An Important Announcement
Going forward, the purpose of this website will shift considerably. Its main focus will be to develop the dialectic of freedom, as explained by Nicholas Berdyaev in his magnificent study of Dostoevsky’s work, entitled simply Dostoevsky…
Why I would not make a good father
I need to understand where my anti-natalism comes from. Although I do believe that to some extent it is informed by my observations of the external reality, there is an inner aspect to it that I shall reveal here – for my own benefit primarily, but maybe others can see themselves in what I am about to related as well…
The Aesthetic: Between God and Misanthropy
May’s philosophical musings touch on the love for man and the love of God, the idea of the Aesthetic, the notion of anti-natalism, misanthropy, religious pluralism and more…
Abortion: A Matter of Principle But Always a Choice
Abortion is always a matter of principle, but always remains a choice. This essay makes the case for pro-choice on Christian and liberal grounds…
After Dostoevsky | The Light and Silence of the Room
The Light and Silence of the Room touches on considerations of Christian theology, inspired by the works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov and The Devils), as well as on a number of issues related to the human condition: loneliness, love and family…
In Defence of Death II
In Defence of Death, part two, is the continuation of an essay with the same title. It explains why we need religion to build a culture in which the moment of death is not feared…
“I believe, therefore I am.”
Philosophical meditations from the month of April 2022, touching on nihilism, faith, loss of faith, Satre’s view on God and the duty of intellectuals, among other things…
On Intimacy: Between Body and Soul
God is dead. So we were told. Nature is dying. So we are told. Communities are vanishing. So we are told. Where then can we find meaning? In the relationship between oneself and another person. Intimacy is key for such a relationship to develop. This essay argues this case…
The Meaning of the Cross
The essay explores the meaning of the Cross within the theological framework of Easter, in a philosophical, psychological and social way, stressing three meanings behind the symbol…
On “dangerous” books: Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto & White Fragility
It is very dangerous for a society to be blind to its dark side. As such, reading “dangerous” books like Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto and White Fragility is a must. However, it matters how one reads them…
“…to love for the sake of love.”
What does it mean to belong to a nation? How did God create us? Such questions and more are explored in this month’s philosophical diary…
Surrender
To surrender is to be free: to surrender to death, to love, to one another…
The Brothers Karamazov: The Life, Teachings and Death of Starets Zosima, A Case Study for A Godless Society
Isaiah Berlin stressed that the Russian authors were primarily concerned with moral questions. This case study provides an insight into the moral questions related to faith and God which Dostoyevsky aimed to highlight in his magistral work, The Brothers Karamazov…
A sensible soul in the river of history
“…it is life that scares me…it terrifies me. So long and troubling only to end so quickly and bizarrely…”
Was the Holocaust evil? | Moral Relativism and Nihilism
This is an essay on moral relativism and its link to nihilism. “Can slavery be good?”, “Is human experimentation good or evil?”, “Is rape evil?” – moral relativists answer these questions with “maybe”…
Religious Persecutions under Communism in Eastern Europe
A brief report onr religious persecution under communism in Eastern Europe. The publication includes a summarised but important context about the philosophical origins of the anti-religious ideas, sentiments and campaigns that the communist implement against all faiths, albeit to different extent…
Truth, nihilism and faith in the age of war
Philosophical reflections for the month of February 2022. “In the darkness of my heart, I have found the mercy of Light”…
Creating the “New Man”: Marxist Re-education under Communism and in the West today | Full Report
This publication looks at how Critical Race Theory (CRT) is used to reshape the Western mind, in the light of the re-education process under communist regimes…
“Tonight, we will kill our brothers!”
A short story about war, depicting the speech of the general and the vision of Christ that he has before charging into battle…
The Pitesti Experiment, or “The Genocide of Souls” | A Case Study of Marxist Re-education in Communist Romania
The Experiment from Pitesti was a brutal example of Marxist re-education under the communist regime of Romania. It provides important lessons for us today if we go down the road of far-Left (Woke) ideology…
In Defence of Death
“We should be brothers and sisters, united by the moment of death, rather than standing divided, trembling in fear and greed. Look up at the sky at night – the moment of death is the beginning when we shall belong with the stars.”…
Emily, A Woman’s Question to the World
“…if existence would end when I am with you, I would feel no fear but an immense joy and overwhelming pride that I, Octavian, had the honour to be yours.”
