχουν την ωριμότητά να διαχειριστούν. Ο αποπλαισιωμένος ατομικισμός είναι η ιδιοτροπία που παριστάνει την θρησκευτικότητα. Εξελίσσεται σε ανεξέλεγκτη τάση για ευχαρίστηση ενώ αγνοεί την ανάλογη ευθύνη που φέρει το άτομο για τις πράξεις του. Συνεπώς, λέω πως, όχι η «σύγχρονη χαρά» (modern happiness) δεν είναι σκοπός όπως υπονοεί ο τίτλος του άρθρου του CNN.

Δεν είμαι θρήσκος για την ώρα διότι δεν ανήκω ακόμα σε σχετική κοινότητα με τα προαναφερόμενα χαρακτηριστικά. Ξέρω από προσωπική εμπειρία καθώς και μελέτη πως ο πολυθεϊσμός ποτέ δεν χάθηκε από την γη των Ελλήνων, ενίοτε ζωντανός σε κλειστούς κι άλλοτε μέσα από οικογενειακές παραδόσεις. Ξέρω βέβαια πως υπάρχουν πολλές ομάδες πλέον που δρουν δημόσια και σκοπεύω να προσεγγίσω μια από αυτές όταν οι συνθήκες θα είναι κατάλληλες. Δεν θα βρω την ομάδα αυτή για να συζητήσω θεολογία, αν κι αυτή είναι μια ενδιαφέρουσα παράπλευρη δραστηριότητα. Θα πάω με στόχο να δημιουργήσω εθνική κοινότητα.

Θα μπορούσα θεωρητικά να γίνω Χριστιανός, αλλά η θρησκεία αυτή δεν είναι επαρκώς εθνική καθώς διατηρεί τις οικουμενικές φιλοδοξίες της καθώς και τις Ιουδαϊκές της βάσεις. Η εθνότητα είναι ο κεντρικός άξονας. Δεν θέλω οι Κινέζοι, οι Γερμανοί, ή οι Άραβες, να γίνουν Έλληνες, αλλά ούτε κι οι Έλληνες να γίνουν κάτι άλλο. Κάθε έθνος έχει τις ιδιαιτερότητες του. Ποικιλομορφία δια της τοπικότητας είναι ένα από τα χαρακτηριστικά του ανθρώπινου είδους. Άνθρωπος από άλλο πολιτισμικό γίγνεσθαι μπορεί εν δυνάμει να ενταχθεί στον Ελληνισμό νοουμένου πως ακολουθεί τα Ελληνικά ήθη και έθιμα και έχει στενές προσωπικές σχέσεις με μέλη της εθνικής κοινότητας.

Μια εθνική θρησκεία δεν πασχίζει να πείσει κανέναν για την ορθότητα των προτάσεων της. Δεν επιτελεί αποστολικό έργο ούτε θα επιβραβεύσει αυτόν που θέλει να αλλάξει πίστη. Το έθνος ως βιολογική και πολιτισμική πραγματικότητα αναπτύσσεται οργανικά.

Έχω θεολογία, ωστόσο αφηρημένες σκέψεις χωρίς θρησκεία δεν οδηγούν πουθενά. Οι στοχαστές που δεν σκέφτονται πρακτικά θα καταλήξουν να ασχολούνται με επιμέρους θέματα ενώ χάνουν την ουσία της θρησκευτικότητας, που είναι η εθνικώς προσδιορισμένη κοινότητα στο βάθος του χρόνου. Εάν δεν έχεις κοινότητα ή αν η υποτυπώδης κοινότητα που έχεις δεν φαίνεται πως θα ζήσει χωρίς εσένα, τότε δεν έχεις θρησκεία.

Στην περίπτωση μου, η εθνότητα μου είναι Ελληνική διότι μεγάλωσα σε Ελληνικό χώρο και έτυχα της Ελληνικής παιδείας/παράδοσης. Το ότι είμαι Έλληνας δεν σημαίνει πως προσδιορίζομαι έναντι άλλων ως, ας πούμε, ανώτερος άνθρωπος. Όχι, η εθνική συνείδηση δεν είναι το ίδιο με την ξενοφοβία. Το ζην Ελληνικώς αφορά τον τρόπο που προσεγγίζουμε τον κόσμο και περιλαμβάνει μεταξύ άλλων και το ιδανικό της Ξενίας, που συμβολίζεται δια του Ξένιου Ζευς (όπως π.χ. στην Ομήρου Οδύσσεια). Εκτιμώ την εθνότητα ως μέσο που συσπειρώνει τους ανθρώπους. Μεταξύ των ομοεθνών υπάρχει η φυσική αλληλεγγύη και το αίσθημα της συλλογικότητας ως συμμετοχή στο κοινό πολιτισμικό αγαθό. Είδαμε πρόσφατα πως εκατομμύρια Ισπανών ένωσαν τις φωνές τους για να γιορτάσουν το συλλογικό τους επίτευγμα στο Παγκόσμιο Κύπελλο ποδοσφαίρου. Είναι η εθνότητα που επιτρέπει αυτόν τον αυθόρμητο κοινοτισμό. Καθήκον μας εμάς είναι να καλλιεργήσουμε το εθνικό αίσθημα ώστε διαρκώς να έχουμε κοινοτισμό στην πράξη.

Προσωπικά, αναγνωρίζω πως ως φιλόσοφος που διέπεται από πειθαρχία έχω τα ταλέντα που απαιτούνται για να εξυπηρετήσω με αποτελεσματικότητα έναν υψηλότερο σκοπό. Τα ταλέντα αυτά δεν είναι για δική μου ιδιωτική χρήση. Δεν είναι για τον πλουτισμό μου ούτε για την τόνωση του εγώ μου. Είμαι το μέσον δια του οποίου αναμεταδίδεται ένα διαχρονικό μήνυμα. Μέσα από τις καθημερινές μου πράξεις αποδέχομαι την ευθύνη που μου αναλογεί: να μιλώ με παρρησία· να εμπνέω τους ανθρώπους να στρέφονται προς τα υψηλά· να σταθώ ως αρωγός και συνοδοιπόρος έναντι όλων, ώστε να τους οδηγήσω εκεί που πρέπει να πάνε, κάποτε δια της παρότρυνσης και κάποτε με αυστηρές παρατηρήσεις.

These substitutions are meant to be as quick as possible and, as such, differ from the standard query-replace (which I still use when necessary). The provided commands prompt for substitute text and perform the substitution outright, without moving the point. The target is the symbol/word at point or the text corresponding to the currently marked region. All matches in the given scope are highlighted by default.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): substitute
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/substitute
• Git repositories:
  • GitHub: https://github.com/protesilaos/substitute
  • GitLab: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/substitute
• Video demo: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2023-01-16-emacs-substitute-package-demo/
• Backronym: Substitutions Uniformly Beget Standardisation for Text Invariably Transfigured Unto This Entry.

Below are the release notes.

Version 0.6.0 on 2026-07-24

This version brings quality-of-life improvements to an already stable package. The user-facing changes are as follows:

1. When performing a substitution, the minibuffer prompt now reports how many matches there are in the given scope. For example, if I call substitute-target-in-defun, I get something like this prompt:

   "Substitute `this-symbol' (3 times) in the current DEFUN with:"
   

2. substitute-target-in-line is a new command that behaves like all the others within the boundaries of the current line.

3. The face used at the prompt to highlight the target of the given substitution is now defined as substitute-prompt-target-highlight. Users or theme developers can update as needed, though the default value should work in virtually every setup.

4. Aliases of certain commands are also autoloaded. Concretely, this means that Emacs is aware of them even before substitute.el is loaded, so they can be bound to keys or called with M-x at any time. Thanks to Morgan Willcock for the patch. Morgan has assigned copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

5. The command substitute-target-in-page should correctly target the current page. Thanks to Morgan Willcock for the patch.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): pulsar
• Official manual: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/pulsar
• Change log: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/pulsar-changelog
• Git repositories:
  • GitHub: https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar
  • GitLab: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/pulsar
• Backronym: Pulsar Unquestionably Luminates, Strictly Absent the Radiation.

