22.05.25. LifeAt the crossroads...
The title expression most likely sounds like an ad hoc comment describing the effect of the first circular of Polish presidential elections 4 days ago. And I guess it's hard to disagree with that vision. Here, however, it is worth noting that present the state of a circumstantial teardrop in the planet around us besides has a much broader dimension and is presented as a consequence of the “end of the West”. But then...
First, a fewer words about the reading that can be associated with the first option of seeing “life at a crossroads”, that is, our political local ad hoc. A fresh appeared just before the election James ŻulczykCandidate (Book planet Publishing, Warsaw 2025). It's a political thriller. His text was preceded by the following note:
The fresh you will read populate characters that you may associate with real characters from public life, and any of the events described in it may be associated with the events you have heard about in the media. Candidate But it's fiction, fantasy. Nothing that was described in it truly happened.
I wrote this fresh due to the fact that I'm curious in power.Most and I'm curious in the emptiness of fiction that power generates only to sanction its existence (distinguished – sk).
The associations suggested by Zulczyk turn out to be absolutely apparent erstwhile reading. The fact that we are inactive dealing with literary creation is besides clear. Who would look for a solid review of the fresh – let us add by the way – will find it easy online (see. Justyna Sobolewska, Manchurian candidate, "Politics" of 15.05.2025). The fresh story, according to what the cover note says, is in short the following:
Poland, day of the second circular of presidential elections. 3rd in the morning. The president, moving for a second term, can't sleep. Everything seems to be fine. The president leads the polls. His position is safe. But something's wrong. The president feels it in his heart. He needs to talk to his wife.
At the same time, the compromised Reporter puts everything on 1 card. His only chance of regaining his occupation and dignity is to uncover materials that can undermine the political order of the past.
The paths of both men will intersect within the next fewer hours at the interface of truth, manipulation and the desperate request to save themselves.
From this illustration it is evident that heroes Candidate They're politicians. They are defined not by names but by roles and functions. In general, information media are besides crucial in this world. The main character here is Reporter. The Journal, Weekly, as well as the Barbell and the National Gazette will besides appear. Associations with non-literary reality do not present peculiar difficulties. In the context of present Entries the most important, however, is the final declaration The beetle from his above-quoted preliminary note, or suggestion, that those who want to gain power and rule, drive mainly their own ambitions and that for the usage of these efforts they construct de facto A fiction that hides the void. The fresh in any case encourages reflection on this subject.
If we go back to the “end of the West”, we would gotta ask what it actually means, that is: how to specify this West, assuming that it is not just the western end of Europe, what this end is and how specified diagnoses gotta do with the concept and effects of globalisation. For example, a Romanian student is considering specified cases Lucian Boia in a tiny book entitled End of the West? Towards tomorrow's world (Trans. Bogumił Luft, PIW, Warsaw 2024). Boia starts like this:
This is how it was meant to be: we live at a crossroads. This era fascinates or confuses, depending on the way it is perceived and the adaptability of individual people. A communicative closes and another 1 draws. It's not the end of the world, but it's something that reminds him, in any case: A certain world. At the time of the West, a certain planet delves like mists of a fresh one.
Similar ends of the world, followed by fresh beginnings, have already occurred over centuries, but never to specified an degree and with specified intensity. The collapse of the Roman Empire provides comparisons of the most imaginative. At that time a large civilization of rich tradition collapsed, and in its ruins the mediate Ages grew, which in turn opened the way to modern civilization. But this trial lasted forever. Now the ellipse of past spins incomparably faster. And the transformations include the full planet (End..., p. 56).
In contrast, Boia concludes his consideration of the observed cultural changes with the following remark:
We know nothing about the future [...] Or “we know” so many things that conflict with each another that it is as if we know nothing. [...] To what degree the Western planet (or the European planet in a broad sense) will break distant from its past, to what degree another cultures will modify or obscure it. We know precisely what we can lose, but we have no thought what we can gain (which does not necessarily mean a negative scenario; as well as a fresh synthesis of civilization, not worse or even better than today). [...] In the western melting pot, Greek-Roman intellectual heritage and the Christian imagination of the planet melted, as well as many another ingredients coming from everywhere, including the muslim planet and far distant China. The consequence was a rational synthesis, capable of transformation and conquest, which embedded humanity in its current structures. Of course, the West has besides done many bad things that I will not list due to the fact that others zealously care about. Anyway, it's not about the Western planet being humbled before Africa just due to the fact that it utilized to exploit it, especially before China just due to the fact that the Chinese are producing a lot and inexpensive today. The only chance for the West, if it does not want to accelerate its decline and contribute to its disappearance, is to regain religion in itself and find the large ideals that erstwhile revived its existence. However, I am not certain that this will happen (End..., pp. 167-169).
In the Polish translation, Boi's book was published last year, but her translator, Bogumił Luft, draws the attention of readers that it was published in Romania in 2013. This means that erstwhile this text was created, Boia
he did not know a fewer crucial events that followed and to which he could not possibly relate. Neither to the pandemic that has shaken the planet economy, nor to the sharp migration crisis that began in 2015 and continues, nor to the worsening of the climate crisis, nor to the dynamics of the challenge from militant Islam, nor, in particular, to Russia's aggression towards Ukraine, which has discovered before the planet the unsurprising strength of Western Ukrainian dreams and the amazing determination of the West (including the European Union) to defend Western values. And yet Lucian Boi’s consideration does not go out of date (End..., Word from the translator, pp. 171-172).
From the position of 2023, all the events and phenomena mentioned by Luft and many others are analysed in the context of the West's conclusion, the author of the book, which was published about 3 weeks ago, that is, at the end of April. Speaking of extraordinary work Those days. Present ReportMartína Caparrósa (for example Marta Szafranska-Brandt, Literary Publishing House, Krakow 2025).
