razor.blog: seeing things as they are.

Inner Plastic Surgery People are obsessed with transformation—but only the kind you can see. They go under the knife to sharpen their jaws, ...

On Parenting in a World of Digital Desire My daughter came to me and asked about Roblox. I said, “Yeah, I remember. A lot of kids at the men...

The Divine Comedy on The Train To Budapest A vision in three realms Canto I – In the Middle of the Offline Way The WiFi wasn’t working. No ...

Trashbin Trance Budapest, April He moved from bin to bin like it was a ritual. Not frantic— not ashamed— just practiced. As if the garbage h...

Wasting the Miracle It begins with a quiet revelation: The path of real self-improvement—the kind that chisels you from the inside out—does ...

The Spectacle of the Obvious Sometimes I glance at the headlines that pop up on my phone—just out of habit, maybe out of boredom. Drunk driv...

Street Stoicism: Composure Is a Combat Skill There’s a difference between knowing philosophy and needing it. The latter is where things get ...

Crossing the Street I was on my way to get some food for my daughter at the Budapest train station. The day was winding down, the light was ...

In Transition  It is always 3 a.m. Not literally, perhaps, but in feeling — that hour when the world is hushed, the body unsure, and the sou...

Madness as Method: Toward a Dialectic of Going Crazy “Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.” —Charles Bukows...

The Mirror Principle When I was very young—just twenty—I worked in a mental hospital in Switzerland. This was the early ’90s. Zurich’s Needl...

The Best Tribe: Civilizing Mission World Tour 2025 It is one of the peculiarities of our time that we call ourselves enlightened while carry...

Faces Like in the Soviet Union: A Walk Through a Swiss Supermarket I walked through Coop today. One of the newest, cleanest shops in the reg...

The Myth That You Live Your Life On the train, I remembered The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz. I've worked in mental hospitals—...

The Wounded Society: A Philomythical Reflection There is a particular kind of wound that does not bleed, but lingers in the air we breathe, ...

Why the Political Immune System Targets the European Right Lately, I’ve been asking myself a question—not from the position of outrage or lo...

The Oracle Answers the Question You Shouldn’t Have Asked In one of the old Greek tragedies, a question is asked. A man named Orestes stands ...

The Morning of the Silicon Alchemists Some books don’t offer answers. They ask questions that stay with you—questions you can’t unsee once t...

The Silence of the Non-Human: An Invitation It began with a message. “We need a way to deal with AI,” my friend Fasil wrote. He’s a philosop...

The Sweet Cesspool A morning letter from the wreckage of Western culture Dear friend, I woke thinking about George Sanders again. You rememb...

Between Guillotines and Guidelines In 1789, the French Revolution sent tremors through the old world. The aristocracy was dethroned, the Chu...

What Do We Really Teach Our Children? It began with a movie. The French Connection. Raw. Brilliant. Dirty. A product of its time. My daughte...

What to Carry Into the Next World They say you can’t take anything with you. But that’s not true. You carry the weight of silence—the times ...

Davos Altitude Sickness: Where Poverty Is a Panel and War a Workshop I was working at a lakeside villa for a man who lived in the margins of...

How Freedom of Speech Became a Dangerous Idea "Question to Radio Eriwan: What is the difference between the Constitutions of the USA an...

From Logic to Lunacy: How Good Ideas Turned Absurd The Pilot’s Checklist for a Crashing Plane A friend once told me about his new relationsh...

Government as Organized Crime? Radio Eriwan was once asked " Is government a form of organized crime ?"  Radio Eriwan  answered: ...

Born in Quarantine Cimon didn’t think of himself as unhappy. That word didn’t exist anymore—not officially, not in the way it used to. Peopl...

The Antibiotic Mistake: How Government Overreach Strengthened Resistance Power is most effective when it moves slowly. History shows that so...

The Pattern That Connects: On Noetic Perception, Chemistry, and the Moment That Precedes Thought A cat watches you from across the room, and...

From One Illusion to the Next: Why People Jump from Blind Trust to Conspiracy Thinking I had been at a lady’s place. I like and respect her ...

Breaking the Script: The Art of Disrupting the Automated Mind There are moments in life when reality feels like a well-oiled machine, a vast...

