There are moments in life when two worlds collide so sharply that you are left standing somewhere between them, unsure which one is real. That is how I felt today after speaking with my cousin, Mykhailo, in the Carpathian Mountains. One moment I was in my quiet house in Exeter, listening to the usual British chorus of complaints and hypotheticals; the next, I was looking through his phone camera at a life shaped by war, illness, and the simple struggle to endure.

From a Carpathian mountain top, the world looks different. Not because the mountains are high, but because life there strips away illusions. Everything is pared back to what matters: family, faith, land, and the strength of community. When you stand in that world — even for a moment — and then return to Britain, the contrast is almost unreal.

Mykhailo showed me around his smallholding, just as he did when I visited years ago. The cows, the chickens, the potatoes and vegetables that keep them alive. Nothing wasted, nothing taken for granted. Life there is still simple and basic in a way that Britain left behind long ago. Yet there is a dignity in it, a resilience that has carried the Hutsul people through empires, poverty, Soviet rule, and now war.

And then came the news about Katya.

It appears she has terminal cancer. The doctors say an operation will not help. Treatment must be paid for, and they have so little as it is. I remember her kindness to me when I visited — the warmth, the hospitality, the quiet strength. Now she faces suffering with a courage that seems almost beyond human. Mykhailo said something that stayed with me long after the call ended:
“Sometimes people are taken from us because their suffering becomes too much, even when they are the best among us.”

It is a hard truth, spoken without bitterness, only sadness.

After ending the call, I turned on the radio here in Britain. A phone‑in discussion about whether young people would fight for this country. Polls, opinions, arguments. People asking what Britain has ever done for them. People treating war as a theory, a distant possibility, something to be weighed like a consumer choice.

The contrast could not have been sharper.

There, war is a neighbour.
Here, war is a debate.
There, people endure because they must.
Here, people question because they can.

I do not blame anyone for this. It is natural. We compare ourselves only to those around us. We complain because we are free to complain. It is almost a birthright in this country. And I am as guilty of it as anyone. But deep down, I know how lucky I have been. The NHS has saved my life more than once. I have lived in peace. I have grown old without fear. These are not small things.

My Father used to say that people usually only learn when it is too late. I fear he was right. Peace allows societies to fragment, to become collections of individuals, each with their own grievances. War, terrible as it is, has a way of reminding people that they belong to one another. I am not praising war — far from it. I am saying only that war reveals what peace allows us to forget.

Speaking with Mykhailo brought all this home to me. His world is shaped by necessity, mine by choice. His community is held together by faith and family, mine by habit and convenience. And yet, in his quiet voice, in his sadness for Katya, in his simple courage, I heard something universal — something that crosses borders and languages.

In the end, courage is the one thing we must all have, whether we like it or not.

If I write this for anyone, it is for him. To show that someone here, in peaceful England, sees him, remembers him, and cares.

Погляд з карпатської вершини

Бувають у житті моменти, коли два світи стикаються так різко, що стоїш десь між ними й не знаєш, який із них справжній. Саме так я відчував себе після розмови з моїм кузеном Михайлом у Карпатах. Ще хвилину тому я сидів у своєму тихому домі в Ексетері, слухаючи звичний британський хор скарг і гіпотетичних міркувань; а вже наступної миті дивився через камеру його телефона на життя, сформоване війною, хворобою і простою боротьбою за виживання.

З карпатської вершини світ виглядає інакше. Не тому, що гори високі, а тому, що життя там знімає всі ілюзії. Усе зводиться до найголовнішого: родини, віри, землі та сили громади. Коли хоч на мить побуваєш у тому світі, а потім повертаєшся до Британії, контраст здається майже нереальним.

Михайло показував мені своє господарство, так само як і тоді, коли я був у них. Корови, кури, картопля, й овочі, що дозволяють їм вижити. Нічого зайвого, нічого марного. Життя там і досі просте й скромне так, як у Британії вже давно не буває. Але в цьому є гідність, стійкість, яка допомогла гуцулам пережити імперії, злидні, радянську владу, а тепер і війну.

А потім прозвучала новина про Катю.

У неї невиліковний рак. Лікарі кажуть, що операція не допоможе. За лікування треба платити, а в них і так майже нічого немає. Я пам’ятаю її доброту до мене під час мого візиту — тепло, гостинність, тиху силу. Тепер вона зустрічає страждання з мужністю, що здається майже надлюдською. Михайло сказав слова, які довго не виходили з моєї голови: «Іноді людей забирають, бо їхні страждання стають надто великими, навіть якщо це найкращі серед нас».

Це важка правда, сказана без гіркоти — лише з сумом.

Після розмови я ввімкнув радіо тут, у Британії. Телефонна лінія: чи стали б молоді люди захищати свою країну. Опитування, думки, суперечки. Люди питають, що Британія зробила для них. Люди говорять про війну як про теорію, далеку можливість, щось, що можна зважувати, як товар у магазині.

Контраст не міг бути різкішим.

Там війна — сусід. Тут війна — дискусія. Там люди тримаються, бо мусять. Тут люди ставлять під сумнів, бо можуть.

