When Intelligence Has Nowhere to Go

When Intelligence Has Nowhere to Go

In the Spanish movie Sleep Tight (2011), the setting is an apartment building in Barcelona. A place held together by routines, habits, and a shared assumption of safety. People pass each other in hallways. Doors close. Life proceeds without drama.

At the center of this order is César, the concierge. Polite. Reliable. Present but barely noticed. He fixes things, keeps records, accepts packages. The kind of person residents trust without ever really seeing.

The film’s unease comes from how little it needs to do. No spectacle. No obvious threat. The tension grows from proximity and access. Safety is not shattered by an event, but eroded by something quiet and persistent. The building feels wrong not because anything happens, but because something already has.

César is the source of this disturbance. He is profoundly "unscheinbar". 

Crans-Montana: When Official Narratives Begin to Obscure the Facts

Crans-Montana: When Official Narratives Begin to Obscure the Facts

In the Korean film New World, the story begins in a familiar moral landscape. There is a criminal organization, and there is the police. One man works undercover for the state inside the gang. At first, the roles are clear. The police represent order. The gang represents crime. The viewer knows where legitimacy is supposed to reside.

As the film unfolds, this clarity begins to dissolve. The police grow afraid of losing control. They have invested too much time, too much prestige, too many careers in the operation. Admitting failure would mean admitting that the strategy itself was wrong. So they do not stop. They double down. They lie to the undercover officer, manipulate him, apply pressure, and treat his well-being as expendable. Step by step, the police begin to resemble the organization they were meant to dismantle.

By the end of the film, something unsettling becomes visible. The gang behaves like a gang, openly, without moral pretense. The police, however, behave like a closed system that protects itself at all costs. Loyalty outweighs truth. Individuals become disposable. Responsibility is never assumed, only redirected.

This is why the recent developments surrounding the fire in Crans-Montana have struck many observers as deeply disturbing.

Importing Meaning

Importing Meaning

In the 1960s, the Western left encountered an outcome its own theory had not prepared it for.

Marx had assumed that industrial capitalism would intensify exploitation until the working class could no longer bear it. Instead, capitalism adapted. Productivity gains were shared just enough. Wages rose. Credit expanded. Consumer goods multiplied. The worker was not immiserated into revolt but integrated into comfort.

The proletariat did not become a revolutionary subject. It became a stakeholder.

This was not a betrayal of capitalism’s logic. It was its refinement. Rather than confronting labor as an enemy, the system absorbed it through consumption, welfare, and status. Class conflict was not resolved; it was anesthetized.

Marx had underestimated the pacifying power of abundance.

By the mid-twentieth century, the Western working class no longer experienced itself as historically trapped. It experienced itself as upwardly mobile. Revolution ceased to feel necessary. And without necessity, revolutionary identity collapsed.

The left did not lose its moral energy at this point. It lost its subject.

Honmono: Authenticity as Residue

Honmono: Authenticity as Residue 

In Japanese, honmono (本物) means “the real thing.” At its simplest, it distinguishes what is genuine from what is imitation. Culturally, it goes further. Honmono names alignment. When what something is, what it does, and how it presents itself no longer contradict each other. It is not a label one applies to oneself. It is a verdict that appears slowly, often without ceremony.

Seen this way, honmono stands in quiet opposition to the modern economy of the self. Ours is a time in which identity is treated as a project. Curated. Narrated. Updated. One is expected to explain who one is, what one stands for, and where one is going. Honmono suggests something else. Do the thing consistently. Take care of what is in front of you. Let coherence emerge over time. If recognition comes, let it come by accident.

This is not uniquely Japanese.

Where the Line Begins to Move

Where the Line Begins to Move

Free speech in Europe is under pressure. Not abolished, not extinguished, but increasingly managed.

In one sense, this is understandable. We do not live in the 1950s anymore. Political ideas no longer move slowly through leaflets, local meetings, or delayed broadcasts. A sentence written in irritation can now reach millions within hours. Social media rewards escalation, collapses context, and turns private speech into public events almost instantly. Governments did not create this environment, and pretending otherwise would be naive.

States are therefore confronted with a real problem: how to prevent rapid escalation and social destabilisation without governing permanently in emergency mode. That tension is not imaginary.

But history is unambiguous on one point. The fact that regulation feels understandable does not mean it is harmless. Periods of technological acceleration have always tempted governments to tighten control in the name of order. Once restrictions are normalised as reasonable responses to new conditions, lines begin to blur.

