The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman

There was a time I lived among people who thought wealth was a synonym for the good life. I watched them spend their lives buying mirrors that only reflected what they wanted to see.

Then one day, I walked away: from the Gold Coast, the trophy blondes, and the medication the rich need to endure their own affluence.

I studied social work with nothing but a family to support.

Worked nights as a security guard; guarding things nobody wanted, in places nobody saw. 

The Return of Zera Yacob

The Return of Zera Yacob

Centuries ago, a man sought truth in a cave by the Takkaze River in Ethiopia. His name was Zera Yacob, and he believed light could be found within, not imposed from without. If his spirit walked among us now, he might not speak of faith or empire, but of clarity. Let us imagine he walks among us now:

If I were to speak to Ethiopia today, I would first ask: what happened to the inner light? We traded it for megaphones.

The Worm

The Worm

Found a worm in the ceiling.
Moth larva, pale as silence.
Most would crush it.
I didn’t.

I gave it a corner.

Green Without Illusions

Green Without Illusions

The planet’s tired. 

The air’s thin. 

The rivers are drunk on chemicals. 

Everyone’s talking about “carbon,” like that’s the whole story. It’s not. 

The problem isn’t just molecules in the sky — it’s habits, power, and comfort. 

The world’s choking on good intentions sold in recyclable packaging.

What Do I Know

What Do I Know

The older I get

the less I trust certainty.

It talks too smooth,

smells like cologne and fear.

Everyone’s selling a map now—

The Three Ways of the Zombie

The Three Ways of the Zombie

They walk among us, and most days, they are us.

Not the kind that crawl out of graves or gnaw at your neck. That would at least be honest. No, these zombies have pensions, gym cards, and subscription plans. They smile in video calls, buy eco friendly detergents, and file their taxes on time. Somewhere along the way, something hollowed them out, and the shell kept moving.

The philosophers saw this coming.

The Echo Chamber

The Echo Chamber

Europe mistakes America’s yesterday for the world’s tomorrow.

Europe has a habit of arriving late. Not stylishly late — just late. By the time Brussels shows up, the lights are flickering and the band has already packed up. Now the bureaucrats are asking Washington to dance to their tune, calling it “reciprocity,” “shared standards,” “normative alignment.” They talk like priests of a paper faith, convinced that if they rearrange enough clauses, the world will start listening again.

But the truth is simpler. Europe is trying to sell America its own old ideas, polished and rebranded.

God on Trial

God on Trial

If man mirrors God,

then God stands accused.

His premise, His law, His court.

If justice is divine,

let it climb back to its maker.

The Bag in the Back

The Bag in the Back

I live in an old house, older than Napoleon, older than most nations that think they’re eternal. Two and a half centuries of cracked wood, stone walls, and forgotten tenants. It’s seen revolutions, wars, famines, but now it’s just me, a few quiet souls, and time passing slowly.

Then half a year ago, a man from the old Yugoslavia moved in upstairs.

The Word “If”

The Word “If”

I never liked the Spartan way of life. Their treatment of the helots, an enslaved underclass forced to labor so that citizens could train for war, was cruel. Their eugenics, their obsession with strength, their distrust of art and individuality. It all feels like a rehearsal for totalitarianism.

And yet, there is one thing to admire about them: the way they spoke.

The Dream of Remembering

The Dream of Remembering

In Plato’s dialogues, truth is not discovered but remembered. The soul, he says, once beheld the eternal Forms before descending into this life. What we call learning is merely recollection: anamnesis. Knowledge is a kind of homesickness.

This idea, though poetic, did not appear out of nowhere.

The Political Animal in an Age Without Polis

The Political Animal in an Age Without Polis

When Aristotle wrote that man is a “political animal,” he meant something very simple and very profound. A human being alone is incomplete. Unlike a beast, we cannot survive on instinct; unlike a god, we cannot stand apart in self-sufficiency. We need others to become ourselves. It is in community that we speak, reason, and discover justice. The polis — the small, human city — was for Aristotle the natural home of man, the place where life could be not only lived but fully realized.

To be a political animal, then, is not primarily about voting or institutions.