Answering Jordan Peterson’s Question to Stephen Fry: On God and Suffering
In a conversation with Jordan Peterson, Stephen Fry focused on the issue with suffering and God, stating that like Ivan Karamazov he rejects God’s world because of the unjustified suffering of children. This is my answer to the issue of suffering in a world created by God…
“It is suffering, not love, that makes brothers and sisters of us all.”
The first philosophical journal for 2020, touching on matters of morality, the wrong of the Right and the illegitimacy of the Left…
ESG investing is political. But this is not the real issue with it.
ESG investing is political. But this is not the real issue with this approach to capital allocation. Rather, the problem is that ESG is not political enough.
An Unbreakable Bond
“[…] in that unusual calm, surrounded by stillness, Emil understood what the words of the greatest philosophers and of the holiest monks could not explain: that the bond between him and his grandmother was unbreakable and eternal…”
Western civilisation and religion in a secular age
Can the Western civilisation be secular? Can religion and God be replaced by manmade alternatives like humanism and socialism? This essay traces the recent polls on this matter and looks back at history to learn how the spiritual abyss of the Western world has been produced…
Why many young Westerners hate Hitler but are unsure about Stalin? | Full Report
Orwell noted in 1944 that English intellectuals rejected Hitler at the cost of accepting Stalin. Hitler remains a symbol of evil and justly so. Stalin however, as a figure of international socialism, or communism, remains an uncertain name in the mind of many Westerns. This report explores why this is the case…
The Poet with Bright Eyes
Those who sell themselves to please the fashionable ways of the world shall find a fate worse than death for they shall have no peace in this life nor in the one after: regret is heavier than eternity…
The subtle poison of our times
“To return to the glory of risk, pain and death is no longer possible for the modern human…”. Philosophical musings, December 2021…
The Red in the Sky is Ours
Veronica, a prostitute, meets her high school love in the staircase of a Soviet-looking apartment bloc. They talk about love, evil and freedom under the cold of the night…
China Today – The Economics and Geopolitics of the New National Socialists
How does the CCP treat its citizens and the neighbouring areas? Is the “economic miracle” really a miracle? These are some of the questions that this essay will seek to answer…
Cherry Blossom
“[…] I will never forgive those who sold out love for their mortality.” Cherry Blossom is a short story about a man mourning the loss of his lover, a soldier who died after five years in a comma…
The Aftermath of Tiananmen Square 1989
The Aftermath of Tiananmen Square 1989 massacre left immediate and long-term scars on China and the world…
Nihil Sine Deo
A priest of the Oxford Blackfriars is asked by a young man for his inspiration about the moving words during a sermon: Nihil Sine Deo…
The Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre of 1989
“[…] when two lines of martial law troops drove their tanks from either side into the square, they were going well over 60 miles an hour. Completely insane. At the time, there were still 20,000, 30,000 people or more who hadn’t left the square. […]”
Indigo Red
The star shines again, but the dead remain dead. A short story of war and loss, painted with words of aesthetic significance…
A Century of Cries for Freedom in China
The context in which he Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 must be viewed: China has over 100 years of history of pro-freedom protests…
The last days of shepherds
The last days of shepherds were upon the world. A new dawn had arrived, a new civilisation built on illusions and emptiness had spawned – and it was going to be magnificent…
Human rights, Hope and Progress
“It is often those who dwell in the darkest abyss that can shine the brightest light.” Philosophical reflections during the month of November in 2021…
Mr. Abramović’s Note
Mr. Abramović died his apartment in Zagreb. The police officers find his body and next to his bed a note on which the deceased’s final thoughts are written down…
“Promise me you will die a beautiful death…”
A soldier and his wife are saying their goodbyes before he will leave for war, during the turbulent years of 1940s…
The Genealogy of Colours
Helena, twelve years old, is a blind girl who wants to know what colours are. But how can we explain what colours are to someone who never saw them? Breaking the barrier of blindness, reaching into the realm of the soul, where the answers to every question lie…
After John | Lucifer, old friend…
Inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, “Lucifer, old friend”, is a story of man and angel discussing God’s love for his creation after the Apocalypse. Finally, peace…
The Butoh Dance: From Rebellion to Tradition in Japan
The interesting birth of Japanese butoh dance, its link to Yukio Mishima’s work and the important role of tradition in maintaining alive our unique identity in order to create the universality of civilisation…
The role of faith in the age of space exploration: how can humanity deal with the infinite unknown?