Trump and Elvis: American Icons in the Age of Spectacle Donald Trump and Elvis Presley—two figures who, at first glance, seem to belong to e...

The Right Choice: Navigating Moral Responsibility in the Modern World I looked down at my shoes before heading to the supermarket. Brown lea...

  How to Raise Children for a Dystopian Future The future will not arrive with a crash of steel and fire. There will be no armies of machine...

Anarchy, Time, Dystopia Societies don’t fracture overnight. They don’t split neatly into those who rise and those who sink. The process is s...

I-Thou with AI Martin Buber wrote that human existence is defined by two modes of relation: I-It and I-Thou. In an I-It relationship, we exp...

The Silent Image and the Speaking Presence: Authentic Experience in the Age of Reproduction Standing in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich with m...

The German Millipede That Forgot How to Walk Germany was once a nation of doers. Industrious, pragmatic, efficient. But somewhere along the ...

The Rolling Stones were once a threat. Their music was chaos, sex, destruction—something your parents feared, something that could get you a...

The Emancipation of Ethiopian Philosophy and Thought Western philosophy has spent centuries building a bridge that no one asked for. A bridg...

Cutting Through Intellectual Colonialism (written for Fasil) Western intellectuals love to play with diversity like it’s an accessory. They ...

The Brutal Truth About Personal Change There is an entire industry built on selling you hope. Personal development seminars, self-help books...

Why Society Operates Without a Goal First off, German sociologist Niklas Luhmann would say that asking why the societal system exists is lik...

The Job Interview Script and the Danger of Thinking There is a script for job interviews, and everyone follows it—knowingly or not.  The int...

The Grand Canyon of Wealth: The Illusion of Access The Illusion of Access For several decades, I was connected to a wealthy family. And yet,...

The Illusion of Personal Space in a Public World The Script We Live By Public spaces aren’t really public anymore—not in the way they used t...

What Parents Can Learn from Their Children We assume that childhood is a process of learning—of accumulating knowledge, understanding social...

A Plea for Medicine That Deserves the Name Medicine was meant to heal, to restore balance, to be a force that stood between human suffering ...

Silent Spring in Bielefeld Bielefeld, a city caught between reality and myth, where the streets whisper with the echoes of a world that no l...

When Oedipus Meets Self-Checkout There are places where fate is sealed, where choices are illusions, and where even the strongest of wills a...

The Lost Totems: A Journey Back to Meaning A totem is not just a symbol. It is a marker of identity, a connection to something larger than o...

Does a Social Worker Have to Be a Leftist? Or: How to Help Without Creating Dependence At some point, a well-known professor of social work ...

How to Survive an Overbearing School System Without Losing Your Sanity At some point in the last decade, schools stopped just educating kids...

William Tell (2024): The Crusader, The Crossbow, and Hippie Jesus It started as a simple father-daughter movie night. William Tell (2024)—a ...

No Glasses Required  John Carpenter’s They Live (1988) was supposed to be just another sci-fi action film—low budget, simple premise, full o...

Why Did They Take the Fun Out of Everything? It was just a moment. A gas station stop, a glance at an old green and yellow St. Gallen-Gais-...

Life Is Not a Game of Dice - When a Hells Angel Met a Social Worker Here, a social worker (that would be me) talks to Andi Gmeiner, co-found...

Rehear sals for a Comback One of my favorite songs is Phil Ochs’ Rehearsals for Retirement.  It’s not just a song—it’s a slow, bitter funera...

Genitals, YouTube, and Greek Mythology The other day, I heard my eleven year old daughter watching something on her phone. I wasn’t paying a...

Sanity as Rebellion: What the Last Messiah Got Wrong Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990), Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer, stands among th...

Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the Consumer Society: Breaking Free from the Narrative Machine Richard Bach was a former Air Force pilot and...

The Economy of Craving Part 2—Why Sugar is the Gateway to All Other Addictions The Moment It Begins My daughter was sitting in the stroller,...

The Economy of Craving Part 1 — What the Ancient Greeks Knew About Consumer Society For most of my life, I was locked into the cycle. I didn...

Bearing the Weight of Another’s Chaos: A Philosophical Reflection on Crisis, Compensation, and Survival   In times of crisis, when one perso...