The First Quarter Of My Century

The ethical challenge can be framed thus: if you know more, yet your intervention would destroy what is not yet ready for change, do you have the right to refrain from acting? There is no universal answer. It is always situational. Yet the structural pattern remains: any action grounded in superior knowledge shifts responsibility from the actor to the affected. The flip side of action is a new form of dependency.

This tension is particularly acute in political contexts. Regimes that maintain institutional integrity frequently encounter expert knowledge indicating growing defects. Decisions about intervention are always deferred: intervening disrupts procedure, while non-intervention preserves the illusion of order.

A systemic contradiction emerges: either act prematurely, violating the autonomy of the environment, or wait until consequences become irreversible. Here lies the difficulty of the position – knowledge is not aligned with the legitimacy of action. This is no longer a matter of choice; it is the architecture of unfreedom under awareness.

A human subject in this position experiences not guilt, but ontological displacement: they exist in a reality where the potential for action is spread across time and does not coincide with the moment of necessity. They can see destruction, predict its trajectory, yet any intervention before it is requested will be interpreted as violence.

Thus is formed the zone of tension between knowledge and action. This zone is not ethically neutral. It demands restraint, where the refusal to act is not inactivity, but a means of avoiding the exacerbation of destruction when intervention is misaligned with the measure of the environment. To «be a god» is not to stand above. It is to exist within a temporal frame where information outruns possibility, and where thought has no right to realization unless it aligns with the internal needs of the environment rather than an external correction.

This is a philosophical model, but it describes concrete states: observing what one cannot change because the scale of perception does not match the scale of development. This is not tragedy; it is the structure of contemporary thinking: seeing more, acting less, because action without legitimacy would destroy the conditions for proper development.

Preparation for the Unexpected

This essay examines the phenomenon of preparing for the unforeseen as a fundamental condition for resilient action under uncertainty. The starting point is the observation of animal play – behavior that is not instrumentally necessary, yet significant in the perspective of potential disruption. I show that analogous forms exist in human practice, primarily in childhood games, which cultivate readiness for situations without predetermined rules. In cultures that exclude deviation and demand measurable results, the capacity to act outside of a script disappears. The essay emphasizes the importance of forms that do not produce immediate outcomes but preserve the possibility of continued action when order is disrupted.

The title phrase refers to behavioral patterns observed in animals under conditions that do not demand immediate response. These actions are not instrumentally goal-directed. Their appearance is not linked to an external threat or a direct task. Yet they are not random: they are regular, repeatable, and observable in stable conditions. Behavior that lacks immediate function acquires significance in another dimension – in the context of possible future states.

From a philosophical standpoint, this model of behavior can be defined as non-goal-oriented preparation for the uncertain. It is not directed at a result, because the result cannot be predicted in advance. The environment for which the organism prepares is neither a known danger nor a predetermined task, but a potential disruption, deviation, or anomaly that cannot be classified until it occurs.

Humans possess analogous forms of practice, but their status is fundamentally different. They are confined to childhood, leisure, and informal activity. In childhood games – hide-and-seek, tag, shifting role structures – a person learns to participate in processes whose rules are fluid and outcomes indeterminate. These games do not model specific situations but cultivate behavioral plasticity: the ability to remain engaged amid changing conditions.

In adulthood, such preparation largely disappears from recognized forms of activity. Contemporary social and institutional mechanisms revolve around the planned and measurable. Unstructured participation is not tolerated. Deviation from norms is seen as error; behavior outside the script is treated as a threat to efficiency.

Consequently, most formal systems exhibit low resilience when confronted with the unexpected. They may be informed but remain ineffectual. Preparation for the unforeseen in the humanistic sense is not the expansion of an inventory of tools; it is the cultivation of an operative stance in which participation is possible without predetermined coordinates. This stance cannot be taught through disciplinary instruction; it requires an environment in which uncertainty is permitted – not as a failure, but as a potential condition.

Historically, such forms existed: in ritual practices, play, and trial structures. They were embedded in culture as modes of engagement when the goal was undefined. Today they are relegated to the periphery. Instructions, algorithms, and simulations have replaced them. Yet when confronted with genuinely unpredictable events, none of these substitute forms retain efficacy.

Play, in the strict sense, models action without guarantee of completion. It reproduces not a plot, but the logic of responding to change. This is its significance: when the script is unavailable, play remains the only means of sustaining engagement.

Preparation for the unexpected is possible only where the necessity of behavior that cannot be reduced to goal-directedness is recognized. Play, experience of deviation, and structured uncertainty are elements without which resilience in a changing world cannot be reproduced. Play. Engage in meaningful play.

Love is…

This essay examines love as a form of sustained relation to another person, in which their presence retains significance regardless of circumstances. It is not about feeling or emotion, but about a position in which another is embedded in the structure of one’s actions, decisions, and restraint. Love is understood as a measure through which one maintains another without substitution or expectation of reciprocation.

The word «love» is used casually, yet it points to something difficult to articulate. It appears so often in daily speech that its meaning risks dilution. Yet, whenever it is invoked seriously, it refers not to impulse or desire, but to a person who has entered the sphere of your responsibility – not out of duty, but through an internal shift in measure.

Love is neither coincidence nor confirmation. It is the presence of another person within the boundaries of your choice. Not as an object, not as a cause, not as a response, but as someone whose existence you now must reckon with. Their presence transforms your position – not superficially, but at the level where your life can no longer be imagined without accounting for them.

You may not know exactly what binds you. You may receive no acknowledgment. This changes nothing. If a person remains in your thoughts, in your decisions, in your actions – not out of obligation, but because you cannot do otherwise – that is love. Without romance. Without protection. Without a guarantee of reciprocity.