The Swiss Village That Did Not Argue

The Swiss Village That Did Not Argue

There is a village that looks, at first glance, exactly the way a Swiss village should look. The houses are tidy. The sidewalks are clean. People greet each other with restrained politeness. Nothing appears out of place. If you were to pass through it on a quiet afternoon, you might even think that conflict itself had been engineered out of existence.

At the center of the village stands the school.

On its website, the school explains its annual motto with gentle conviction: We pull on the same rope. The children are taught that disagreements should be minimized, that problems should be solved together, that harmony is not only desirable but expected. There is even a symbolic “peace rope,” tied with knots representing the proper order of reconciliation: name the conflict, express feelings, state wishes, apologize.

It is a beautiful idea.

Almost pastoral.

But while the children are learning how not to argue, something very different is unfolding a few administrative doors away.

Reality Is Nazi

Reality Is Nazi

There is a peculiar kind of person one encounters more and more often now. They enter the room composed, articulate, certain. They speak as if they have already crossed terrain the rest of us are still mapping. Then reality arrives, unscripted as always, and within minutes the structure collapses. What follows is rarely self-doubt. It is accusation.

Reality, they say, is the problem.

It is too harsh. Too backward. Too unjust. Too full of enemies.

A Middle Path for Navigating Modern Complexity with Wisdom and Grace

A Middle Path for Navigating Modern Complexity with Wisdom and Grace

People in the West keep returning to Taoism and Buddhism the way city dwellers return to nature documentaries. Something in them knows that what they are living inside is no longer human-scale. The books feel calm. The language feels sane. The ideas feel older than the noise. And then Monday morning arrives, with emails, institutions, bills, deadlines, custody schedules, performance reviews, gas prices, and a phone that never shuts up. Whatever enlightenment felt possible on Sunday night collapses before breakfast.

The problem is not that Taoism or Buddhism are wrong. The problem is that they were never meant for a world like this.

The Epstein Distraction

The Epstein Distraction

The most corrosive effect of the Epstein obsession is not what it reveals, but what it immobilizes. The story functions as narrative glue. Once attention sticks to it, it does not move. Moral energy circulates in a closed loop of outrage that feels like awareness but operates as paralysis. People believe they are looking behind the curtain. In practice, they are kept busy staring at a single scene replayed without end.

Epstein no longer operates as a historical case. He has become a Rorschach test.

The Gym, Late Afternoon

The Gym, Late Afternoon

The gym is bright in the wrong way. Fluorescent light. Mirrors everywhere. Bodies doing what bodies have always done. Pushing. Pulling. Sweating. You would expect something human to happen. It never does.

People arrive sealed. Headphones in. Eyes straight ahead. Everyone pretending not to look while looking constantly. Desire hangs in the air like stale perfume. Nobody touches it.

That tells you what kind of place this is.

Suicide of a Civilisation

Suicide of a Civilisation

Mental health is not the human default.

That uncomfortable fact was stated with icy clarity by Peter Wessel Zapffe and quietly ignored ever since. Psychological stability is an achievement, not a given. It is produced by filters, illusions, routines, shared stories, and limits. Remove those and you do not get liberation. You get exposure.

Modern society has done exactly that. Systematically. Proudly.

Émile Durkheim diagnosed suicide not as a private failure, but as a social symptom. When norms dissolve and integration fails, people die not because they are weak, but because the structure that once held them together no longer exists. His mistake was stopping at the individual. He did not push the logic to its institutional conclusion.

We are now watching suicide at the level of civilisation.

Post-Legitimacy Governance

Post-Legitimacy Governance

A cold winter in Europe. Snow in places where warmer, milder seasons were promised. Ice on the roads. On social media, people no longer debate climate models. They post jokes. Memes. “It’s winter.” “More CO₂ tax.” “Here we go again.” This is usually described as ignorance or denial. It is neither. Cold winters do not disprove climate change. Most people know that. The distinction between weather and climate has been explained for years. Long-term averages, anomalies, jet streams. The information is everywhere, repeated endlessly. What has collapsed is not understanding. It is credibility.

People no longer react to claims. They react to who delivers them and how. When scientific hypotheses are fused with moral imperatives, when urgency replaces persuasion, when dissent is treated as social deviance, content loses authority. Communication stops informing and starts performing. It becomes ritual. Ritual only works as long as belief exists. Once belief disappears, ritual becomes parody. Mockery follows. Not as resistance, but as withdrawal. Mockery signals disengagement.

Karen Is Not Just a Woman: This Should Not Be Happening to Me

Karen Is Not Just a Woman: This Should Not Be Happening to Me

For most of my adult life, the system has worked quietly in my favor.

Borders. Police. Offices. Forms. Queues. Officials.

I pass through without friction. Nobody hesitates. Nobody asks a second question. The machine hums, stamps the paper, waves me on.