Below are the release notes.

Version 1.4.0 on 2026-07-22

This version fixes a few bugs and brings quality-of-life improvements to an already stable package.

Correctly pulse the full line even in M-x shell and related

In certain buffers, we cannot use regular motions to reach a portion of text. This is done by text properties that make the propertized text inaccessible. One use-case is to prevent the user from deleting the shell prompt in M-x shell.

Pulsar is now designed to handle inhibit-field-text-motion correctly so that it works as intended in all relevant cases.

Thanks to Jake Miles for telling me that the shell buffer was not pulsing, which made me investigate the underlying problem. This was done in issue 40: https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/issues/40.

The pulsing behaviour of Evil commands is more refined

In short:

• editing commands should pulse the region, not the entire line;
• evil-delete-char should not produce a pulse;
• evil-delete-marks is not an editing command, as it removes invisible marks from the buffer.

Thanks to Steven Allen from modifying the relevant variables in pull request 39: https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/pull/39. Steven has assigned copyright to the Free Software Foundation.

Also thanks to Javier Pacheco for adding more Evil-related commands to the list, in pull requests 37 and 38:

• https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/pull/37
• https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/pull/38

The pulsar-face is no longer hardcoded in one case

It is always meant to be a variable, specifically a user option, meaning that we want to use its value as defined by the user.

Thanks to irisjae for reporting the bug in issue 36: https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/issues/36.

Pulsing is done correctly on the TTY and other frames

The technicalities are covered in issue 33: https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/issues/33. Thanks to the participation of Sébastien Delafond who provided feedback about their Emacs environment and helped me test the snippets I had provided.

In a TTY we cannot use what we normally do, so I arrange for a standard colour to be used instead. My rationale for the choice of colour is this:

• we are in an environment which does not guarantee accurate colour reproduction;
• it is almost a given that the frame supports at least 8 colours;
• of those 8 colours we have black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white;
• excluding black and white, the colour that contrasts best against both black and white is red;
• picking red means we do not need to know the background-mode of the frame, which saves us the extra computations.

The contrast table for the six colours, using Org, where Λ is an alias for modus-themes-contrast:

|         | #000000 | #ffffff |
|---------+---------+---------|
| #ff0000 |    5.25 |    4.00 |
| #00ff00 |   15.30 |    1.37 |
| #0000ff |    2.44 |    8.59 |
| #ffff00 |   19.56 |    1.07 |
| #ff00ff |    6.70 |    3.14 |
| #00ffff |   16.75 |    1.25 |
#+TBLFM: $2='(Λ $1 @1$2);%.2f :: $3='(Λ $1 @1$3);%.2f

Pulsing is consistent even when the Emacs daemon is involved

In short, things should work as intended in all sorts of configurations.

Thanks to Koloszár Gergely, Mehrad Mahmoudian, and Nikolaos Bezirgiannis for reporting that the Emacs daemon would produce static highlights instead of pulsing them in and out of effect. This was done in issue 32: https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/issues/32.

In this context, also thanks to Gautier Ponsinet for removing an unnecessary let binding. This was sent to me as a patch via email.

The ace-window command is added to the default value of pulsar-pulse-functions

This means that it will produce a pulse effect after it is invoked.

This Sunday I will join a group of Greek polytheists (ethnic Greek religion) from Cyprus in a rite related to Dioskouri at a temple overlooking the sea.

My immediate plan is to not record anything from the event, out of respect for other people’s privacy. Though I might take a selfie.

My long-term objective is to form a tightly knit community or otherwise join and contribute to an existing one.

We are what we do, not what we claim.

First off, they make a reference to the latest film about the Odyssey. I have expounded on my opinion about the absence of Greeks from Hollywood’s Odyssey movie (2026-06-03). The gist is to (i) understand art as symbolic so that you are not an idolater in practice, (ii) ignore Hollywood because the kinds of people it promotes are typically corrupt, and (iii) the absence or presence of Greeks is a distraction.

Now to the topic of religion and theology. Theology is a branch of philosophy. It is what we do to understand what might be the divine. Theology necessarily overlaps with metaphysics, for it pertains to the abstract structure of all that is. Or, to put it differently, it wants to understand what is the pattern or reason by which the world of physics unfolds.

To me, “theology” and “metaphysics” are two words for the same study, though I am content with keeping them conceptually distinct in the interest of communicating different types of emphasis. For example, theology focuses on god while metaphysics is concerned with abstract structure without mentioning god. Though even writing this out makes me notice the arbitrariness of the distinction, but whatever.

What theology/metaphysics does is discern the common in the multitude of all phenomena as that which is both a precondition for them as well as the irreducible factor in their manifestation. In the Greek tradition, god is Logos (Λόγος): that which transcends and permeates all. It is neither human-like, nor agentic, nor disposed a certain way (e.g. as benevolent sky father). Logos literally means all of the following, which we commonly employ in everyday Greek parlance:

• reason (the cause of something);
• reason (as in reasonableness);
• speech (and by extension language);
• ratio (and by extension pattern or structure).

Plus there are other common uses, such as the suffix “-logy” that we find in the English name of various fields of study. Those applications are consistent with the aforementioned.

Presence has pattern. It has ratio, it forms structure. It unfolds through cause and effect in what effectively is a feedback loop that is indistinguishable from communication and thus language.

Logos is constant. It is. We may say “it always is” for effect, though we do not imply temporality or locality: there is no before or after it, nor inside and outside of it. It is total and complete in its oneness.

Hesiod, an ancient poet, claims that in the beginning there was Chaos. Strictly speaking, chaos refers to the absence of structure (so “chaos theory” in mathematics is not the same thing because it still is about pattern, for it discerns something to be studied and reasoned about, hence theory). A primordial Chaos is the kind of careless claim that philosophers must remind poets not to mention in passing. If something comes from a putative patternlessness, then that has had in it the capacity for cause and effect, else the capacity for pattern and structure, and, therefore, it was never patternlessness per se.

To even describe something as “patternless” necessarily requires that it exists as patternless, in the state of patternlessness, and is identifiable as such. To identify is to discern, to discern is to trace pattern, to trace pattern is, in short, to recognise an instantiation of Logos. Primordial Chaos is useful only in a loose metaphorical sense. But even then we can think of more apt metaphors (and, by the way, Hesiod does a terrible job with some of his metaphors that debase the gods in what effectively is ancient pornography).

Which brings me to the topic of art and mythology. Theology is for few people. Not because we are elitist snobs, but due to the nature of the topics involved. Few have the patience to follow along, let alone meditate in isolation and build up the requisite capacity.

The Greek gods and all of mythology are human constructs, products of Greek culture that reflect Greek values, all realised as Greek art. We imagine them, depict them in certain ways, and tell stories that are meant to teach something valuable to people.

We speak of many gods with the understanding that one and the many are differences of focus or emphasis, not category, like the one ray of light that is understood as many colours once it is seen through a prism. The multitude of gods is a useful didactic and mnemonic device: polytheism is a practical tool. We can capture phenomena in the world and describe them in memorable ways.

For example, we can speak of Athena as the goddess of wisdom who is at once wise and a formidable warrior. This representation triggers the imagination and has people paying attention. The audience wants to know why do we associate wisdom with (i) a woman and (ii) a warrior. Why not have some male monk meditating in the mountains? Or some pacifist librarian and scholar? Those have their purpose as well, though we do it this way to communicate the following non-exhaustive list of teachings, which we consider more important for social reproduction:

• Females are not weak (and actually there are no weak goddesses in the 6 males and 6 females arrangement of the Olympians which represents the equality of the sexes through their innate differences).

• Power is not limited to raw physical prowess. The right attitude is mightier than the fist. As such, Athena’s power consists in her perfect poise.

• Wisdom is about judgement and control. Even when you are committed to non-violence, you understand that sometimes you have to fight. “Sometimes” is where judicious reasonableness comes in.