Я нікого за це не засуджую. Це природно. Ми порівнюємо себе лише з тими, хто поруч. Ми скаржимося, бо маємо свободу скаржитися. Це майже наша національна риса. І я сам не кращий. Але в глибині душі я знаю, наскільки мені пощастило. NHS не раз рятувала мені життя. Я жив у мирі. Я старію без страху. Це не дрібниці.

Мій батько казав, що люди вчаться лише тоді, коли вже пізно. Боюся, він мав рацію. Мир дозволяє суспільству розпадатися на окремі частини, ставати зібранням індивідів, кожного зі своїми образами. Війна, якою б жахливою вона не була, нагадує людям, що вони належать одне одному. Я не вихваляю війну — зовсім ні. Я лише кажу, що війна відкриває те, про що мир дозволяє забути.

Розмова з Михайлом нагадала мені про це. Його світ сформований необхідністю, мій — вибором. Його громада тримається на вірі й родині, моя — на звичці й зручності. Але в його тихому голосі, у смутку за Катею, у його простій мужності я почув щось універсальне — те, що долає кордони й мови.

У кінці кінців мужність — це те, що мусить мати кожен із нас, хочемо ми того чи ні.

Якщо я пишу це для когось, то для нього. Щоб показати, що тут, у мирній Англії, є людина, яка бачить його, пам’ятає про нього і щиро переймається.

The Falklands have appeared in the news again, and with them an unexpected consequence: a forgotten chapter of my own life has resurfaced. It’s hard to believe it was forty‑four years ago. I was a young man then, and in a place no one would expect — Kiev, in Soviet Ukraine.

Why I was there is a story in itself. Partly it was my background: both my parents were Ukrainian, and I had always felt a pull toward the country they left behind. But there was another reason too, one that stung at the time. The British government had recently introduced new security rules that barred people like me — with two Ukrainian parents — from working in certain areas of public service. I had just graduated, full of plans, only to discover that my heritage disqualified me. It felt like a door slamming shut.

So I went to the Soviet Union. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. Perhaps I was looking for a sense of belonging, or perhaps I was simply reacting to the feeling of rejection at home. In any case, there I was in Kiev, living in a strange mixture of curiosity, ambivalence, and cultural dislocation.

And then, toward the end of my stay, the Falklands war erupted.

I was shocked. It seemed absurd that such a conflict could happen in the late twentieth century. People asked my opinion, but I had almost no access to reliable news — just the occasional BBC World Service broadcast, fading in and out. I couldn’t form a steady picture of what was happening or why. All I knew was that something extraordinary was unfolding, and I was watching it from behind the Iron Curtain.

At first, the Soviet officials around me tried to maintain a polite neutrality. My uncle even looked up the islands on his Soviet map and pointed out the word printed next to them: spornie — “disputed.” But it didn’t take long for the propaganda machine to warm up. Soon Britain was being denounced as a neo‑colonialist aggressor, and Argentina was cast as the heroic anti‑imperialist underdog. I remember being shown a propaganda film that was so one‑sided it made my stomach turn.

By that point, I was already wilting from my time in the country — the atmosphere, the distortions, the constant ideological pressure. The Falklands coverage was almost a final straw. And then something unexpected happened. Instead of distancing me from Britain, the propaganda had the opposite effect. I began to feel a renewed sense of connection, even pride. Not because Britain was perfect — I knew its flaws all too well — but because, in the end, it was home. And from Kiev, of all places, I could suddenly see that more clearly than ever.

The final twist came in May, when the British victory was announced. It happened to coincide with the Soviet Union’s own Victory Day celebrations — Den’ Pobediy, the commemoration of the defeat of Nazi Germany. I walked into the office of my Soviet mentors, raised my fist, and declared, “Den’ Pobediy!” But I wasn’t referring to 1945. I meant the Falklands.

They knew exactly what I meant. They couldn’t say a word.

Looking back now, it feels like a small, strange, intensely personal moment — a collision of identity, history, and youthful defiance. And perhaps that’s why it has stayed with me. It was the moment I realised that, despite everything, Britain was my home.

And as for my friend, Bob, back in the UK, who wrote to me sporadically through the unreliable Soviet post, his summary of the whole affair still makes me smile. He called it a “rum do.” Try translating that into Russian!

Looking back, that cry of “Den’ Pobediy!” was probably one of my finest moments. It summed up something essential about me: a tendency toward mischief, a taste for the absurdities of life, and a habit of taking the occasional pot‑shot at authority — but always obliquely, never crudely. The sort of remark that seems harmless on the surface, yet lands with a quiet thud of meaning. Even now, I can still see the expressions on their faces. They understood perfectly. And that, I admit, gave me no small satisfaction.

Footnote: A Small Act of Entomological Dissent. The First Crack in the Soviet System.

