The First Quarter Of My Century

The First Quarter Of My Century

Ilya Margolin

© Ilya Margolin, 2026

ISBN 978-5-0069-2897-8

Создано в интеллектуальной издательской системе Ridero

Introduction

This book emerged from a simple yet inevitable desire: to record my own experience of thinking at the moment I turn twenty-five. A quarter of a century is neither a milestone that demands final conclusions nor an age that presupposes definitive judgments. It is merely a point at which it becomes important to understand what has shaped my perspective, which ideas have sustained me, and what conclusions I have drawn from encounters with people, from circumstances, and from my own inner work.

I do not seek to present my thoughts as final, closed, or claiming universal validity. On the contrary, I am fully aware that some of the positions expressed here may change over time. Certain themes may lose their significance; others, by contrast, may acquire new meanings. This is natural: life moves forward, intellectual work continues, and consciousness develops precisely through the ability to revise one’s own foundations.

For this reason, this book is neither a monument to a set of views nor an attempt to secure an authoritative position. It is a fixation of a single moment in life. It is a document of who I am now, at twenty-five, with the volume of experience I have lived through and with the questions to which I have arrived.

The one hundred essays collected here are not a random assortment of reflections. They are the result of a prolonged process of inner selection. In each of these texts, I sought to understand specific forms of human experience: loss, maturation, the fallibility of forecasts, the nature of conflicts, self-deception, generational change, the workings of consciousness, the structure of judgment, motives of behavior, choice, responsibility, conscience, loneliness, the need to belong, and the attempt to understand oneself and others. This is a wide range of themes, but they are united by one thing: they are my personal attempts to comprehend the structure of human life through the prism of real situations, concrete circumstances, and clear philosophical logic.

I do not offer ready-made answers. I offer a practice of thinking. This practice can be accepted, challenged, or continued independently. But it is always directed toward one aim: a sober understanding of reality and an honest conversation with oneself.

What is this book for the reader?

The answer is simple. Each of us passes through similar questions. Age, biography, and circumstances create differences, but the structure of inner work is largely the same for everyone. We try to understand who we are, why we make certain decisions, what shapes us, what destroys us, what helps us, what distorts us, where the source of strength lies, where weakness resides, and what remains when everything external disappears.

This book may be useful to those who are searching for a language for self-analysis. To those who encounter similar experiences and do not know how to think about them. To those for whom clear, consistent arguments matter more than emotional reactions. To those who want to see how one consciousness – neither better nor worse than others – attempts to impose order on what appears to be a chaos of thoughts.

Each essay is not an answer, but a tool. Each text is an invitation to think. It is an attempt to show the path I myself have taken and to pass on the points of support that I have managed to discover.

I do not claim that my position is true. But I am certain that it has been honestly lived. And if it helps someone see their own path more clearly, then the work has not been done in vain.

This book is my way of leaving a trace not in the space of convictions, but in the space of reflection. My way of fixing who I am today, in order later to be able to compare how differently I may think at thirty, forty, or fifty.

This is not a completed project. It is the beginning of a long conversation – with time, with myself, and with everyone who opens these pages.

Welcome to my one hundred thoughts. Welcome to a space where I try to be honest with myself and with the reader.

The Price of Instant Alertness

An essay on the quiet war that contemporary culture of instant pleasure wages against its own consumer. On how the market for energy drinks and stimulants cultivates dependence on the illusion of alertness, disguising societal fatigue behind bright cans and sweet chewing gum. The price of this instant alertness is health, awareness, and self-control.

In an era when advertising promises awakening in three seconds and alertness is sold in an aluminum can, it becomes necessary to ask what this instant energy actually costs. Store shelves are filled with caffeinated chewing gum, taurine-infused ice cream, and energy candies containing additives few can name. What is most striking is not that the market for such products has grown severalfold, but that its target audience has become noticeably younger. Packaging stylized as comics and memes gleams enticingly on display shelves, teenagers film TikTok challenges counting consumed energy drinks, and global brands increasingly launch product lines aimed at children and adolescents.

What drives this market? Why has the culture of instant effect become an integral part of the contemporary world? And what consequences follow from an alertness whose price will be paid far longer than its effect lasts?

We live in an age of fatigue. Fatigue has become chronic, permanent, nearly unavoidable. A society driven by the idea of productivity no longer recognizes the right to rest. A rested person is a suspicious person – either unemployed or lacking initiative. One of the unspoken commandments of our time reads: if you are not tired, you are not working enough. This fatigue is imposed less by objective workload than by the rhythm of culture itself, where the flow of information never stops and where being late means ceasing to exist.