• As a hoplite (infantry) bearing a shield and wielding a short-ranged weapon, Athena fights from the front lines in a phalanx formation. She thus is fearless to come forth (we have the virtue of parrhesia, after all, which is essential for philosophy—and I am doing now by publishing this otherwise unconventional piece) and will stand shoulder to shoulder with her peers, so she accepts the role of the one as part of the many. She is not self-obsessed and thus sees the bigger picture, which is what wisdom demands.

We can interpret all the gods in this way, but I will not belabour the point.

The symbolism, then, is about reinforcing one’s memory of the teachings by fastening them upon the construct of an awesome figure who has an interesting background and looks cool in what they do. Yes, “cool” and “awesome” to get the people going.

People are inspired by excellence and grandeur. Just the other day the world was admiring the accomplishments of elite footballers playing for their national teams. Even in nominally monotheistic countries there is endless demand for stories of heroes who do something noteworthy, be they actual people or fictional characters. Go anywhere you want and you will find millions of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo fans, for instance.

Just think of how many kids have been inspired by the likes of newer starts, like Kylian Mbappe and Lamine Yamal, to commit to excellence through the medium of sport. They do it because those footballers are doing something admirable; something incredibly hard to achieve.

And even those who do not emulate their heroes one-to-one still find elements of heroism that are applicable to their own life. Not everyone has the unflinching commitment of an athlete, for example, though everybody acknowledges that even a little bit of restraint and discipline does them good.

Furthermore, the tool of polytheism is a way of recognising the diversity among humans: how some are endowed with certain talents while others have different ones. There is no better or worse god, just as there is not one set of talents that is beneficial for society: everybody counts. One person will feel closer to Athena, for example, and another will relate more to Dionysos. In actuality, every person has a little bit of every archetype. Together we form the collective from which we all can benefit.

Philosophers can talk in abstract terms, but metaphors and such mnemonics are helpful to everyone, especially those who are not philosophising.

Which brings me to the problématique of what is religion. Unlike theology, religion is for everyone. Its precepts must be practical so that every member of society can apply them. Its lessons need to be clear for each individual to feel involved. And its rites must reinforce the sense of togetherness among the practitioners. To put it succinctly, religion is a community equipped with a comphrehensive framework for every facet of life.

Religion benefits from art and mythology because those are essential to human’s need for recreational activities. In Greek, we describe “recreational activities” with a far more significant term: psychagogia (ψυχαγωγία), which literally means “soul-teaching”. As such, we see in recreational activities the potential of growing as a person and of expanding one’s conscience beyond the day-to-day trivia. Like with every teaching though, it cannot be all about studying: one must also be practical, do some work, and generally proceed through action. So psychagogia is not a license for laziness.

Religion, however, is not beholden to the artist in particular. Since the CNN article mentions the Odyssey, I must stress that Homer is not religion. He uses the gods as characters in his stories. The modern equivalent would be some kind of superhero, saiyan, and the like. Artists can interpret the gods, though they have to be aware that they hold a special power for which they are responsible and accountable: the power of formulating symbols.

As such, religion must have a self-contained traditionalism, which strengthens the cohesion of its community over the aeons by providing a bulwark against ill thought ideologies or trends of artistic expression that come and go with the times.

Religion, then, is not a cult for hipsters. It has to stay in place for the long-term. It is intergenerational in outlook and robust to the vicissitudes of fashion. This means that at its core it has to have a clear understanding of the family (which is the extended family in the Greek tradition) and of social reproduction more broadly. “Social reproduction” refers to biological continuity (i.e. children) plus the regeneration of the cultural framing of the given society. Everybody is welcome, yes, as all people matter, though the core objective and ultimate value cannot deviate from the imperative of survival through solidarity between generations.

In this sense, religion is ethnic (not to be confused with nationalist, totalitarian, etc.): it encompasses the culture of a specific people and it functions as the mechanism that keeps those people around throughout the centuries. Religion that does not recognise ethnicity will always degenerate into imperialism, which will then engender materialism and inevitably greed (and even the dominant religions of our planet which claim to be ecumenical still have inescapable ethnic particularities, like Greek Orthodox Christianity which in practice sets the Greeks apart from, say, the Russians as well as all other Christians).

The wishy-washy, all numbers win, kind of spiritual aspiration cannot survive long-term since it treats ethnicity, and by extension organic hierarchy, as an impediment. It does so because it focuses on the short-term wellness of the individual where there are no concerns for the rigid structures that (i) enable intergenerational continuity and (ii) keep irresponsible fellows away from items they are not prepared to handle. This frameless individualism is an expression of caprice masquerading as religiosity. It is unbridled want with the attendant unaccountability. So, no, “modern happiness”, as the CNN piece suggests in its title, is not enough.

I am not religious because I do not belong to a community of the aforementioned kind (not yet, anyway, though I am the kind of person that makes things happen—and I am persistent). I know from personal experience that polytheism has always persisted in Greece, sometimes in closed circles and others through family heritage. I also am aware that there are many groups that are public all over the Greek world. I might, in fact, join one such group in my part of the world, if the conditions are right. I will not do it to discuss theology, though that might be an interesting activity on the side. I will do it to contribute to a community.

I could become a Christian but it is not sufficiently ethnic and, at core, remains ecumenical in its pursuits. Ethnicity is key. I do not want the Chinese, the Germans, the Arabs, to become Greeks or vice versa. Each culture has its own particularities. Diversity through locality is the nice thing of our species. A person from another cultural milieu can become Greek by adopting the Greek customs, for example, though this practically means that such a person commits to the community long-term through interpersonal connections.

An ethnic religion is not trying to convince others of the religion’s merits or the correctness of its theological propositions. It does not carry out missionary work and is not promising any kind of reward to anyone who chooses to convert to it. The ethnic group grows organically.

I have a theology, though that without a religion is what nerds do: interesting, but not interesting enough (and, yes, this is self-criticism). What nerds also do is get distracted by the technicalities, such as how many gods there should be, while missing the bigger picture, which in the case of religion is the presence of ethnically defined community over the long-term. If you do not have a community, and if that community does not outlive you, you do not have a religion.

In my case, ethnicity is Greek simply because it is the one I grew up in and can intuit about. There is nothing inherently better about Greekness, nor is this tacit xenophobia: Greek is a state of mind and, in fact, Xenia (Ξενία) symbolised through Xenial Zeus (Ξένιος Ζευς) is an important ideal, which is also invoked in Homer’s Odyssey, by the way, but I digress. To appreciate ethnicity is to recognise the fact that togetherness is stronger between people with shared cultural associations. When Spain won the World Cup last week, millions of Spaniards, including those who do not like football, came together as one. Ethnicity is a practical consideration of what is the most reliable basis for solidarity and its concomitant collectivism.

At any rate, I recognise that as a philosopher and a disciplined, energetic person I have the talents to serve a higher purpose with great effect. These talents are not mine to keep. They are not for my enrichment, nor to boost my ego. I am the medium through which a timeless message is echoed. Through my daily deeds, I accept the duty to speak my mind in earnest; the duty to inspire people to aspire towards excellence; the duty to be the elder brother or father figure or faithful fellow traveller even vis-à-vis strangers, so that I lead them where they need to be, sometimes with a gentle touch and at others with tough love.

J’ai remarqué qu’au cours de mon apprentissage du français, j’apprends aussi à renforcer ma motivation par des liens avec d’autres personnes.

C’est une bonne méthode. La semaine dernière, j’avais l’opportunité de parler en français pour quelques heures avec les gens francophones par téléconférence. J’aime parler pour la vie en général.

Je n’ai pas le vocabulaire pour parler sur les plusieurs sujets, mais j’ai le détermination de continuer. En plus, je n’ai pas l’intuition d’utiliser les correctes prenons pour le gendre de grammaire et de distinguer l’orthographie propre entre mots qui ont identiques à mes oreilles (par exemple, je sais que j’ai écris «mémé» quand j’ai voudrais dire «même» ou l’inverse).

Je fais l’effort d’écrire sans consulter l’Internet. Les mots que j’écris sont les mots que j’ai lu ou écouter. Ceci est l’exercice de réfléchir et de tester ma capacité actuel.