There is one more small episode from my time in Kiev that deserves mention, if only because it still makes me smile. In the meeting room where we Western students occasionally gathered with Soviet officials, there stood a bust of Lenin — just his head on a plinth, gazing sternly across the room. One day, feeling particularly fed up with the atmosphere of ideological earnestness, I found a dead fly on the windowsill and, without much thought, placed it delicately on Lenin’s bald pate.

It sat there for days.

No one noticed — or if they did, they said nothing. The moment only came to light later, when an American friend, looking at an official photograph, spotted a tiny black dot on Lenin’s head and marvelled that a fly would dare land there. I had to confess that it hadn’t landed at all; I had put it there. He was astonished. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had anyone caught me in this act of microscopic subversion. Perhaps there was a clause in the Soviet penal code against defacing public statuary, especially of the great leader. But I needn’t have worried. I got away with it.

And if the Soviet Union began to wobble soon after, who’s to say my little fly didn’t play its part?

The real subversion wasn’t placing the fly there, but knowing that no one dared acknowledge it.

Final Reflection: Between Worlds

Looking back, I realise that much of what I saw in Kiev — the propaganda, the silences, the absurdities, the tiny acts of mischief — made sense to me precisely because I stood between worlds. My Ukrainian relatives, who lived inside that system, couldn’t see it from the angle I did. My friends in the West, no matter how well informed, couldn’t quite grasp the texture of life behind the Iron Curtain. I occupied a narrow strip of ground between the two, able to see both perspectives yet not fully claimed by either. It was an odd place to stand, but it gave me a clarity I’ve carried ever since.

A small parable of our times

There I was, late on a Saturday evening, drifting between thoughts about ideology, AI, German history, the nature of consciousness, and the meaning of life — when there came a knock at the door.

A knock at 8.30pm. On a Saturday. In St Thomas.

I opened one eye, wondering whether it was an emergency, a neighbour in distress, or perhaps the universe sending me a sign. Instead, standing at my gate was a small, slightly forlorn woman holding a briefcase at an angle that suggested both “Authority” and “Please don’t shout at me.” Her head was cocked to one side in a way that instantly reminded me of the pigeons I’d seen earlier in town — the ones who hover hopefully near your sandwich, waiting for a crumb of human kindness.

She addressed me by name, apologised for the hour, and then — with the earnestness of someone who had clearly rehearsed this line — asked whether I agreed that Kemi was doing a wonderful job. It was only then, still half‑asleep and without my tooth plate, that the penny dropped: I was being canvassed.

At 8.30pm. On a Saturday. By a woman barely taller than my gate, standing like a hopeful pigeon with a briefcase.

What followed was a surreal exchange involving weeds, public conveniences, and my attempt to speak without opening my lips. But the moment itself — that knock interrupting my reflections on the fate of ideology — felt like a perfect snapshot of the times we live in: the examined life colliding with the unexamined world.

“The Weeds, the Loos, and the Pigeon‑Postured Canvasser”

Once I’d recovered from the shock of seeing a pigeon‑postured emissary of democracy at my gate, she launched into the standard script. Potholes, she said, were a major concern in the area. This is now compulsory in British politics — the pothole has become the national symbol of decline, the secular equivalent of original sin.

But as I no longer have a car, potholes are not high on my personal hierarchy of needs. I told her so, trying to speak without revealing the absence of my tooth plate, which gave the whole exchange the air of a man attempting to negotiate municipal policy through ventriloquism.

She looked momentarily lost, as if the briefing notes had not prepared her for a constituent who did not drive. So I glanced across the road for inspiration and saw the neighbour’s wall, sprouting weeds like a botanical uprising. And out it came:

“Weeds. That is the problem that most concerns me.”

Her face lit up. Weeds! A breakthrough! A real issue she could sink her teeth into — unlike me, who at that moment had no teeth to sink anywhere.

She nodded vigorously, as if I had just revealed a deep structural flaw in the British constitution. “Oh yes, weeds,” she said. “They are a terrible problem.”

I could see her mentally filing it away in the briefcase: St Thomas — plagued by weeds.

Then came the second question: “Anything else?”

By this point I was becoming acutely aware of my bladder. I am, as they say, in that demographic. So I mentioned the lack of public conveniences in town — many having been shut down over the years. This, too, delighted her. Her eyes widened with the joy of a canvasser who has finally found a talking point that fits the demographic before her.

“For someone such as yourself,” she said, with the tact of a well‑meaning but slightly clumsy niece, “how do you manage?”

I explained that being on a bike, I could fly back down the hill in minutes if nature called. This seemed to reassure her. She nodded solemnly, as if I had revealed a personal resilience strategy worthy of a government white paper.

And the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I realised how extraordinarily lucky she had been to knock on my door. Anywhere else in St Thomas at 8.30pm on a Saturday and her fate might have been very different.

Had she tried:

• a house full of football fans mid‑match
• a house waiting for a pizza delivery
• a house deep into Britain’s Got Talent
• a house with a dog that treats doorbells as a personal insult

…she might have found herself retreating down the path at speed, briefcase held over her head like a shield. In some parts of town, she would have been fortunate to escape with the briefcase intact, let alone her morale or dignity.