When the body’s natural resources fail to keep pace with this rhythm, products of instant effect come to the rescue. Yet alertness poured into cans and molded into bars is not real energy. It is mobilization – working on credit, a debt that must later be repaid. While classic energy drinks once raised concern because of their contents and possible consequences, the new wave of energy products – ice cream, chewing gum, candy – is perceived as harmless entertainment. Meanwhile, a generation is forming for whom alertness without cause is the norm and rest is a weakness.

The market of instant solutions is not accidental. It arose from the need to compensate for the impossible. The human body is evolutionarily unprepared for modern burdens – informational, emotional, physiological. Rather than changing the rhythm of life and social and labor systems, humanity chose another path: to create the illusion of adaptation. Energy drinks and other stimulants function as social prosthetics, simulating performance. And the further this market develops, the more sophisticated it becomes. If ten years ago energy drinks were associated with adults – extreme athletes, long-haul drivers, students during exam periods, night workers – today their formats and advertising are actively tailored to adolescents and even children.

Manufacturers target younger audiences deliberately. Habit formation at an early age is a reliable way to secure a future consumer. Children and teenagers are more susceptible to marketing triggers, more responsive to packaging, design, and social media advertising. Energy chewing gum shaped like comic-style bombs, ice cream with a «boost effect,» candies «for drive» – all of this is not merely product, but strategy. It instills a belief: alertness can be bought. Energy comes not from within, but from a box. There is no need to care about sleep, nutrition, or routine – taking a «pill» is enough. Once the habit is formed, the adult becomes an ideal consumer of stronger stimulants, from energy drinks to antidepressants.

The illusion of alertness these products provide is their most dangerous feature. Physiologically, most energy products do not add energy so much as temporarily redistribute the body’s resources. Caffeine blocks adenosine receptors in the brain responsible for the sensation of fatigue; taurine and glucuronolactone increase excitation; sugar produces a brief spike in blood glucose. But the effect is deceptive. This is not an increase in strength, but a temporary mobilization of internal reserves. When the effect wears off, fatigue deepens. The body is depleted, the nervous system thins, and the need for stimulation grows. The paradox is clear: the more alertness one buys, the greater the subsequent exhaustion.

Why is the culture of instant effect so appealing? Because it aligns with the dominant social imperative of our time: results matter more than process. We are accustomed to getting everything quickly – fast food, fast dating, fast money, fast likes. Deferred gratification has lost its value. Few are willing to wait, invest, or plan. This culture has become embedded in both consumer behavior and social ethics. Energy products are merely one of its most visible manifestations.

Social pressure demands constant alertness. Fatigue is treated as personal failure. If you are not energized, you are ineffective. This belief is subtly reinforced by corporate culture, influencers, advertising, and even popular psychology. The alert person is successful; the tired one has lost. In this race for artificial vitality, energy products become not just commodities, but social instruments. This is also biopolitics: power exercised through control of physiology. It is easier to govern exhausted yet stimulated people than free and rested ones.

A particularly alarming aspect is the focus on younger audiences. New-generation energy products are no longer just drinks. They are ice cream, gummies, chewing gum, lozenges. Their packaging mimics comics, video games, TikTok memes. Their advertising targets teenage communities. The consumer is shaped from childhood – a person who does not know that alertness is a state, not a product; who becomes accustomed to seeking resources externally rather than internally.

The consequences of this culture are immense. Physiological consequences range from cardiovascular problems to anxiety disorders and insomnia. Psychological consequences include dependence on stimulation, panic attacks, and disrupted sleep. Social consequences involve the formation of a society of perpetual consumers, incapable of sustained, patient effort without external stimulation – people who live from dose to dose, from spike to spike.

Most troubling is how this culture redefines health itself. Health is no longer about inner balance, sleep, nutrition, or physical activity. It is about drive, «charge,» and the ability to work beyond one’s limits. Energy products have become symbols of this new model of health. Whoever is alert is healthy. That this alertness is purchased through stimulants is of little concern.

The price of instant alertness is high. It is not only the health of individuals, but the future of an entire generation – a generation that does not know how to rest, does not recognize natural fatigue, and fears slowing down; a generation taught from childhood that its energy is a commodity and its alertness a service. If energy products were to disappear one day, this society would experience withdrawal, unable to function without external stimulation.

Can anything be changed? Possibly. But doing so would require dismantling the core belief of our time: «everything, immediately.» Restoring the value of delayed results. Learning to acknowledge fatigue. Abandoning the glorification of overwork. Recognizing that the human being is not a perpetual-motion machine. And understanding that genuine alertness is not purchased – it emerges from proper rest, physical movement, intellectual effort, from life itself, not from a can.