Le langue est une phénomène entre les gens. Mémé si je racontes des bêtises ou j’utilise les mots que n’existent pas, je m’engageais dans le milieu de langue. Mon action peut engendrer un rétroaction, et ça peut devenir une connexion avec l’aide de logiciel, comme un échange des courriels ou un téléconférence.

Le mois prochaine on va faire avec Sacha et autres personnes les vidéos sur Emacs. Des détailles ici: https://sachachua.com/blog/2026/07/voulez-vous-parler-d-emacs-avec-prot-et-moi/. Je croix que c’est une initiative très intéressant et je suis content d’avoir cette opportunité!

En parlent nous pratiquons le langue et nous découvrons un peu plus de le monde.

Writing for UnHerd, Marta Havryshko comments on Why Ukrainian liberals love conscription.

The process is brutally simple. Draft officers, often accompanied by police, snatch military-age men off the streets, before delivering them to recruitment centres. There, many are pressured through threats, intimidation, and physical abuse to pass military medical examinations and sign draft papers. Men with serious conditions — including HIV, tuberculosis and even cancer — are routinely declared fit for service. Whether they like it or not, the recruitment officers must meet quotas; the only question is who fills them. Yet with Ukraine’s wealthy elite reluctant to heed the call, Kyiv’s recruitment crisis is becoming a class crisis too, one that could cause chaos long after the guns fall silent.

Marta’s account echoes what the BBC is reporting today on the brutalities of “busification”:

Ukraine’s military ombudswoman says such attacks are now “regular” and “a major problem” as the country struggles to mobilise men to fight in the fifth, draining year of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The EU and the UK are content with an endless war

What happens internally in Ukrainian society is largely enabled by policy-makers in the European Union plus the United Kingdom, with the Americans in the distance. They are the ones who provide pampers to the Zelenskyy regime, in the form of diplomatic support and financial aid.

The money Europeans give to the Ukrainian government pays for the essential operational expenses and the remainder is siphoned back to European industrialists in exchange for arms deals. In other words, the European taxpayers are subsidising the European oligarchs while consigning Ukrainians to the meatgrinder.

The EU-UK tandem does not have a vision for how this war will end, other than Russian capitulation—good luck doing what the military juggernauts of Napoleon and the Third Reich failed miserably at!

Russia is clearly winning this war on the ground. They are making slow yet steady advances in the Donbas region while terrorising other parts of the country. Those gains on the frontier occur at what may seem as snail’s pace because this is the nature of modern warfare: when virtually every apartment can be used as a launching pad for drones, you cannot conduct a blitzkrieg.

Western media wants to create a different impression by exaggerating the impact Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian territory have on the dynamics of the war. Starting fires in civilian infrastructure does not change the realities on the battlefield where Ukraine’s frontlines are falling apart.

The narrative that Ukraine is outsmarting the putative dumb Russians through sheer genius and technical acumen is designed to keep the war on the agenda. At times it feels like Ursula and Kaja only say “Russia, Russia, Russia”. This is beneficial for industrialists and, by extension, financiers who understand warfare as a means of regaining Europe’s lost competitiveness in global markets.

European elites are aware of what is happening in Ukrainian society, including neonazism, and have no scruples about it. They give money and hardware to Zelenskyy on the condition that he brings the meat that feeds the war machine, i.e. the men, which is how we learn of stories such as the aforementioned BBC report or the account of Marta Havryshko.

Looking at the future, Westerners have not been sincere in their intention to sign a permanent peace deal with Putin (and to keep their promises in general, if we go back to NATO’s and the EU’s Easternmost expansion). This means that the Russian regime will likely be emboldened to continue its campaign further south to capture all of coastal Ukraine and potentially connect with Transnistria. They will stop when they want, which is catastrophic for the people of Ukraine and madness for the rest of us.

Yes, this is also costly for Russia. Even the winners of a war, or dominant powers in general, pay a hefty price for their supremacy. Just check the American public debt to get a sense of what that looks like and what sort of odious burden it is for future generations.

Manhood and public pressure

The war shall continue and the poor will keep paying for it with blood and materials. Such are the structures of power in Europe, Ukraine, and beyond, and such is the fate of the peoples who do not control their own politics.

Shifting gears, there is a wider theme about the role of men in society. Taking another quote out of Marta Havryshko’s article (the parenthetic explanation is mine):

This asymmetry [of those who do not fight the war and are shielded from its consequences publicly shaming men who dodge the draft] lies at the heart of growing social tensions. Those who champion moral condemnation often do so from positions of relative safety and freedom. They can cross borders, pursue careers abroad, and retain control over their own lives. The men they shame cannot. From the very first days of the war, Ukraine has cultivated the image of the ideal man: self-sacrificing, strong, courageous, and unfailingly committed to defending his family, his home, his nation. He is prepared, if necessary, to give his life for this cause.

This is an age-old view of manhood which is partially based on biological fact. The average man is substantially stronger and more physically dominant than the average woman. Where biology ends and ideology starts is on the normative implications of this basic reality: what men ought to do and how they ought to feel. That is a matter of culture or opinion more broadly.

Every person needs structure in their life: a framework to keep them present in day-to-day realities and to maintain their readiness for the relevant rigours; an arrangement that helps them direct their life force towards some useful project. Without structure, people are lost. They become wasteful in their actions and self-destructive in their habits.

Structure in life either comes from within, in the form of discipline, or from the social milieu as peer pressure. Discipline, especially the strict kind, is the rare condition, so peer pressure becomes intense and ubiquitous. In our case here, males are expected to do manly activities as determined by culture, such as to serve and to protect and to sacrifice themselves.

The average man needs an outlet for his high capacity for aggression. This will either be some socially agreed upon convention, which has a benign effect on the collective, like work or sport or gaming that is done in moderation, or it shall be expressed as some anti-social form of violence, criminality, terrorism, or self-harm. In plain terms, the good man is the busy man; the best man is the committed man.

All of this covers the positive side of ideology that is layered upon the basic reality of masculine biology: what men ought to do to keep society going.

The negative side occurs once emotional manipulation enters the mix to channel man’s power towards questionable ends. The average man is highly susceptible to questions of his masculinity. That is his weak point: you shout at him, he shouts back, you punch him, he punches back, you doubt he is man enough and he feels something break inside of him. He becomes insecure as soon as you raise doubts about his ability to perform, where performance is once again a cultural construct.

Women who understand this are those who control and micromanage the relationship even in a superficially patriarchical setting. And men who understand this tend to become Internet famous masculinity merchants who belittle other men in order to convert them to paying customers.

Emotional manipulation is how you take a healthy person and convince them that they are fundamentally lacking in some ways which they can only remedy if they take such and such product. Once you brainwash a man to think of himself as a man manqué, you can make him do whatever you want.

It is no coincidence, then, that the public shaming of men in Ukraine is done by plenty of women. This is a super effective form of emotional control. It also reveals the cruel, indeed misandric and oftentimes sociopathic, nature of feminist rhetoric: it hates men, it hates children, it ultimately hates life.

Feminism and its modern masculinist antipode are forms of extremism that equally undermine the moderate expression of egalitarianism. They both have a worldview of structural victimhood, an originary grand conspiracy of sorts, which is in place to suppress the talents of their allied gender. Furthermore, they both cultivate tacit or explicit contempt for their enemy gender and thus both work to tear apart the social fabric.

Both in its positive and negative applications, structure is a matter of control. When public opprobrium happens, it is to enforce the dominant view and to silence any dissenting voices. What one must then look for are the ideocentric underpinnings of the prevailing opinions. Those are never mere biology, even when they are formed around a kernel of scientific truth.

To consider a relevant example, the USA military will start screening its troops for testosterone levels. There is an element of real science there, namely, healthy levels of testosterone are benign for men and too little or too much testosterone becomes harmful. Though the end is purely political: to create the conditions for heightened pressure so as to (i) put men on a leash, while (ii) ramming through other policies under the rubric of health, readiness, “real masculinity”, and so on.

The power apparatus wants to control men at all costs so as to secure for itself a constant supply of soldiers for its endless wars. It is not the nerds congregating think tanks or appearing on TV that will lead the charge, nor the women with plastic all over their face. Those who will be used as fodder for the cannons are men who are impoverished, men who are geographically trapped, men who are emotionally manipulated to die for their masters.