And then it struck me: in other parts of the world, a knock at the door at 8.30pm on a Saturday might mean something far more dramatic. The local mafia coming to collect their weekly cut. The police arriving to frame you for the neighbourhood murder. Someone desperate, seeking refuge from deportation. But here, in Britain, I get a lady with a briefcase doing a passable impression of a pigeon. Only in Britain.

But she came to me — half‑asleep, tooth plate missing, bladder protesting — and still received a polite conversation about weeds and public conveniences. I suspect her campaign manager knew exactly what they were doing. I was the “safe constituent, who does not bite type” the one unlikely to bark, slam, or threaten to insert the briefcase into the nearest dimension.

As I closed the door behind her, I stood for a moment in the hallway, wondering whether I had dreamt the whole thing. The surreal timing, the pigeon‑postured earnestness, the weeds, the public loos, the briefcase held like a relic of authority — it all felt like a scene from a play written by someone who had only a passing acquaintance with reality.

And yet, on deeper reflection, the more it seemed to capture something essential about the age we live in. A time when the great narratives have dissolved, when politics has become a kind of travelling theatre, and when the boundary between public life and private life has thinned to the point of absurdity. A time when a man can be sitting quietly, contemplating ideology, AI, German history, consciousness, and the meaning of life — only to be jolted back into the world by a knock at the door and a question about potholes.

The lady herself may vanish from the statistics after the election. Her briefcase may return to whatever cupboard it came from. Her pigeon‑like posture may never again grace my gate. But she will not be lost to time. Not while I have a garden chair, a German history book, and a website on which to record the small, strange parables of our age.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I really must find the loo.

This is, in the plainest sense, a post about a post. Yet I hope you’ll find, as I did, that even the most ordinary things can become signposts to something higher.

It began, as these things often do, with something small: a rotted door post at the back of the house.

A trivial repair on paper, but not in feeling. A weakened frame is a weakened sense of safety, and after weeks of shifty voices, inflated quotes, and the slow erosion of trust that comes from dealing with people who see you as a mark rather than a person, the post had become a quiet source of unease.

I had almost resigned myself to the usual run of cowboys when a young local man named Alex arrived.

He was younger than most in his line of work, quietly spoken, calm, and carrying a van full of tools that looked less like equipment and more like extensions of his mind. A mini band saw he assembled on the pavement. Every kind of cutter, chisel, and drill. The sort of kit only someone who cares would invest in.

He assessed the job, quoted a very fair price, and then — despite being fully booked until July — offered to do it that very afternoon.

And he did.

Not quickly. Not grudgingly. But with the kind of patient attention that belongs to people who take pride in doing things properly.

He refashioned the batten again and again, shaving it, adjusting it, checking the fit, not because he had to, but because he wanted it right.

When I apologised for the difficulty, he smiled and said he enjoyed the problem‑solving. How many tradesmen say that?

A Byzantine Aside

When he told me his name was Alex, my mind — in the Byzantine labyrinth it has become — immediately leapt to Alexius Komnenos, the emperor who once inherited a realm in disarray and set about restoring what had decayed. Not that a Byzantine ruler had suddenly appeared on Buller Road with a mini band saw, but the association wasn’t entirely inappropriate. After my Father died, the house passed to me in a state that could only be described as an inherited mess, and I’ve been on the strategic defensive ever since — leaking roof on one flank, collapsing fence on another, rotting posts breaching the perimeter. And here was a young man, calm and capable, restoring order to a small corner of my world with a seriousness and care the emperor might have envied.

He fetched the wood — despite fuel prices rising. He painted the finished post. He swept up every shaving. He took away the rotten timber. He charged less than agreed, because, as he put it, “not everyone has a lot.”

And then, in the quiet way people sometimes reveal themselves, he told me a little of his life.

A father who left a paid job for an unpaid one because it helped people in alms houses. A friend whose dog‑walking business he supported by designing an advert and placing it in the local magazine. A gut condition brought on by stress. Two small tattoos hidden beneath his watch strap — symbols he looks at when times are hard, reminders never to despair.

A young man who has possibly come up from a dark place, and chosen decency rather than bitterness.

A rare bird.

And as I watched him work, I realised the post he was repairing was no longer just a post.

It had become something else — a small, sturdy monument to the Good.

Not the good of philosophy books, not the good of sermons or slogans, but the good that manifests quietly in the way a person behaves when no one is watching.

The good that doesn’t preach, but simply is.

After years of dealing with people who put money before people, Alex reminded me that goodness still exists — not in grand gestures, but in the careful refashioning of a batten, the fair price, the swept pavement, the hidden tattoo, the ethos inherited from a father who believed in service.

And so the post now stands at the back of my house, straight and solid, painted and true.

But for me, it will always be more than timber.

It will be a reminder that the good is real, that it still walks among us, and that sometimes — when you most need it — it arrives in a battered van with sliding doors and a young man named Alex.