When the culture of instant effect ceases to be the norm, energy chewing gum and caffeinated ice cream will disappear as well. Because the social demand for perpetual alertness will vanish. As long as that demand exists, the market for instant alertness will thrive – selling people not energy, but its phantom.

The Society of Fragmented Tasks

A critical reflection on contemporary approaches to time management, with particular attention to the popular Pomodoro method. A symptom of a deeper cultural transformation in which the fragmentation of time replaces natural rhythms of work, substituting freedom with the illusion of efficiency. An essay on the exhaustion of attention, the loss of the capacity for deep concentration, and the transformation of time into a controllable resource.

There is something darkly ironic in the fact that the human being of the twenty-first century – a creature that has proclaimed its liberation from the shackles of history, religion, and ideology – voluntarily binds itself to a timer. A small digital tomato blinking on a laptop screen determines when one is allowed to work and when one may take a breath. The Pomodoro method, conceived at the end of the last century as a tool to combat procrastination, has today become a symbol of a new culture of time: fragmented, discontinuous, and, in essence, profoundly anti-human.

Before the age of machines and factories, work was an organic continuation of life. People hunted, plowed, wove, healed, wrote books – without measuring effort in minutes. Working time was governed by the rhythms of nature, the body, and necessity. Even the medieval craftsman experienced work as a sequence of meditative, continuous processes. The Industrial Revolution was the first to sever human beings from the organic experience of time. From that moment on, the day was divided into shifts, hours, breaks, quotas.

At first, this appeared efficient. But the effect proved deceptive: along with productivity came anxiety. The world split into «work» and «life after work.» Time became a commodity.

The digital age has only intensified this condition. We live in a constant stream of notifications, urgent emails, messages, and tasks. Our attention is scattered. Fear of missing out (FOMO) and the habit of instant response have destroyed the ability to concentrate on a single task for more than a few minutes.

The paradox is striking: the more technologies we create to save time, the less of it we seem to have. We jump from task to task, from notification to notification, like someone who has broken free from chains that he himself forges anew. The Pomodoro method is not a cure for this fever, but a symptom of the disease. Twenty-five minutes of work followed by five minutes of rest appear to be a solution. In reality, this is a crutch for an exhausted, fragmented consciousness. People seek control over time because they have lost it. The timer on the screen replaces personal will. It is no longer you who decides when to work, but a digital signal.

Employers, marketers, and social media algorithms are all interested in our fragmentation. A person incapable of deep immersion is easy to manage. He remains in a state of constant mild busyness, yet never truly engages. This is the ideal consumer and employee. He does not demand conditions for long-term projects. He can be loaded with small tasks, his efficiency measured by the number of Pomodoro intervals per day, bonuses distributed according to the timer.

Pomodoro sells the illusion of freedom – as if you were the master of your time simply because you can measure and organize it. In reality, this is yet another form of external control. A person relinquishes the right to natural fatigue, to sudden inspiration, to monotony, to days when work simply does not happen. Everything is subordinated to the stopwatch.

We lose the capacity for prolonged immersion. Deep work becomes an anomaly. Culture fills with increasingly superficial projects: texts written in three Pomodoros, designs completed in five, decisions made in two. The fatigue produced by fragmented labor is subtle. It does not resemble the tiredness that follows physical work. It is a slow, viscous exhaustion that accumulates over months. We lose wholeness – the ability to work for long stretches with full immersion, the ability to lose track of time while writing, programming, building.

Life turns into a sequence of twenty-five-minute segments. Work becomes a simulation of productivity. Time becomes a commodity.

How can we reclaim time?

The first step is to acknowledge that Pomodoro is not a universal good, that the fragmentation of time is a symptom of a culture of anxiety rather than an instrument of freedom.

The second is to reclaim at least fragments of deep work: to work for hours without a timer, to lose the sense of time, to engage in tasks that do not fit into twenty-five minutes.

In our attempt to control time, we have lost it entirely. The Pomodoro method is a digital overseer that promises freedom but sells dependence. The culture of fragmented tasks is not progress; it is a symptom of a society that has forgotten how to work naturally.

Either we learn to master time again, or we will become its slaves completely.

Emotional Dictatorship

In this essay, I decided to examine one seemingly insignificant detail of our digital lives: instant reactions on Telegram. I have always believed that any opinion has the right to exist until it is drowned in either the approval or the hatred of the majority. And it is precisely here that the most interesting thing begins: a person is capable of changing their attitude toward a thought without ever reflecting on it, simply by seeing a sufficient number of hearts or angry emojis beside it.