Couched in those terms, we must be extra careful with how we appeal to biology and science at-large. It is easy to see how the gimmick of the “high-T” male is going to be abused as a tool for delegitimising those who oppose stupid wars. They will not take your arguments on its own merits but will instead discern the “biology” between the lines, call you a pussy, and force you into submission.

The use of science to justify ideological ends is not new. The Nazis did it, for instance, to provide credence to their racial theories and attendant eugenics. In more recent times, it was employed in the service of woke tokenistic inclusion and the debasement of skill. US servicemen will soon be pressured to do the functional equivalent of gender affirming care while pretending to only value nature.

Phenomena in Ukraine and beyond exist on a continuum of socially sanctioned values. A useful heuristic in discussions that involve interpersonal affairs is “tell me what you want, without expounding on the science behind it”. There you learn what the goal is and you may begin to appreciate how your wellness is not a factor in their grift.

Table of Contents

1. Make TAB complete when it can
2. The in-buffer completion backends (completion-at-point-functions)
   1. Common providers of CAPFs
3. The completion frontends
   1. Corfu for an in-buffer completion popup window
      1. My preferred corfu setup plus cape
   2. Company for an in-buffer completion popup window
      1. My preferred Company setup
   3. The built-in completion-preview-mode for a minimalist single suggestion at a time
      1. My preferred setup for completion-preview-mode

Make TAB complete when it can

By default, Emacs uses TAB to align the current line or selected region of text. It does so based on the relevant rules provided by the major mode (e.g. a programming mode may have specific requirements for how the body of a function definition is indented).

We can tell Emacs to also use TAB to perform completion once no further alignment is possible in the given context.

(setq tab-always-indent 'complete)

The in-buffer completion backends (completion-at-point-functions)

The completion-at-point-functions is a variable (technically an abnormal hook) that takes as its value a list of functions. We can call those “CAPFs”, for “completion at point functions”. Those are used to perform completion in the buffer, with the text right before the cursor as their input.

When we request completion for the text at point, either via TAB or the command completion-at-point (C-M-i by default), Emacs looks at the value of the completion-at-point-functions, and calls the functions found there in order from first to last (or left to right).

Normally, once a function returns results, Emacs will display those and will not move to the remaining functions in the completion-at-point-functions. So if we have many functions, we may not see of them at once. To do so we need more advanced solutions, which I comment on further below.

The completion-at-point-functions typically has a buffer-local value. This means that the functions we run in one buffer will likely be different than what we have in another buffer. For example, in a programming mode it makes sense to use the Language Server Protocol to get comprehensive suggestions for the language we are programming in, whereas in Org mode we may only wish to see the correct spelling of a word.

When the completion-at-point-functions has a buffer-local value, it will typically include a t. This is a reference to its corresponding global value. So if Emacs tries to complete and reaches the t, it then goes through the list with the global CAPFs.

Common providers of CAPFs

• specialised minor modes;
• the major mode;
• the Language Server Protocol via its Emacs client (e.g. eglot or lsp-mode);
• the cape package;
• the company package;
• other packages that may extend company or related.

The completion frontends

For a few years now Emacs has a unified infrastructure at its core for how completions are done. Users should not mess around with that. What they can do instead is choose how the completions are displayed as well as the relevant modalities for filtering and selecting candidates.

Corfu for an in-buffer completion popup window

A package by Daniel Mendler, the developer of vertico and consult, among others, which is built on top of the completion-at-point-functions. It is designed to be fast and effective, with a good out-of-the-box experience and reasonable extensions.

By default, corfu does not automatically pop up its window. Users must manually invoke completion or opt in to the auto-completing functionality.

;; Read the comprehensive documentation of Corfu for further customisation options.
(use-package corfu
  :ensure t
  :init
  (setq tab-always-indent 'complete)
  :config
  ;; ;; If you want the popup window to appear automatically as you type:
  ;;
  ;; (setq corfu-auto t)
  (global-corfu-mode 1))

My preferred corfu setup plus cape

This is just for your information. It fits my use-case, but I do not recommend it as a starting point. The cape package is also developed by Daniel Mendler.

(use-package corfu
  :ensure t
  :init
  (setq tab-always-indent 'complete)
  :config
  (setq corfu-preview-current nil)
  (setq corfu-min-width 20)

  (setq corfu-popupinfo-delay '(1.25 . 0.5))
  (corfu-popupinfo-mode 1) ; shows documentation after `corfu-popupinfo-delay'

  (global-corfu-mode 1)

  ;; I also have (setq tab-always-indent 'complete) for TAB to complete
  ;; when it does not need to perform an indentation change.
  (define-key corfu-map (kbd "<tab>") #'corfu-complete)

  ;; Sort by input history (no need to modify `corfu-sort-function').
  (with-eval-after-load 'savehist
    (corfu-history-mode 1)
    (add-to-list 'savehist-additional-variables 'corfu-history)))

(use-package cape
  :ensure t
  :after corfu
  :config
  ;; This is for the global value.
  (setq completion-at-point-functions '(cape-dabbrev cape-file))

  (defun prot/cape-super-set-local (capfs &optional individual-capfs)
    "Set `completion-at-point-functions' to current value plus CAPFS.
Treat CAPFS and the default value as a super CAPF.  Then append the
INDIVIDUAL-CAPFS to the list."
    (let* ((all-for-super (append completion-at-point-functions capfs))
           (all-minus-global (delq t all-for-super))
           (cape-super (apply #'cape-capf-super all-minus-global)))
      (setq-local completion-at-point-functions (append (list cape-super) individual-capfs (list t)))))

  (defun prot/cape-prog-setup ()
    "Set up Cape for programming."
    (prot/cape-super-set-local '(cape-dabbrev) '(cape-file)))

  (add-hook 'prog-mode-hook #'prot/cape-prog-setup)

  (defun prot/cape-text-setup ()
    "Set up Cape for prose."
    (prot/cape-super-set-local '(cape-dict cape-dabbrev cape-emoji) '(cape-file)))

  (add-hook 'text-mode-hook #'prot/cape-text-setup))

Company for an in-buffer completion popup window

This package by Dmitry Gutov is older than corfu though remains in active development and has all the features of Corfu plus some extras. Fundamentally though, it does the same thing, so if you are already using one there is no pressing need to switch to the other.

As of this writing (2026-07-19), company version 1.1.0 is still in development. It comes with many nice features, such as native support for tab-always-indent, child frames, and in-buffer completion in the minibuffer.

By default, and unlike corfu, Company automatically pops up its window. You can opt out if you wish to.

;; Remember to read the comprehensive documentation of Company for all
;; the customisation options and extra features.
(use-package company
  :ensure t
  :init
  (setq tab-always-indent 'complete)
  :config
  (global-company-mode 1))

My preferred Company setup

The company includes several CAPFs, unlike corfu which spins them out into the separate cape pacakge. Company CAPFs can easily be grouped to collect the results of many functions into a single popup window.

This is what I am currently using. Again, I am sharing it for your information and do not meant to imply that it is useful in general.