A gentle guide to slowing down while the world gallops past

There comes a point in life — somewhere around 67, give or take a few dents and scratches — when you realise the world has become a horse in full gallop. Everyone is rushing: rushing to buy things, rushing to build things, rushing to comment on things, rushing to be outraged by things. The whole planet seems to be spinning faster and faster, as if someone has quietly turned up the speed without asking permission.

But then I sit down at my modelling table.

And the world… stops.

Not metaphorically. Not poetically. It simply stops. Time flattens out, the noise fades, and the only thing that exists is the part in front of me — a wing root, a canopy frame, a tiny piece of plastic that demands nothing except my full attention. In that moment, the world ceases its mad rotation and becomes still.

I sometimes think everyone should experience that feeling, even for a minute. If they did, perhaps we’d all treat the world — and each other — with a little more care. Perhaps we’d stop galloping and start walking again.

I once knew a Korean diplomat at university. His friend told me, with a mixture of admiration and disbelief, that he could take half an hour to peel an orange. Half an hour! At the time I thought it was eccentric. Now I understand it completely. He wasn’t peeling an orange — he was refusing to be rushed by the world’s tempo.

Perhaps his Buddhist religion or philosophy had something to do with it:

He was living at the speed of attention.

That’s what modelling has become for me. Not a race to finish, not a competition, not a stash‑building exercise. Just a slow, attentive act. A way of being present. A way of reminding myself that life is finite, precious, and best lived one careful brushstroke at a time.

Each model I make now, I treat as if it might be my last — not in a morbid way, but in a grateful way. A way that says: I’m still here. I’m still making something. I’m still paying attention.

And if the hobby has become a galloping horse, then perhaps someone needs to stand by the fence and say, “You know… you don’t need a thousand parts. You don’t need to build hundreds of kits. You don’t need to rush. You can just slow down, breathe, and enjoy the feeling of making something with care.”

A Note on Three Kits Found in a Hospice Shop

Not long ago, I found three kits in the local Hospice shop — an Italeri 1/48 Sabre, an ICM Spitfire, and a Red Arrows Hawk. Nothing exotic, nothing rare, nothing engineered to within an inch of its life. Just simple, honest kits from a quieter era, before the hobby ballooned into mega‑monster monstrosities of parts, stress, and over‑engineering.

They reminded me of what modelling used to be: a few sprues, a handful of parts, and the promise of a weekend well spent.

And one of them — the Sabre — did something more. It took me straight back to the child I was, spinning around in St Thomas Park with a little Sabre I’d found, pretending it was flying. I can still feel the weight of it in my hand, still remember the joy of that moment. Funny how a single shape, a single nose ring, can carry a lifetime of memory.

Those three kits felt like a quiet message: Slow down. Enjoy this. Remember why you started.

They’re not just models. They’re reminders of a simpler rhythm — one worth returning to.

Addendum: Three Small Summits

And since every philosophy benefits from a practical footnote, here are mine — the three modest peaks I still hope to climb:

1. A true natural‑metal finish, with panels that shift subtly in the light.
2. A perfect gloss coat, smooth as still water.
3. A delicate Italian squiggle or dot camouflage, confident and alive.

If I reach even one of them, I’ll feel as though I’ve sat on a small summit for a moment, looking around, quietly satisfied.

And perhaps that’s all any of us can hope for: a few small summits, climbed slowly, with care.

The other day, I had someone clear the mass of weeds that had overrun my small back garden. On Easter Sunday, I stood outside with a cup of coffee, looking over the newly turned soil, when I noticed a greyish shape half-emerging from the earth. I bent down, and immediately recognised it: an Airfix 1/72 scale figure – a German soldier from the First World War, kneeling, rifle raised.

Time had not been kind to him. The tip of his Mauser Gewehr 98 carbine was gone, and soon after I picked him up, the spike of his helmet fell away. He must have lain there for fifty years or more, buried, forgotten, and now – quite suddenly – returned, as if blinking in the light, into a world entirely changed.

I felt, almost at once, that this small figure – whom I named Feldwebel Hermann – might stir something beyond myself. So I took a photograph and shared it, along with the story of his discovery. What followed surprised me. Messages began to arrive from across the world: Bavaria, Australia, England – each carrying echoes of childhood. Stories of beaches and gardens, of lost toys and rediscovered ones; of small battles fought in sandpits and fields; of plastic soldiers, Matchbox cars, farm animals, and the quiet, imaginative worlds children once inhabited so completely.

It became clear, very quickly, that Hermann was no longer simply mine.

He had become a point of recognition.

Not because of what he is – but because of what he carries.

A fragment of plastic, no larger than a thumbnail, and yet within him something vast seemed to reside: a store of memory, of time, of shared experience that transcended place and language, something close to what Carl Jung might have called a shared symbolic layer of experience – not abstract, but deeply lived.

In him, people did not see a soldier so much as themselves – children again, absorbed in play, in a world that felt whole, continuous, and unbroken.

It is a curious thing, that in an age of boundless communication, it should be something so small, so ordinary, that draws people together. We are surrounded by devices that promise connection, yet so often leave us dispersed – each in our own stream of images and impressions, our own fragment of the present, endlessly renewed and just as quickly forgotten.