I conducted an experiment to test how easily we are governed by those we never see – a crowd without faces, without voices, but with a rapid click. This essay is about a new form of emotional dictatorship that requires neither violence nor commands. It lives in likes. And the most troubling part is that we submit to it voluntarily.

There is in human nature an eternal desire to be part of the crowd, and an equally persistent desire to resist it. In the age of digital media, however, this struggle has taken on new contours. There is no longer a public square where one can shout an opinion. There is no living face to confront. There is only a screen and the signs you see before you encounter the thought itself. This is why ideas today have ceased to be self-sufficient. They exist only within the context of immediate reaction. A like, a flame, a heart – or, conversely, anger, displeasure, a «dislike.» These miniature markers have become a new form of power, a new metaphysics of digital existence.

I conducted a small experiment that revealed a simple truth: we do not so much read messages as we adjust ourselves to the reactions of others. In this everyday digital procedure, one can discern that very absurd society I might have described in another era. Only now the absurdity has been stripped of romance, and the crowd has anonymously clicked «like.»

I selected thirty participants, aged between eighteen and thirty-five. Exactly half were men and half women. They appeared to be ordinary Telegram users. Yet this heterogeneity proved essential.

Ages 18—25 represented a generation of instant emotion – those who live in the mode of «now.» Their reactions form within the first seconds, and their consciousness quickly aligns itself with the mood of the majority.

Ages 26—35 were individuals who present themselves as knowing the price of emotions. Yet it was precisely they who most often experienced inner irritation when the crowd disagreed with their position.

I presented both groups with a series of posts – some neutral, others provocative. In each case, I preassigned emotional reactions: in one version positive, in another negative.

My assumption was that positive reactions could soften even a critically inclined reader, while negative ones would provoke in dissenters a level of aggression extending beyond the digital space. This is how the simplest and most imperceptible form of consciousness management begins.

The topics of the posts were straightforward: the morality of contemporary trends, the right to solitude, the value of power and success. The same ideas were accompanied either by a surge of positive reactions or by a wave of negative ones.

After publication, the focus group was asked to provide feedback. I recorded not only the content of their responses, but also their emotional intensity.

Positive reactions:

78% of participants softened their initially negative attitude toward the idea. Even those who disagreed found «reasonable elements» in it.

Younger participants were more willing to change their opinions, especially those who had not initially engaged in deep reflection.

Negative reactions:

65% of opponents experienced strong irritation – not because of the idea itself, but because of the sensation of «the crowd against me.»

20% withdrew from the discussion entirely.

15% initiated aggressive disputes – not with the author of the idea, but with those who supported it.

Women more often chose silence and withdrawal. Men more often entered open confrontation. The absurdity lay in the fact that the content of the post no longer mattered to anyone. All discussion revolved around the reactions.

This experiment confirmed what is rarely acknowledged in the era of digital romanticism: the human being remains a herd creature. Only now herd behavior is expressed not through a unified shout, but through a unified click. And it is precisely here that a new form of power emerges. It requires neither cruelty nor threats. It is enough to place the right emojis to alter the perception of an idea.

Telegram reactions constitute a simplified model of collective consciousness. It does not demand thought from the individual. It demands agreement.

Can one live in a society where opinion depends on how many likes appear in the first minute after publication? Of course one can – because we already do. And in this new digital reality, freedom is reduced to a choice between a heart and an angry emoji, while truth has ceased to be what is, becoming instead what is supported by the majority.

The Society of Public Selves

The world is no longer tolerant of the silent. It was once possible to remain quiet about oneself, to live without a digital trace. Today, the absence of public presence is almost a cause for suspicion. I have noticed that even in professional, business, or friendly interactions, a person with their own Telegram channel or a visible social media presence immediately inspires greater trust – not because they are more competent or more virtuous, but because they are legible. Their thoughts become a storefront; their posts, a new form of résumé.

We live in an era in which silence is no longer neutral. Silence provokes suspicion. Anonymity is treated as a sign of social deficiency. The absence of a digital footprint borders on a minor crime. And the further this process advances, the more convinced I become: the future belongs to those who speak – or at least to those who create the appearance of speaking. In the twentieth century, a person could conceal their thoughts. One could be a postman, a carpenter, or a minister without anyone having the right to know what was going on in one’s head. Existence did not need to be proven through words. It was enough to work, eat, raise children, and die.

Today, everything is different.

A person’s value is now measured by their public thought. You may be unemployed, nobody, absolutely nobody – but if you have a Telegram channel where you broadcast your doubts, hopes, memes, and literary references to the world every day, people will begin to listen to you. To respect you. Perhaps even to fear you. Because in a society where thought is on display, the one who remains silent appears as a potential threat.