The Engine of Corruption: The Case of Marcial Maciel

The Engine of Corruption: The Case of Marcial Maciel

I was watching a documentary about Marcial Maciel. Later that day, stretched out in the bath, a thought came to me: here was a man who had built an empire out of nothing, a priest who rose from obscurity to command schools, universities, seminaries, and a global religious order that counted its wealth in the hundreds of millions. 

And yet, beneath it all, he was a fraud: a drug addict, a sexual predator, a man who lived multiple secret lives while cloaking himself in the aura of holiness.

At first, I tried to separate the two: the empire and the abuse, the genius and the crime. But the more I thought, the clearer it became: they could not be separated.

Newspaper Schizophrenia

Newspaper Schizophrenia 

Open a tabloid today and you step into madness. One half of the page screams apocalypse: Russia’s drones, ultimatum after ultimatum, the doomsday clock at one minute to midnight. The other half giggles with triviality: reality stars, football scandals, influencer gossip. Doom above, distraction below. Terror and idiocy fused into a single product.

This is not journalism. It is psychological warfare.

Endzeit

Endzeit

It always looks solid before it breaks.

Newspapers fat with slogans. Ministers in pressed suits. Radio blaring the same tune louder and louder to drown the cracks. East Berlin ’89 was like that: people queuing for bread, muttering, waiting for buses that never came. Inside the politburo, ashtrays full, smiles rehearsed. Business as usual on paper.

Then the wall fell. No warning siren.

Bukowski vs. Nietzsche, Round One

Bukowski vs. Nietzsche, Round One

I came across a post: Bukowski in one corner, Nietzsche in the other. Both talking about morality, freedom, emptiness. Two men who could never meet, yet somehow they collide.

Bukowski’s line: people with no morals don’t end up free. They end up hollow, without love or feeling. He’s thinking of the psychopath who mistakes numbness for liberty.

Nietzsche’s punch is harder: morality itself is a trick. A herd-code, built so the strong don’t run too far ahead. He’s saying: the shoebox is safe, but it isn’t living.

I thought of an article I read in the daily newspaper.

Big Decisions

Big Decisions

All my life, I’ve feared the hinge-moments, the choices that seem to tilt a whole existence. Should I marry this woman or walk away? Should I take this job or turn it down? I imagined each decision as a trapdoor: step wrong, and the rest of my life would be sealed in regret.

Kierkegaard, dark Dane that he was, once wrote: “Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, and you will also regret it.” That line stayed with me. It was less a consolation than a curse: no path without its shadows.

And so, here is a story.

Ghosts of Legitimacy

Ghosts of Legitimacy

I don’t know much about China. I’ve been there, took once a train from Zurich to Shanghai... but travel doesn’t make me an expert. What I see from afar is a paradox: a state that claims Marxism, yet runs one of the most capitalist economies on earth. 

Someone told me Xi reads Marx in the morning while presiding over property bubbles, sweatshop work schedules, and a class of billionaires. Everyone knows it’s absurd, but the portrait still hangs on the wall. Marx lingers as a ghost, legitimizing what would otherwise look like naked authoritarian capitalism.

But before the West laughs too loud, let’s look in the mirror.

The Bacchae and the Repressed Thing

The Bacchae and the Repressed Thing

Euripides’ The Bacchae is a play about Dionysus, god of wine, ecstasy, and madness. Beneath the myth lies a truth: deny the irrational side of human nature, and it will return. 

Dionysus does not ask to rule; he demands recognition. When Pentheus refuses and tries to chain him, Dionysus does not vanish. He erupts, bringing down king and kingdom alike.

On the surface, it is order against chaos.

Nothing Is Eaten as Hot as It Is Cooked

Nothing Is Eaten as Hot as It Is Cooked

Switzerland just voted on the E-ID. By a narrow margin, it passed. For anyone outside the country: the E-ID is a state-approved digital identity that lets citizens log into government and private services, sign contracts, or prove who they are — all through a single credential. The promise is efficiency and security; the fear is surveillance and control.

I didn’t cast a vote.

Playing Stupid

Playing Stupid

J.K. Rowling once wrote: “Never in my lifetime have so many people tried to signal their intellectual and moral superiority by playing stupid.” She nailed something that defines our age. The problem isn’t ignorance; it’s the performance of ignorance. We know better. Even children know better. 

But still, whole societies pretend not to see what’s right in front of them.