The author is simply a writer and a writer. He lives in Spain, he's from Argentina. another books were published in Poland. More information – both about the author and about his work – will be found by curious people in the April issue of “Books. Magazine for Reading’ (pp. 10-15), in the text entitled Capital assessment is over. With Martín CaparrósArtur Domosławski talks. The title of the signal conversation clearly indicates that Caparrósa is not so much curious in the “end of the West”, but even more so – the end of the “anthropocene” referred to by him as “capitalocene”. In general, Caparrós divides the planet into the “world of the poor”, which inhabits people permanently experiencing hunger and the “world of the Rich”, inhabited by those for whom profit counts. Hence, the word "capitalocene".
Such a division is besides described at work Those days, a It is no longer a ‘small book’ as in the case of Boi, but a real brick. Its unusualness is due to the application of a certain thought experiment. The “our times” are analysed in it as “the times” by a historian surviving a 100 years after our present day. In 2121, she was commissioned to prepare an appropriate past book. She's the 1 representing the peculiar one. Present Report24 short essays. Each of them contains hard data and analysis of events and phenomena characteristic of a given issue. Among the issues discussed are the number of people in different parts of the world, the problem of democracy, the issue of migration, the treatment of women and the current models of life, shopping, things, fashion or the operation of digital corporations. The analyses cover the past including 2023. Their complement is all time a short communicative about any symptomatic for the presented subject of individual history. Among these single characters are, for example, Joseph Ratzinger, Javier Valdez, a writer who was most likely murdered on behalf of a drug boss, Vladimir Putin, a female who secretly learned to read against the laws of her culture, Lionel Messi or Zhang Yinming – the creator of TikTok.
The last, twenty-fifth chapter deals with ideas about the future and illusions that a given life form is eternal. These ideas can be driven by fear of the unknown or linked to affirmative expectations. A lot about politics depends on it, and everyone needs to be aware of it.
You read the Caparrós work well and it is worth studying. besides representatives of the Last Generation, which is now much to be said about, would find in it material to think about, including thesis on slogans spread out of fear of the planet. The thesis, which says that the planet will survive, has already survived various climatic disasters. Rather, it is to take care of the conditions of human endurance against climate change. The tongue is not innocent...
The question of "how to live at crossroads" inactive seems to give a communicative from almost 2 and a half 1000 years ago – the communicative of Socrates. It has been mentioned here many times. Daily applicable Philosophyof 20.01.2022, Fundamental Questions of 25.01.2024, On Deglobalisationof 7.03.2024 and Making You Think of 2.01.2025).
Socrates didn't compose anything, and fresh works about him are inactive coming up. For example, there's a book in our bookstore for a fewer days. Krzysztof Lapiński, philosopher and translator from the University of Warsaw. Title: Smartest. Socrates' biography (Agora Publishing House, Warsaw 2025).
Everything we know about Socrates comes from the second and subsequent hands. Of course, Łapinski besides outlines this biography, utilizing dramas, primarily from comedy showing Socrates by his contemporaries. It is crucial that it besides presents the cultural context with which Socrates lived. We read:
The age in which he lived was remarkable. In the shortest and most accurate terms, Ernest Renan described her erstwhile he viewed the ruins of Acropolis, utilizing the phrase “Greek wonder”. It reflects how uniquely the creative energy of artists, thinkers and politicians was in Athens. large times after the Persian Wars, the regulation of Pericles and his legacy have imprinted an unbroken mark on the next millenniums. In fact, to this day, we live partially in those Athens, erstwhile we go to vote and request freedom of speech, erstwhile we deal with theatre and art, erstwhile myths talk to us and erstwhile a doctor puts diagnosis in a hypocratic way. erstwhile we learn mathematics, grammar, logic and rhetoric. erstwhile we anticipate rationality in life and call for moderation and balance. All of this is simply a continuation or a contradiction with the achievements of the Greeks of Socrates times.
In this respect, this book differs from many another papers on Socrates, in which the Athenian philosopher, deprived of a certain background, is suspended in a vacuum like in comedy Clouds Aristotle, where he swings under the ceiling. For it is not apparent how it came to be that this shrewd man, who wrote nothing, did not preach clear views, taught systematically or was not an influential figure in political life, gained specified popularity in Athens. Let us add that he acted in an highly demanding and critical environment, which had advanced intellectual expectations and where he had to face constantly influential competitors (Smartest... pp. 17-18).
A small further:
This book can be treated as a map of Socrates' fate. However, in order not to get lost in it among the many ways, let us take a compass to aid guide us through the full story. I believe that the roles of specified a compass can be played by 2 fundamental statements that readers and readers should constantly remember erstwhile they read about Socrates.
The first is in Gorgias Plato, where Socrates says it is better to experience evil on his own than to do it to individual else.
The second is the belief that the fact should be pursued jointly, by practicing a dialog which is not a fight, but a combination of forces in search of the best solution (Smartest...( p. 22).
The compass proposed by Lapiński would surely be worth utilizing not only erstwhile reading his book. With respect to “life at crossroads”, 1 might add that Socrates doctrine as a explanation was transformed into practice. "As if he wanted to say that views should not only be preached but besides realized" (Smartest..., p. 26). This concerns politicians, of course, but besides the request for a peculiar reflection on how to organise universal education, if, as usual in the finals of these Entries Take on the school problem. It is not about repeating another people's wisdom that should come down most, but about creating the conditions for conversation, that is, formulating problems, asking questions and trying to find the fact together by practicing dialogue...