(use-package company
  :ensure t
  :init
  (setq tab-always-indent 'complete)
  :config
  ;; NOTE 2026-07-19 with the next version of Company, which may be
  ;; 1.1.0, (setq tab-always-indent 'complete) is supported
  ;; out-of-the-box, which means that we disable the automatic popup
  ;; feature and rely on TAB to perform completion in the buffer.
  (setq company-idle-delay nil)

  (setq company-tooltip-limit 6)
  (setq company-tooltip-minimum-width 25)
  (setq company-tooltip-align-annotations t)
  (setq company-dabbrev-code-completion-styles t) ; use the `completion-styles'

  (setq company-transformers '(company-sort-by-occurrence
                               company-sort-by-backend-importance
                               company-sort-prefer-same-case-prefix))

  (setq company-frontends '(company-childframe-unless-just-one-frontend
                            company-preview-if-just-one-frontend
                            company-echo-metadata-frontend))

  ;; Notice the `(company-capf company-dabbrev)', which represents a
  ;; grouping of CAPFs, whereas `company-files' shows results of its own.
  (setq company-backends '((company-capf company-dabbrev) company-files))

  ;; IGNORE THIS AS IT IS RELEVANT ONLY FOR MY CONFIGURATION which
  ;; does a lot with the `display-buffer-alist'.
  (define-advice company-show-doc-buffer (:around (&rest args) prot)
    (let ((help-window-select nil)
          (display-buffer-alist nil)
          (display-buffer-overriding-action
           '((display-buffer-reuse-mode-window display-buffer-below-selected)
             (window-height . 0.3)
             (post-command-select-window . nil))))
      (apply args)))

  (defun prot/company-prog-backends ()
    "Set `company-backends' locally to my preferred value for `prog-mode' and derivatives."
    (setq-local company-backends '((company-capf company-dabbrev-code) company-files)))

  (add-hook 'prog-mode-hook #'prot/company-prog-backends)

  (defun prot/company-text-backends ()
    "Set `company-backends' locally to my preferred value for `text-mode' and derivatives."
    (setq-local company-backends '((company-dabbrev company-ispell company-capf) company-files)))

  (add-hook 'text-mode-hook #'prot/company-text-backends)

  (global-company-mode 1))

(use-package company-statistics
    :ensure t
    :after company
    :config
    (company-statistics-mode 1))

The built-in completion-preview-mode for a minimalist single suggestion at a time

Since Emacs 30, there is the completion-preview-mode by Eshel Yaron. Unlike the other options, it displays only one suggestion at a time. It does it inline as you type. You can still cycle through suggestions or display more of them with either the default *Completions* buffer or one of the aforementioned packages.

Note that Company also has the equivalent of completion-preview-mode. Check the company-frontends for more.

completion-preview-mode does not provide its own CAPFs directly or through some companion package. You will have to use one of the previous options or simply rely on what other providers (major modes, LSP, …) give you.

;; Do M-x describe-package and then search for completion-preview to
;; read its commentary, or M-x find-library and then
;; completion-preview to go straight to its source code (where you can
;; read the commentary and browse through all the options).
(use-package completion-preview
  :ensure nil
  :config
  (global-completion-preview-mode 1))

My preferred setup for completion-preview-mode

And here is what I have for this minor mode. Again, it is only for your information.

(use-package completion-preview
  :ensure nil
  :demand t
  :bind
  ( :map completion-preview-active-mode-map
    ("M-n" . completion-preview-next-candidate)
    ("M-p" . completion-preview-prev-candidate)
    ("M-<return>" . completion-preview-insert)
    ;; This way you can combine it with another interface (like the
    ;; generic Completions buffer or `corfu-mode') to display more
    ;; candidates.
    ("<tab>" . completion-preview-complete))
  :config
  (setq completion-preview-exact-match-only nil)
  (setq completion-preview-commands '(self-insert-command
                                      insert-char
                                      analyze-text-conversion
                                      completion-preview-insert-word))
  (setq completion-preview-minimum-symbol-length 2)
  (setq completion-preview-idle-delay 0.3)
  (setq completion-preview-ignore-case t)
  (setq completion-preview-sort-function #'identity)

  (global-completion-preview-mode 1))

Ce n’est pas facile de dire «je ne sais pas», «je fais des fautes», ou, simplement, de répondre négativement au manière ferme, de dire que tu a une opinion concrète et que tu va vivre avec discipline en accord avec la raison.

J’ai la parrhésie, la qualité de personnage de m’exprimer sincèrement, d’être préparer d’accepter les conséquences de mes actions, et d’admettre tout mes erreurs avec l’honneur. La raison est que mon estime de soi ça dépend exclusivement à moi. Les opinions des autres personnes ne sont pas pertinent: j’aime que je suis et ça suffit.

Je n’ai pas l’inquiétude. Je suis calme et content dans ma réalité, grâce à mon conception de valeur personnel comme une affaire privée. Les autres ne peuvent pas changer cette condition parce que il n’ont pas accès à l’intérieur de mon présence. Je ne suis pas extraordinaire ou l’exception: c’est vrai pour moi et pour toi.

Quand ton valeur de soi déviant par les opinions des autres personnes, tu n’a pas de stabilité à ton vie. C’est une situation précaire. Aujourd’hui ils t’aiment, demain ils te détestent, et le lendemain ils t’ignorent—la éventualité que tu redoutes le plus.

L’opinion publique est toujours important pour ton sécurité, mais pas pour ton estime de soi. La parrhésie est dangereuse sans conscience de la situation. Tu dois connaître quand tu va parler et quand tu va ne rien dire. C’est ça la raison judicieuse.

Ceci est pour ma perception de soi. Aux autres sujets je veux savoir quelles sont les opinions ou méthodes que les gens avoir. J’étudie la condition humaine et les phénomènes en général. Donc je suis indépendant et j’ai aussi la disposition communautaire pour trouver les autres, pour savoir qui sont-ils vraiment, et pour découvrir d’autres aspects du cosmos.

doric-lilac is a light theme, while doric-borage is dark. I am still testing them, though in the screenshots below you can get a first look.

Borage, by the way, occurs naturally in the mountains and there even is some in my land: all sorts of bees love it. I have seen lilac around, so I will need to transplant some of it here.

doric-lilac

doric-borage

Part of development

The new themes will be available in version 1.3.0. They already have the character I want from them, though I may still tweak some colour values.

Sources

The Doric themes use few colours and will appear monochromatic in many contexts. They are my most minimalist themes. Styles involve the careful use of typographic features and subtleties in colour gradients to establish a consistent rhythm.

If you want maximalist themes in terms of colour, check my ef-themes package. For something in-between, which I would consider the best “default theme” for a text editor, opt for my modus-themes.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): doric-themes
• Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes
• Backronym: Doric Only Really Intensifies Conservatively … themes.

Halo is set in a science fiction world far into the future. Humanity is warring against space aliens. The original antagonist is a coalition of different species known as the “Covenant”. Though early on we learn about a far greater danger described as the “Flood”. Then, in Halo 4 we are introduced to “The Prometheans” with all the possible conflicts they can make possible.

Humanity is technologically advanced. The culmination of its achievements is a transhumanist programme of supersoldiers known as “Spartans”. They are outfitted with the finest weaponry, their bodies are cybernetically augmented, and they can even have an actual artificial intelligence connected directly to their brain. In short, they are the absolute best warriors among the humans.

Through most of the series we experience in first person the exploits of a certain Spartan known as the Master Chief. We learn that he is not necessarily the greatest of his kind in terms of physical prowess, though he has that intangible quality that lets him rise to the occasion and repeatedly prevail over his enemies.

The Master Chief is a man of few words. Most of the talking is done by his superiors as well as his AI companion known as “Cortana”. As the story unfolds Master Chief and Cortana show signs of mutual feelings of Platonic love. Cortana eventually needs to be rescued and the Master Chief acts accordingly, making for a fine fit to the age-old trope of damsels in distress who are saved by some valiant warrior.

Cortana is not some helpless lass though. She is a strong character with a nuanced story arc. Similarly, the Master Chief gives off the impression of a man who is bitterly defined by the circumstances of his life, has a hardened carapace around his core self, and allows no-one to get emotionally close. These are the kind of people who are empowered by their aloofness and resulting emotional stability, though they also are the ones who do not really relate to anyone. Their strength is their weakness.

Cortana is probably the only one who understands the inner world of the Master Chief, in large part because she is, at times, directly wired to his brain. In a sense, she is less of a robot than the Master Chief because her emotional side is more pronounced. Whereas our hero finds solace in the role of the killing machine that others forced upon him when he was a little boy.

Which brings me to the point of the Spartan programme. It is a clandestine operation of the regime, designed to develop soldiers who can counter any insurgency and keep revolutionaries at bay. The Spartans were not conceived as a noble end to contribute to the betterment of humankind, nor was their unit established in response to the formidable threat initially posed by the Covenant. The Spartans were—and might remain—mere tools in the hands of the bad guys.

