Ethereal Insights

Hindu ( ॐ ) depiction of Vishnu ( विष्णु ) as Varaha ( वराह ) slaying Banasur ( बाणासुर ) The Problem of Borders | Thursday – April 30, 2026 B orders define our world, particularly international borders, largely because the modern mentality in its attempt to quantify everything within reach of the sensible leans into compartmentalization of all kinds, read particularly " Nation-States ".      For every quality that the moderns attempt to quantify, they have to impose limitations, and while they may seem arbitrary, which they are in a way, they are actually necessary, because if something is supposedly quantifiable, there must exist some number or some representation in the number plane that describe the outer limit, usually a lower and upper limit or bound, of the object in question, the object in view, and even if it is quite impossible to reach an exact and stable number or representation, it is often more than adequate to take the limits and allow the extension of th...

Banners for boys' day festival By Utagawa Kuniyoshi ( 歌川 国芳 ) What is Respect? Wednesday – April 29, 2026 R espect is one of those words that seem to apply in a rather peculiar way: should a thief show some kind of respect to his victims; should certain criminals be respected, while certain other criminals should expect no consideration, no respect, at all, etc?      Indeed, respect is a funny thing, a funny concept that seems to be a fairly loud expression of the modern deviation , particularly of individualism and a kind of American individualism . There are of course many other implications here: of course the humanist notion of individualism plays the biggest role, read " My Views on the 'Rights of Man'" , and I guess most other things in the modern world tend to be derived from this notion; in fact, it is actually quite hard to separate anything from the notion of individualist humanism; you see this everywhere, and I guess this is why the quantitative poin...

Photograph of the Atlas globe Cynicism | Tuesday – April 28, 2026 C ynics and cynicism all over the place! Indeed, the world is full of it and it seems quite strange, at least from a material point of view, read " The Efficacy of Ideas ". I mean, there are so many fat and addicted people all over the place, how come they are so cynical? Did people used to be this cynical in the past? First of all, yes it should be taken as an overall sign of our times that people are cynical, and of course cynicism and sentimentalism go hand in hand... But the entire assumption that only "bad" guys can win, read " Directing Films ", is very salient today. Brutality, realism, or perhaps brutalism? Why not, why not another one of those isms? Well, there are of course plenty of those around so I should think that there is no problem for me to add another one. Movies are so full of themselves, and so full of this kind of lazy and truly evil and very much offensive and dista...