And yet Hermann endured.

For decades he lay beneath the soil, outside of time, untouched by the acceleration that has since overtaken us. When he re-emerged, he seemed to carry with him not only the past, but a different quality of time – slower, deeper, more continuous. The kind of time in which memory and meaning are allowed to gather.

Perhaps that is why he resonated.

For beneath all the noise and fragmentation of the present, there remains, I think, a quiet yearning – for simplicity, for continuity, for those small, human things that do not demand attention, but offer recognition. Hermann does not speak loudly. He does not compete. He simply is. And in that stillness, something in us answers.

It brings to mind an old Chinese adage: “The right man sitting in his house and thinking the right thought will be heard a hundred miles distant.”

Perhaps that is what happened here. Not through noise or intention, but through the quiet truth of the moment – a small figure, a simple thought, travelling farther than one might ever expect.

“Vergesst mich nicht,” he seems to say.

Do not forget me.

But perhaps what he asks us not to forget is not himself, but what he has come to represent: a world in which experience was shared more easily, in which meaning was not endlessly deferred, in which even the smallest object could hold a universe of imagination.

I have not forgotten him.

In time, I may place him on a small plinth, or perhaps set him in a quiet corner of the garden, something like a veteran’s shelter – half memorial, half offering. Not to honour the figure alone, but the thread he has uncovered: the fragile continuity between past and present, between one life and another, between memory and meaning.

For a moment, through him, something of that continuity returned.

And perhaps, in his own modest way, Feldwebel Hermann has done what so much else struggles to do: he has brought people, however briefly, back into relation – with themselves, with each other, and with the deeper currents of time that run beneath the surface of our hurried lives.

He sits on my desk as I write this, small, battered, uncomplaining – a fragment of the past that somehow made its way back. Perhaps that is all any of us hope for: that something of what we were might one day be found again.

For some time now, I have felt that the we’ve slipped into a new human condition that the old vocabulary  cannot hold anymore.

The philosophy I grew up with, Existentialism, with its absurdism, alienation, angst – those belonged to a world where reality still behaved like a novel with a coherent plot.

Now we’re living in something stranger, faster, more contradictory, and more theatrical than anything Sartre or Camus ever imagined. Even Kafka would look at 2026 and say, “No, that’s way too much.”

Why we need a new word

Because the world has changed in ways language hasn’t caught up with:

• Absurdity used to be the exception; now it’s the baseline.
• Alienation used to be a feeling; now it’s a global operating system.
• Angst used to be personal; now it’s ambient.
• Surrealism used to be art; now it’s the news.

We’re living in a time where:

• ceasefires aren’t peace
• victories aren’t victories
• truth is optional
• narratives contradict themselves before they finish being spoken
• tiny plastic soldiers become international mascots
• and super tanker captains can’t decide whether to go forward or reverse

Language wasn’t built for this.

I have been trying to coin a new word that captures the flavour of this new era:

1. Transabsurdity

Beyond absurdity. Where the absurd becomes normalised and self‑aware.

2. Meta‑chaos

Chaos that knows it’s chaos and performs it theatrically.

3. The Unwordable

A state of reality that resists description.

4. Hyper‑real dissonance

Where everything is real, unreal, and contradictory at the same time.

5. Post‑sense

A world that has moved beyond the need for things to make sense.

6. Surreality

Not surrealism – surreality: the condition of living inside something that behaves like a dream.

Two realities at once

We are living in two realities at once, and the gap between them has become so wide that the old vocabulary –  existentialism, absurdity, alienation – simply can’t bridge it anymore. Philosophers haven’t yet named it, but ordinary people feel every day.

Reality One: The Window World

The world outside my window is coherent, continuous, embodied:

• a little old lady walking past
• a bus rumbling by
• the weather doing what weather does
• the same street I’ve known for decades
• the physical, sensory, grounded world

This world has narrative continuity. It behaves like reality always used to behave.

It’s slow, legible, human.

Reality Two: The Screen World

The world on my screen is the opposite:

• a torrent of events
• contradictory statements
• no single truth
• no shared narrative
• opinions masquerading as facts
• facts treated as opinions
• noise, noise, noise

It’s fragmented, accelerated, and disembodied. It behaves like a dream written by a committee.

This world has no continuity. It resets every hour.

The fracture between the two

For most of human history, the world we saw and the world we heard about were roughly aligned. Now they’re not even in the same universe.

I look out the window and see a quiet street. I look at the screen and see a world on fire.

My nervous system doesn’t know which one to believe.

This is the new human condition

Existentialism doesn’t cover it. Absurdism doesn’t cover it. Alienation doesn’t cover it.

Those philosophies assumed a single shared reality that felt meaningless or hostile.

But we now live in dual realities:

• one stable
• one chaotic
• one embodied
• one digital
• one continuous
• one fragmented

We need a new word for this.

Possible candidates for the new modality:

1. Bi-reality

Living in two incompatible realities at once.

2. Split‑realism

A world divided between the physical and the digital.

3. Duality Drift

The psychological slide between window‑truth and screen‑truth.