Yet herein lies an ancient insight about the world as admixture. Nothing is purely good or bad. It is both good and bad. More importantly, a good deed can have disastrous consequences while even the most horrific event can still produce benign results. We can only understand phenomena in this light when we are not invested in a specific outcome and are thus approaching them dispassionately.

The Spartan programme reflects the unscrupulous nature of the powers that be. It is an abusive project in the service of a nefarious goal. Nevertheless, humanity would not survive the Covenant onslaught without the Spartans, let alone deal with the Flood. Nobody objects to being rescued by the Master Chief, for example, even though he truly is a potential weapon of mass destruction in the hands of tyranny. Each Spartan shall enforce the will of the establishment owning to years of indoctrination. To them it is their duty to protect, even though such is the conditioning of a ruthless apparatus of power.

The state of admixture is everywhere beyond the science fiction setting. It is how our world is. The Iran war, for example, reminds us of the inexhaustible greed of our kind, here expressed through the machinations of the Western empire. Despite its horrors and attendant economic pressures, the ongoing conflict compels us to draw valuable lessons that can help us do something better for our future. If anything, there now is a greater sense of urgency to find solutions to the demand for energy. Those must be genuine alternatives to what worked hitherto. Whatever happens in the Strait of Hormuz, it is not viable that some sovereignist force can hold the rest of the world at ransom.

Understanding the world as admixture does not mean that we offer a blank cheque for abuse, nor that we perform mental gymnastics to beautify—let alone justify—every atrocity imaginable. It simply is a matter of adopting a descriptive outlook, to recognise that one’s normative view of the world is not the world as-is, and then work with the state of affairs as it is made manifest.

Coming back to the Halo universe, the otherwise terrifying prospect of the Flood consuming all life, engenders in members of humanity and the Covenant alike a sense of awareness in each other’s capacity for personhood. The Master Chief is no longer “the demon” in the eyes of his enemies, for example, but a stalwart fighter who epitomises the noble qualities that someone like the Arbiter also represents.

This is not about a mere opportunistic political calculus, where the enemy of my enemy is an ally. It rather is a deeper realisation that the other side of this conflict is, in fact, not mindless and bestial as originally thought. The dynamic between the Master Chief and the Arbiter is one of cautiousness informed by respect. There remains distance due to all the bad blood, yet we can tell how there is hope for reconciliation no matter what has transpired.

Same principle for the transhumanist agenda as such. Many parts of it can make us fearful of technology. I know I do not trust any moneyman with access to my brain and the rest of my body. Though such concerns also inspire us to explore what it means to be human and to become more humanised in the process.

We are forced to look for the positives in our kind beyond the numerous negatives of domestic abuse, murder, serial killing, torture, genocide, and many more. Even if we think of transhumanism as the latent evil of our era, we have to acknowledge how it functions, including inadvertently, as a creative force that at once destroys our negativity about humanity and our romanticised view of humans, while giving us a reason to try our best and to seek the others.

It then follows that we are presented with a mirror, which empowers us to be introspective and honest about our behaviour. It is not some figment of futuristic science that is robotising us, like, say, AI-capable computer chips attached to our body. We have been undergoing robotisation through analog means for decades, if not centuries, through systems of economic coordination that render us little more than cogs in a machine.

Our values have been eroded, as we see everything, including romance, through the prism of money and prestige. The corruption is so deeply rooted that we conflate this with the natural order of things. In the meantime, we have abandoned the lands, extended families, and local communities that served us well for millennia to become mere numbers in the megalopoles of this world, suffering from permanent stress, insecurity, and some elusive dread.

There is so much more to comment on regarding Halo: The Master Chief Collection, but I will leave it here. As you can tell, I am more interested in using the game as a pretext to expound on what I would have written about anyway, than to partake in the fanfare. Make no mistake though, Halo is a remarkable contribution to our culture.

Quand j’écris j’ai l’opportunité de comprendre mes idées. En les distillant je trouve les concepts qui ont représentations de les phénomènes sur lesquels que je vais commenter. Tout ces concepts je les collectes pour renforcer ma capacité de réfléchir avec le précision et de m’exprimer de la même façon.

Chaque fois que j’écris quelque chose je développe les automatismes qui m’aident à m’exprimer. Ces automatismes ont les phrases ou expressions que je peux les connecter pour former les pensées complets. Ceci est la capacité que je veux avoir.

Mais c’est important de parler même sans la vocabulaire riche pour créer le mémoire musculaire. Je trouve que plusieurs fois quand je parles je fais des erreurs que je ne les fais pas en écrivaient. J’ai ce problème avec tout les langues que je connais. C’est le résultat de l’introversion: j’écris beaucoup plus que je parle.

Donc l’effort d’apprendre une langue étrangère est également personnel et social.

If you want maximalist themes in terms of colour, check my ef-themes package. For something in-between, which I would consider the best “default theme” for a text editor, opt for my modus-themes.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): doric-themes
• Sample pictures: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/doric-themes-pictures
• Git repository: https://github.com/protesilaos/doric-themes
• Backronym: Doric Only Really Intensifies Conservatively … themes.

Below are the release notes.

Version 1.2.0 on 2026-07-12

Two new themes

doric-tiger is a light theme, while doric-lion is dark. Both have warm colours.

Org agenda events are easier to spot

Events are entries which have an active timestamp but not a SCHEDULED or DEADLINE keyword associated with it. Those are now rendered in italics in addition to the faint foreground they already had (the faint foreground is there because an event is not as important as a

Support for vc-dir-key-binding-hint-label (Emacs 32)

This concerns a new option for VC Dir buffers to display their available key bindings. The face applies to the additional headings. They should now look like all the other headings in those buffers in the interest of stylistic consistency.

Some package.el faces stand out more

Those are present in the buffer that M-x list-packages produces. They concern certain status indicators and fit in better with the rest of the design.

The nobreak-space face is now underlined

This is one way to make that character visible. It is useful to know that a space is not the regular space. For example, in French orthography we are expected to include non-breaking spaces between the quotes and the words like « Protesilaos ». Whether you actually follow that guideline is another discussion—I happily ignore it.

The fundamental requirement of multiculturalism is a diversity of cultures. For multiculturalism to work, nations and regions all over the world have to preserve their distinct cultures. The alternative to this is not progress but a global monoculture driven by hypercapitalism and American cultural imperialism. For the Nordic countries, this means that we have to fight to preserve our language, our heritage, and our history in a world that is ever more dominated by the English language and global internet culture. And this is precisely what we at least attempt to do when our national football team dresses up in runes, and our fans cosplay as Vikings.

I am on a similar wavelength as the author. National identity is nothing to be ashamed of, not even if Nazis or other groups have at times appropriated some of its artistic representations and values. This is true for Norse culture as it is for the Greek one. From the time of the Romans we have had to contend with the figment of ideology known as Greco-Roman culture, which later transmogrified into this vague, ostensibly singular Western tradition that claims the Hellenic city-state as its progenitor while being inwardly antithetical to everything the ancient world stood for.

To the point about the Vikings, every tribe, every nation has a bloodied past and is destined to commit further violence in perpetuity. Such is the inescapable nature of humankind: to eat we have to kill, to have shelter we must eliminate all threats from its milieu, and to guarantee safe spaces in our societies we need to apply sovereign authority with extreme prejudice.

The polite society, talking through the intelligentsia in its ivory tower, is so used to hearing its correctness that it has forgotten what it means to be human. Such is the comfort it lives in that it does not realise how all of its world is underpinned by originary, ongoing, and latent violence: the necessary violence to establish a settlement, the violence that secures access to resources, the violence that keeps enemies away, the violence of law that safeguards order.

It is thus that we have a civilisation to speak of, for stability and its concomitant predictability provides the luxury to pursue activities that go beyond the struggle for survival, such as art, science, and philosophy. And if we ever rediscover the vitality of revolution that will aim to free us from the excesses of the oligarchs it, too, will be carried out in violence.