You don’t consciously think, this is how the world works. That would be crude.

It settles lower than thought. In the nervous system.

And then one day, it doesn’t.

The police stop you.

Ontological Fragmentation and the Death of Mass Culture

Ontological Fragmentation and the Death of Mass Culture

What is happening around us is often described as polarization. That word is too small. Polarization assumes a shared axis. It presumes that people are still standing in the same world, merely facing in opposite directions.

What we are dealing with instead is ontological fragmentation. Not disagreement about opinions, but a fracture in the assumptions that make disagreement possible in the first place.

Large groups of people no longer share a moral universe. They do not merely differ on values. They differ on what counts as harm, what counts as truth, what history means, what authority is, what guilt is, what freedom is, what humor is allowed, and whether irony itself is legitimate. They inhabit different models of reality.

Once that happens, mass culture as it existed in the twentieth century becomes structurally impossible.

The Fantasy of the Meta-Position

The Fantasy of the Meta-Position

Dieting is where a deeper political and philosophical lie becomes visible in everyday life.

On the surface, dieting looks trivial. Eat less. Choose differently. Apply willpower. If human beings really possessed the kind of sovereignty modern culture insists we have, dieting would be a technical adjustment, not a recurring failure. You would decide once, and the body would comply.

The fact that entire industries exist to manage repeated failure should already tell us something is wrong with the premise.

Diets fail not because people are ignorant or unmotivated. Most people know exactly what they are supposed to do. They intend to do it. They often begin doing it. And then, somewhere between intention and execution, something else takes over.

This is where the real problem appears. Most diets are built on an implicit fantasy: the fantasy of a meta-position.

2021: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Switzerland: “I Stand Here With You”

2021: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Switzerland: “I Stand Here With You”

What follows is my report as it appeared in a small Swiss newspaper.

On Thursday evening, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw on social media that a demonstration had been announced for November 12, 2021, in Bern, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a speaker. It was organized by Public Eye on Science, aka the farmer Urs Hans from the Tösstal. At first I thought it was a joke. But other familiar names were also listed, including Dr. Thomas Binder and the pharmacist Kati Schepis.

As soon as I heard a Kennedy was coming, I asked the editor-in-chief whether he would travel to Bern. He said no. So we agreed I would go as a “reporter” for Die Ostschweiz and capture the mood. On Friday at noon, my daughter and I arrived in Bern. The demonstration was not at the Federal Palace, but in Wankdorf at Rosalia Wenger Square, a place I had never heard of despite having lived in Bern years ago. The location felt chosen to keep the event out of sight.

Radioactive Liability: Why the West Did Not Go After China

Radioactive Liability: Why the West Did Not Go After China

The Western response to the origins of COVID-19 only looks puzzling if you take official narratives at face value. Once you stop doing that, it becomes almost boringly obvious.

The West did not hesitate to accuse China because it lacked evidence.

It hesitated because accusing China would have forced Western governments to explain their own role in what was happening in Wuhan.

That was the real danger.

Social Work Without Being Social

Social Work Without Being Social

There is a particular kind of unease that arises when form and content drift too far apart. I felt it recently in a job interview for a position in social work. On paper, social work is a profession built around human contact, sensitivity, judgment, and presence. In reality, I found myself sitting across from two people who felt more like accountants auditing a balance sheet.

To My Daughter on Her Twelfth Birthday

To My Daughter on Her Twelfth Birthday

There is an old philosophy called Stoicism. It began more than two thousand years ago, with people who were trying to figure out how to live well in a world that is often unfair, confusing, and unpredictable. They were not trying to be cold or tough. They were trying to stay clear.

One of the main ideas of Stoicism is very simple:

Some things are up to you.

Some things are not.

NPCs Don’t Suffer

NPCs Don’t Suffer

Late at night, dark trailers were placed across a highway in Germany. No lights. No warning. A truck driver barely stopped in time and warned others. Police treated it as attempted murder. Dozens of people could have been killed:

Families returning from a trip. Parents with children asleep in the back seat. Night workers driving home. People with no political power, no role in the conflict, no awareness that they had been drafted into it. One delayed reaction, one second less, and the road would have turned into a mass grave.

Days earlier, critical power infrastructure was sabotaged in Berlin’s winter grid. Tens of thousands of households were affected for a week.

In many high-rise buildings, elderly people were trapped in cold apartments without functioning heaters or stoves. Elevators stopped running. Some could not leave their homes. Hospitals were affected. Lives were put at risk, quietly and unevenly, behind closed doors.

All of this for a "political" cause. 

What connects these events is not ideology.

It is perception.