4. Hyper fragmentation

A condition where narrative coherence collapses.

5. The Noise Epoch

An era defined not by events, but by the overabundance of them.

6. The Two‑World Condition

Simple, clear, and accurate.

7. Post‑objective reality

Where objectivity hasn’t disappeared – it’s just drowned.

What has shifted?

Is it the world, or us, or both?

It’s both.

The world has become hyperreal

Events now happen at a speed and scale that no human nervous system can integrate. The screen-world is not reality – it’s a simulation of reality, amplified, accelerated, and stripped of continuity.

We have become divided selves

Part of us lives in the physical world. Part of us lives in the digital one. And the two no longer match.

This mismatch is the source of the new condition.

The Past: A Single Narrative World

Even in crisis, people shared:

• one reality
• one set of facts
• one pace of information
• one emotional rhythm
• one sense of “we”

That’s why collective effort was possible. Not because people were better but because their world was simpler.

The Present: A Fragmented Hyperreal

We now live in:

• a shattered information environment
• multiple incompatible realities
• no shared truth
• no stable narrative
• no common emotional tempo
• a constant flood of noise

The window-world is still sane. The screen-world is a kaleidoscope dropped on the floor.

And we flicker between them dozens of times a day.

This is the new condition I am trying to name.

We need a word that captures all of this

A term that holds:

• fragmentation
• hyperreality
• unreality
• simultaneity
• cognitive overload
• narrative collapse
• the impossibility of returning to the old world
• the sense that both the world and the self have shifted

Many people have described their sense of  emotional exhaustion living in this world – shattered, knackered, basically ruined, but that only describes how we feel, not what the condition is.

I am trying to describe the cognitive problem, the sense of cognitive dislocation. I am trying to name something deeper, something structural, something that sits beneath the emotional weather. The people of the past lived inside a single, stable narrative world. Even when it was frightening or unjust, it was coherent. It had continuity. It had a shared frame.

The psychological infrastructure that made collective action possible – shared narrative, shared truth, shared purpose – has dissolved. Not because people are weaker, but because the world has split into incompatible realities.

The Past: A Single Narrative World

Even in crisis, people shared:

• one reality
• one set of facts
• one pace of information
• one emotional rhythm
• one sense of “we”

That’s why collective effort was possible. Not because people were better – but because the world was simpler.

The Present: A Fragmented Hyperreal

We now live in:

• a shattered information environment
• multiple incompatible realities
• no shared truth
• no stable narrative
• no common emotional tempo
• a constant flood of noise

The window-world is still sane. The screen-world is a kaleidoscope dropped on the floor.

And we flicker between them dozens of times a day.

This is the new condition I am trying to name.

The Perpetual Present: a defining symptom of our new condition

In the past, people lived inside a continuum:

• yesterday shaped today
• today shaped tomorrow
• history was a guide
• memory was a map
• the future was something you could imagine

Now, for millions of people, especially those immersed in the digital world, time has collapsed into a perpetual present:

• news resets every hour
• narratives don’t continue, they restart
• nothing accumulates
• nothing resolves
• everything is “now”, and only “now”

It’s not that people have forgotten the past – it’s that the screen-world erases continuity.

The window-world still has continuity. The screen-world has none.

And we are living in both.

Why this is so disorienting

I am trying to hold together:

1. A world with time

The one outside my window:

• seasons
• aging
• routines
• familiar faces
• continuity

2. A world without time

The one on my screen:

• endless updates
• no memory
• no narrative arc
• no stable truth
• no shared past

This is the cognitive split.

We have moved from a narrative reality to a fragmented, perpetual-present hyperreality.

The old world was built on continuity. The new world is built on interruption.

The old world had a shared story. The new world has millions of competing micro-stories.

The old world had a past. The new world has a feed.

This is why existentialism feels outdated. It assumed a stable world that felt meaningless.

We now have an unstable world that feels unreal.

I have already identified:

• fragmentation
• hyperreality
• dual realities
• narrative collapse
• cognitive overload
• the impossibility of mapping past to present

Now add:

• the collapse of temporal continuity
• the perpetual present

I am trying to live in:

1. The Continuous Frame

Books. Philosophy. The world outside my window. The old lady walking past. The bus. The weather. Time that flows. Meaning that accumulates.

This frame is coherent, slow, narrative, embodied.

2. The Discontinuous Frame

The screen. The feed. The noise. The perpetual present. Events that appear and vanish. Opinions that contradict themselves. A world with no memory and no future.

This frame is fragmented, hyperreal, timeless, disembodied.

Why the bridge keeps collapsing

When I read a book, I enter a world with:

• continuity
• depth
• time
• structure
• argument
• coherence

When I switch to my screen, I enter a world with:

• interruption
• acceleration
• contradiction
• simultaneity
• emotional overload
• no temporal anchor

My brain tries to integrate the two, but they operate on different logics, almost like different physical laws.

It’s like trying to combine Newtonian mechanics with quantum mechanics in your head. They describe different universes.

No wonder it feels disjointed.