As humanity approaches a new age of space exploration, this essay argues that reason, imagination and intuition are not enough for us to explore space humanely and to avoid disasters. Faith is also necessary to guide us through the infinite unknown…
“Human experience is irrelevant to the truth”
“Between feeling nothing and feeling something, even terrorising pain to the point of fainting, I choose the latter. This is the essence of human life from the perspective of an individual…”
Hardcore Posers
“Grimes might have made an innocent joke that attracted the attention of newspapers and the social media crowds, but the prank was an echo of something much deeper among some of the most successful and wealthy people on the planet…”
Nostalgia
Nostalgia, or the aching to return home. This article explores this concept in-depth, starting with Tarkovsky’s masterpiece, “Nostalghia”…
Shirts
Shirts is a short story that follows Bill, a corporate worker who aims high but realises that the corporate ladder he was meant to climb through hard work and dedication does not exist. A world of politics and propaganda, Bill realises what many of us already know…
Better days…
“…I am tired now and cancer is eating my lungs. I thought you should know that you died in vain on that cold and muddy battlefield in Europe…”
The Bones of Time
“Erebus has devoured the bird and with it the entire history of the old world of angelic chants and barbaric faith in the limits of the human mind…”
Honey, you make me feel invincible
“I must leave this room, this city, this earth and fall deep beneath the abyss of my own soul. I need wine for the difficult trip.”
“Objective good exists, but not in the world of men.”
“I want to drown in philosophy, but only in the philosophy of a few minds, of those who understood that there is nothing worthy among the multitudes of men…”
I pull my own teeth out
This is the best non-satirical political satire you’ll ever read: the story of Joseph Stalin the university professor, not the communist dictator…
Twin black eyes
It is 1776. Old school Japan. A woman faces the death of her lover, a samurai buried under a tree in the middle of a field without end…
1973
It is now 2003 and the images held by a wrinkled polaroid in the pocket of an American soldier are covered in blood and dust…
Bored with the future…
We are now like stray animals, retrogressed from primeval men, lurking in nothingness. Days, trapped between what it was and what it will be… Progress, autonomy and importance, all lies…
Elisabeta Rizea: The Woman Who Defied the Totalitarian Left
Elisabeta Rizea was tortured and put in prison by the communists for her political views. “They hanged me by my hair from a hook in the ceiling and pushed the chair and the table from beneath my feet. My hair stuck to the hook, and I fell to the ground. That is how I lost my hair…”
Soulmates, Socialism and Suffering
August’s philosophical diary brings ideas on socialism, soulmates, destinity and fate, criticism and more…
Thus spoke Zarathustra
A vignette in a lost roll of film. Its margins are narrowed by black fog. Nothing peers through it, nothing escapes it. A short story about Creation and human life…
The Life and Legacy of Sir Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton FBA FRSL (1944-2020) was a writer and philosopher who published more than forty books in philosophy, aesthetics, and politics…
A cup of blue
Abstraction is a mighty tool to explore reality as life imitates art. A short story about time, identity and imagination…
The River
Inspired by Peter Wessel Zapffe’s essays, The River follows the life story of a creek that grows into a river, clean and healthy. Until one day…
Los Angeles Pine Trees
Three actors discuss the past on a street in LA in 1992 under a patch of pine trees. Los Angeles Pine Trees is a short story about perception – of time, of aesthetics.
Death is an illusion
July’s philosophical diary brings ideas on the group and community, possession of things, reason, morality and death…
Salvador and Andrea
A short story about two gay lovers discussing truth, reason and intution…
What does “Wild” mean ?
“Wild and free”, “wild nature”, “into the wild”, “wild spirit”, “wild animal”, wilderness […] a world of overwhelming beauty that deeply speaks to each one of us…
Give your children meaningful names
It may not seem like much but naming your child with a name that has a story that inspires, a name which fits their energy, words that carry history…
Romanticism, History and Dangerous Ideas
June’s philosophical diary contains thoughts on nihilism, history, romanticism and whether ideas are dangerous or not…
Contradictions, Unity and Rebellion
“The duty of an anti-establishment movement is to keep opposing whatever the status quo is: there is never a settling down with the current system”
Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilisations
“…no civilisation can hide the truth forever: it is in the inevitable collapse of all civilisations that humanity should celebrate its achievements for then the entirety of our nature is expressed”.