The Ladder Officer and the Collapse of Balance

The Ladder Officer and the Collapse of Balance

The image is absurd, almost comic: a dentist’s office in Berlin is required to designate a “ladder officer,” a staff member officially responsible for ensuring that the practice ladder meets regulatory standards. The detail is so trivial that it would be funny if it weren’t symptomatic of something larger: a bureaucracy that has turned into a self-sustaining machine, piling regulation upon regulation until the work itself is buried under paperwork.

What the dentist in Berlin experiences is not unique.

Too Conscious for Comfort

Too Conscious for Comfort

Peter Wessel Zapffe said humans are “too conscious.” Once we reflect on our own finitude, isolation, and meaninglessness, anxiety follows. Other animals are spared. We are not. To endure, we construct defenses: we block out disturbing thoughts, anchor ourselves in myths, distract with noise, sublimate into work or art. Without these defenses, life becomes unbearable.

I believe him.

Optics as Ethics: The Paradox of Corporate Morality

Optics as Ethics: The Paradox of Corporate Morality

Modern capitalism operates with a peculiar moral compass. Systemic harm is absorbed and normalized. Personal scandal is punished swiftly and without mercy.

Nestlé illustrates this paradox in its starkest form. The baby formula scandal in Africa. The privatization of water in drought-stricken regions. The persistence of child labor in cocoa supply chains. Price fixing, environmental destruction, the quiet devastation of communities from Pakistan to South America.

These are not allegations.

The Bow of Philoctetes: Between Achilles and Odysseus

The Bow of Philoctetes: Between Achilles and Odysseus

In Sophocles’ Philoctetes, a crippled hero rots on a lonely island. Once abandoned by the Greeks because of his festering wound, he is now suddenly indispensable, for he alone holds the bow of Heracles, the weapon that prophecy says is needed to bring down Troy. The Greeks send two figures to retrieve it: Odysseus, the master of guile, and Neoptolemus, the young son of Achilles.

The stage is set as a clash of principles.

True Fact-Checking in the Age of the Meta-Narrative

True Fact-Checking in the Age of the Meta-Narrative

Lyotard once claimed that the postmodern condition marked the end of grand narratives. Religion, ideology, historical teleology—those sweeping frameworks that once organized reality—were said to be gone, replaced by fragments and local truths. But the 21st century proved otherwise. 

Meta-narratives returned not as whispers but as thunder.

Cutting the Tag

Cutting the Tag

I live in Switzerland now, raising my daughter from a marriage I once had with a Thai-Chinese woman I met while living in Bangkok. We divorced, and I’ve raised our daughter ever since. Once or twice a month, my daughter spends a weekend with her mother. I don’t ask her what happens there. She tells me when she feels like it.

On a trip to Germany not long ago, she began talking about a war between Thailand and Cambodia.

Agamemnon on Trial

Agamemnon on Trial

Today at the thrift shop, I picked up three books for my daughter: Sophie’s World, a collection of antique myths, and one about Native American culture. I told her, “You can choose one book to start with.” She went for the myths. Then she asked if she could choose a story inside it. Of course—why not? A bit of agency makes all the difference.

She leafed through and settled on the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia. I asked her why. At first she said, “Because it’s interesting.” I pressed her a little: “But out of so many stories, why this one?”

On the Ineffable Nature of Parenting

On the Ineffable Nature of Parenting

It’s hard to say why some children grow into kindness, curiosity, or strength. We like to pretend there’s a formula—books, methods, systems—but in truth, there isn’t. It’s more like a web of many things: some genetic, some environmental, some just chance.

What a parent can do isn’t so much teaching in the strict sense, but being there.

When the Furies Return: Aeschylus and the Age of Woke

When the Furies Return: Aeschylus and the Age of Woke

I just revisited "The Eumenides", the third play of Aeschylus’ "Oresteia". You know the ending: Athens puts an end to the old cycle of blood-for-blood vengeance. Apollo and Athena turn the terrifying Furies, aka the embodiments of vengeance, rage, and ancestral curses into the “Eumenides,” the Kindly Ones. Law replaces vendetta, reason replaces passion, and democracy begins to breathe. It’s the triumph of rationality over chaos, of civic order over private grievance.

Now fast forward 2,500 years. Look around. Would the Greeks recognize us?