This is not to glorify brutality nor to debase morality. It is a mere description of how things stand. You are reminded of all this as soon as you set aside the books and work the land: nature will quickly reveal its norms. We still have to operate in accordance with practical reason, which entails restraint of the highest form. Otherwise, we fall in the vicious cycle of irresponsibility and bloodlust, of massacres that beget massacres, which is how radical uncertainty takes hold and civilisation is undone.

There is nothing inherently suspect with football fans adopting superficially nationalistic forms of expression. It is a sign of maturity and emotional stability to not take oneself too seriously, to knowingly incorporate historically inaccurate representations in one’s patterns of behaviour, and to even have the audacity to be absurd where necessary. This is how we recapture the spirit of ethnic traditions which understand quotidian affairs, sport, art, and religion on a continuum of work, play, and human creativity, of metaphor and didactic story-telling, else mythology.

Narratives with a clear ethnic origin and target audience help cultivate in people a sense of belonging. They thus contribute to the formation of a framework within which social life unfolds and the individual is given a clear role they can thrive in. People feel lost when they have no structure around them that they identify with. They turn inwardly and withdraw to their self where they can only find the twin ills of overthinking and powerlessness. Those lead to an implosion into depression or explosion into criminality.

The social whole has cultural particularities the same way a group of friends develops its own private language and inside jokes: it is for the sake of strengthening its bonds not being exclusionary per se. Ethnicity connects the past to the present while giving a clear outlook for the future. It makes people feel rooted in their locality. What rootless moneymen detest the most is communities which honour their ways; communities which necessarily subsist in a defined land that they consider their homeland, as it echoes the stories of their ancestors. Such communities do not submit to the crude reasoning of the balance sheet and will not sell their soul in pursuit of profit or prestige. Therefore, they instil in people a sense of duty towards the collective, which is expressed as solidarity.

Coming back to the Vikings of this World Cup, may the best side win and everybody have fun in the meantime.

Compounding the problem, there are no excellent covers either, perhaps because contemporary singers recognise that they cannot produce a performance that will stand as an equal to the original material.

At any rate, here is the man in a solo live performance at some closed space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpdoQ3VDzVU and here is an alternative done for national television https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqU8UMWgg08.

The lyrics are below, followed by my faithful translation of them, and further comments on what this song is about.

Τόσα χρόνια μιαν ανάσα

Ερμηνεία:  Λαυρέντης Μαχαιρίτσας
Στίχοι:    Λίνα Δημοπούλου
Μουσική:   Λαυρέντης Μαχαιρίτσας


Ανάβω ένα τσιγάρο
απ'τα απαγορευμένα
Πάντα το σκασιαρχείο
αγαπούσα πιο πολύ
Ανάβω κι άλλο ένα τσιγάρο

Στη δουλειά και στο σχολείο
στης αγάπης την αρένα
μια απόδραση ζητούσα
και μια άτακτη φυγή
ώσπου φάνηκες εσύ

Πήραν φόρα οι μελωδίες
και του έρωτα οι χημείες
και γεννήθηκαν τραγούδια
κι ένα όμορφο παιδί
ούτε το'χα φανταστεί

Είναι τώρα που μετράμε
κάπου δυο δεκαετίες
και κανένας πια δε θέλει
να το σκάσει από κει
φτάνει δίπλα να είσαι εσύ

Σε μιαν ανάσα
τόσα χρόνια τα χωράω
Τα φιλιά σου κι όσες γράψαν μουσικές
Σε μιαν ανάσα
Σε μιαν ανάσα
Ότι έγινα σε σένα το χρωστάω
Το χρωστάω
κι ο δειλός
δε το ξεστόμισα ποτέ

Κι αν καμιά φορά με πιάνουν
κάτι ανόητες μανίες
και τα κάνω άνω κάτω
και τραβάω το σκοινί
του σκορπιού μου το κεντρί

Βγάζω, μάτια μου, ισόβια
σε κρυμμένες μου φοβίες
μην ξυπνήσω κάποια μέρα
κι έχεις εξαφανιστεί
Μια ζωή χωρίς ζωή

All these years a single breath

Singer:  Lavrentis Maheritsas
Lyrics:  Lina Demopoulou
Music:   Lavrentis Maheritsas


I light a cigerette
of the forbidden ones
Always the escapade
I loved the most
I light another cigarette

At work and at school
at love's arena
an escape I sought
and a disorderly flight
until you showed up

The melodies took pace
and love's chemistries
and songs were born
and a beautiful child
I had not even imagined it

It is now that we count
about two decades
and nobody wants anymore
to escape from it
provided you are there

In a single breath
all these years I fit
Your kisses and all the music they wrote
In a breath
In a breath
All I became to you I owe
I owe
and the coward
never uttered as much

And if sometimes I am gripped
by mindless manias
and turn things upside down
and go to extremes
the sting of my scorpion

I spend, my eyes, a life sentence
in my hidden phobias
not to wake up one day
and you are gone
A life without life

Beyond the obvious elements of romance and love, this song is about how we thrive within constraints. Every agent of action needs structure in their life in order to retain their vitality.

The impression of complete openendedness leads to ruin because human has the propensity for hubris. It is an innate frailty of our character: to overdo it, to go beyond the confines of what is sustainable. We never have enough.

Whether some phenomenon is benign or detrimental to us is a matter of degree. Nothing is an absolute blessing or curse. Even water, the essence of our life, will poison us if we drink too much of it too quickly.

There must always be boundaries to prevent us from going too far. They put a limit on our otherwise insatiable wants. In doing so, they empower us to channel our limited energy to what we can do well, thus bringing worth our best version.

Relationships, habits, responsibilities, and rules form a nexus of forces that keep the individual present in their presence. A sense of belonging, duty, commitment, or purpose is essential. It is what anchors the person in their milieu by holding them accountable to a certain standard, while rewarding them accordingly.

A person who lacks structure is, as the song correctly describes, always keen on escaping from whatever their immediate reality is. They will even flee from their own works, for those require further maintenance or shall create some longer-term responsibility, i.e. a form of structure.

As such, a person without any structure in their life is one who does not reach their potential. They feel a void within them and experience the attendant powerlessness. Their very agency is the cause of their angst.

In the song, the structure comes from the “you” who is the spouse of the poetic first person. It is the person who sets the “I” in order, giving our protagonist the impetus they need to become creative.

The structure is not necessarily external to the person. It can come from within. That is discipline: to define, implement, and continuously enforce one’s own rules for every facet of their life. To the disciplined person, these rules are not negotiable: they are sacrosanct for as long as reasonableness demands.

In practice, there will be internal and external sources. Even the most disciplined person benefits from having commitments: projects of some kind or relationships that demand attention and require upkeep.

Remember that hubris is latent in everything we do. This includes the aforementioned structure. There may come a time, for example, when the person will need to revise the precepts that their discipline safeguards or to terminate relationships that are becoming toxic.

Whatever the case, there is no shame in recognising what kind of person one is. Those who lack discipline must muster the courage to admit as much and then try to find structure through social arrangements: family, friends, tribe, club, religion… The modalities do not matter.

Our previous meeting about getting started with Emacs is here: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2026-07-05-emacs-live-with-linkarzu/.

Below is the code I showed in the video:

(setq custom-file (locate-user-emacs-file "custom.el"))
(load custom-file t)

(load-theme 'modus-operandi-tinted)

(use-package keycast
  :ensure t
  :config
  (keycast-mode-line-mode 1))

(set-face-attribute 'default nil :height 180)

;; Your only safe keys are documented here:
;; (info "(elisp) Key Binding Conventions")
(define-key global-map (kbd "M-o") 'other-window)

;; (define-key MAP KEY nil)

;; There is also `defvar-keymap'...
(defvar prot-overrides-mode-map (make-sparse-keymap)
  "Keymap for the `prot-overrides-mode'.")

(define-minor-mode prot-overrides-mode
  "Activate the `prot-overrides-mode-map'."
  :global t
  :init-value nil
  :keymap prot-overrides-mode-map)

(define-key prot-overrides-mode-map (kbd "M-o") 'other-window)
(define-key prot-overrides-mode-map (kbd "C-<return>") 'find-file)

(prot-overrides-mode 1)