Rigorous inquiries into philosophy, culture, science, and the structures shaping modern consciousness.
The Emergence of Metanationals Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy presents a near-future history in which transnational corporations rise to power and assume the roles of sovereign states. The story begins in the mid-2020s and extends to the 22nd century. In this world, traditional nation-states have almost entirely collapsed. Robinson refers to the dominant corporate entities …
“The universal itself is precisely as idiotic as its concrete and individual appearance.” Alenka Zupančič, The Odd One In: On Comedy In Absolute Recoil, Slavoj Žižek offers a Lacanian reading of two Hegelian figures of moral consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the “Beautiful Soul” and the “Law of the Heart,” criticizing Lacan’s condensation of …
Last night, it rained, and the crisp morning air is filled with a hint of petrichor and the aroma of coffee. I am sitting outside on a coffee shop’s veranda on the beautiful open campus where I work. I got here early, and the sun has only just started to rise. The sky is pale, …
Whoever crosses into a new year without reordering attention doesn’t truly advance in time. Such a passage resembles movement, yet functions as a quiet withdrawal from oneself. Time passes, but the subject thins out. What presents itself as renewal often conceals a subtler form of disappearance. The new year produces the illusion of motion even …
Introduction: The Icarus Complex and the Digital Frontier When a discussion on what the future may hold arises, surgical modification, mechanical augmentation, artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and gene splicing inevitably become focal points. Humans have been obsessed with transcending their physical forms and becoming transhuman since the dawn of ancient civilization. This drive—the desire to escape …
These past Christmas days allowed me to read one of the best books I have ever read, and very likely one of those that will accompany me throughout my entire life: Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper. For some time now, I had been thinking about the noise of our internet-driven world. The …
In the preface to Inferno (1976), co-authored with Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle described himself as “a 14th-century liberal.” The phrase, seemingly paradoxical, reflected his Catholic faith and conservative worldview, deeply rooted in the moral and political sensibilities of medieval Christendom, particularly the era of Dante Alighieri, while deliberately distancing himself from the modern liberalism of …
Introduction The proposed research aims to explore the concept of "fragmented knowledge", which is that the notion that knowledge, as it is received, interpreted, and reconstructed over time, is inherently fragmented and distorted. This fragmentation often results in various epistemological fallacies that can affect the development and understanding of new concepts. This study seeks to …
There is a familiar story we tell ourselves about the modern world. It begins with religion as darkness, dogma, and fanaticism; continues with science as light, clarity, and liberation; and ends with a future in which human beings, finally freed from superstition, will understand themselves and the world with objective precision. It is a powerful …
The Tyranny of Styphon’s House Beam Piper’s Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen is a work of speculative fiction that centers its drama on political conflict. The novel follows Calvin Morrison, a Pennsylvania state trooper who is accidentally transported into a parallel timeline. The new world bears a resemblance to late medieval Europe. It has petty kingdoms, …