We all live in Edward Hopper’s paintings
Loneliness is wide spread in the modern world, affecting men and women of all ages. Despite having a lot more than any other civilisation, we have a lot less of what matters…
The List
This is the final part of Ratiu’s book, The Stolen Church. It is a list of some of those who sacrificed their lives for their faith during the communist regime in Romania…
The plan of destruction
Effective propaganda doesn’t use big lies because there is the risk of people discovering that they have been lied to…
“[…] why anarchism cannot work…”
Philosophical thoughts during March of 2021. On the future, chaos and order…
Nobody can serve two masters
This is the first article in a series of three that depict how the communists in Romania plotted and attempted to destroy the Catholic, Greek-Catholic and Orthodox Churches…
The Function of Beauty
“Beauty helps us transcend the human condition, opening the doors of an unlimited and universal world of here and now”…
Death and Life
“The torture left scars on their skin and a deep, bleeding wound in their souls. Because they knew that pain and fear were real, these students became allies with anxiety and depression…”
Pain and Fear
This is the second blog in a series of three, detailing the horrors suffered by 1,000 students at the hands of the communist regime in Romania. The brainwashing experiment from Pitesti…
“Dreams are reality”
Philosophical Diary – February 2021: “Aiming to change the world for the better, whatever that means, is severe delusion”.
“Destroy them through themselves”
This experiment was started by the communists in the name of “liberating the people”, but it was nothing but the slaughter of innocent young people.
“At the edge of Everything”
Philosophical Diary – January 2021. Thoughts and reflections from the first month of this year. All ideas are my own.
Freedom
“After 16 years spent in prisons and forced labour camps, with the exception of those ten months of freedom between 1955-1956, I was finally free”.
The Forced Labour Camps
“The prisoners spent three years in that labour camp. The only way to survive that was to accept that there was a higher power above the communist regime – that was religion”.
The Prisons
This article is a continuation of “The Arrest”, which you can read in the Project 1989 page, The Stolen Church: 16 Years of Detention. It details the horrors of the communist prisons in Romania.
The Arrest
Alexandru Ratiu was arrested on 29 October 1948. He spent 16 years in the communist prisons and gulags in Romania. This is the first article that details what happened – translated from the book “The Stolen Church”.
The Fall
“The Fall is a brilliant portrayal of a man who has lost his innocence and glimpsed the emptiness of his life, yet is happy to die”. This is a short literary commentary on “perhaps the finest and least understood” of Camus’s books” as Sartre said.
On The Silver Globe
A review of On The Silver Globe by Polish movie director Andrzej Żuławski. Vice called the movie “the best Sci-Fi movie never made”. It is indeed a journey to the core of humanity.
On a balcony in California
This is a short romantic story, unfolding on a balcony in California at the edge of the infinite, where all ends and begins at once.
Ce que le jour doit à la nuit
“What the day owes the night”, screened by French director Alexandre Arcady, is based on a story written by Algerian author, Yasmina Khadra. The movie was recommended to me by a good friend with whom I reconnected recently after 15 years, by chance.
For the Individual
The individual is the most important unit in society. Without the individual, our civilisation cannot exist. As such, defending…
The Headless Hydra
The Hydra is an ancient concept, charged with all the fears and frustrations that are wired in us as creatures of stability, order and guidance. For example, in ancient Babylon, the myth of Marduk, the multi-eyed god, fought and killed Tiamat, a water dragon made of “watery” chaos.
What if the hippies were right?
We burn ourselves to hell for the future, and the hippies saw that. Congratulations to us on our evolutionary advantage over everything except ourselves.
What is to be done then?
Rethinking investment return
The notion of investment return, quantifiable and financial, is in dire need for reform. It has become too rigid…
La Grande Bellezza
A review of one of the greatest movies ever made, which celebrates the squalor and beauty of human life. La Grande Bellezza is a lesson about what it means to be human…
Zdzisław Beksiński
“Meaning is meaningless to me. I do not care for symbolism and I paint what I paint without meditating on a story.” Zdzisław Beksiński (1981)
On progress, choice and individual responsibility
Is there a need for tomorrow? In other words, is there a need for us human beings to act on this driver to “progress”? If this question can be answered negatively, what does this entail for how we go about in life?