The deeper truth: I am living in two incompatible temporalities:

• the world of books: past → present → future
• the world of screens: now → now → now → now

This is why the past feels unreachable. This is why the present feels unreal. This is why the future feels unimaginable.

It’s the structure of the world.

We now have all the components:

• dual realities
• incompatible temporalities
• narrative collapse
• hyper fragmentation
• the perpetual present
• cognitive dissonance
• emotional exhaustion
• the impossibility of integration

This is the new human condition

The two words for it:

1.The Analytical Term

Bireal Hyperpresentism

This one is clean, exact, and captures everything I’ve been describing:

• Bireal — living in two incompatible realities (the continuous world outside the window, and the fragmented hyperreal world on the screen)
• Hyperpresent — trapped in a perpetual present with no past or future (the screen-world’s endless “now-now-now”)
• ‑ism — signalling a philosophical condition, not just a mood

Bireal Hyperpresentism = the condition of living in two incompatible realities, one continuous and one hyperreal, while being cognitively trapped in a perpetual present.

2. The Catchy, Slogan‑Like Term

The Great Disjunction

Short. Memorable. Punchy.

And it captures the feeling perfectly:

• the split between window-world and screen-world
• the split between past and perpetual present
• the split between meaning and noise
• the split between coherence and fragmentation

Last night, I switched off the PC and dozed off. It was my nervous system saying:

Let me rest in a world with only one reality for a while.

Sleep is the last unified frame we have.

A final note.

The reality we have created was created by us, humans. But no one designed it, no one intended it, and no one is steering it.

That’s the part that makes our condition feel so strange, so unnameable. We’re living inside a human‑made reality that emerged, rather than being built. It’s like a weather system: made of us, but not controlled by us.

And that’s why it feels uncanny.

The unintended world

Think of it this way:

• No one intended the internet to become a perpetual present.
• No one intended social media to fragment truth.
• No one intended news to become a firehose.
• No one intended attention to become the world’s most valuable commodity.
• No one intended the screen‑world to replace the narrative world.

But each small step – each innovation, each convenience, each platform – nudged us toward a reality that no individual or institution ever consciously planned.

We built the machine. But the machine built the world.

And now we’re trying to live inside it.

Why it feels so disorienting.

Because humans evolved for:

• continuity
• narrative
• shared truth
• embodied experience
• slow time

But we accidentally created:

• fragmentation
• competing realities
• no shared truth
• disembodied experience
• perpetual present

We are creatures of the window‑world, trapped in the gravity of the screen‑world.

And the two worlds don’t meet.

This is why the new terms matter.

I am not just naming a passing mood. I’m naming a structural shift in human consciousness.

Bireal Hyperpresentism – the analytical term The Great Disjunction – the cultural shorthand

These work because they capture the unintendedness of it all.

We didn’t choose this. We drifted into it.

Earlier today I read Jeremy Bowen’s analysis on the BBC site of the unfolding war between the United States, Israel, and Iran. It left me with a deep and unmistakable unease. Not simply because of the scale of destruction already unleashed, but because of the pattern behind it—a pattern Bowen described with a clarity that is rare in public discourse. He wrote of decisions made on instinct rather than thought, of advisers who fall silent, of institutions bypassed, of consequences unimagined until they arrive. A war waged without strategy, without preparation, without humility.

As I read, I felt something shift inside me. The crisis Bowen described was not merely geopolitical. It was psychological. It was moral. It was a vivid example of what happens when power is exercised without inner order—when the people making decisions are governed not by reflection, but by impulse; not by imagination, but by grievance; not by humility, but by pride.

I am old enough now to recognise the pattern. We have seen versions of it before, though rarely in such concentrated form. To understand this moment—and to avoid despair—we have to step back, look at history, and then look deeper still, into the structure of human nature itself. This essay is my attempt to gather those fragments into a coherent whole.

Geopolitical analysis: when narrative meets reality and the façade cracks

1. The trap revealed by Bowen: war by instinct.

Bowen’s analysis makes something painfully clear: the United States has manoeuvred itself into a position where every exit is bad. The trap is visible, structural, and entirely predictable.

• Declare victory → hollow, transparent, strategically meaningless.
• Escalate → ground forces, amphibious landings, a long war of attrition Iran has spent decades preparing for.
• Negotiate → requires concessions neither side is psychologically ready to make.

This is the classic Clausewitzian nightmare: the political aim is undefined, so the military means expand to fill the vacuum. Force is used first, and only afterwards does anyone ask what it was meant to achieve.

And the trap is not hidden. There is no fog of war here. The impulsiveness, the misreading of Iran, the belief that a regime forged in the Iran–Iraq War would collapse like a fragile petro‑state — all of it was visible from the start.

Reality always arrives. And when it does, rhetoric collapses under its own weight.

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2. A war without a plan—and the catastrophic misreading of Iran

Bowen shows that this war is being fought “from the bones”—from instinct, not from thought. There is no clearly defined political objective, no serious attempt to understand the adversary, no sense of the end state. Iran, meanwhile, has spent decades preparing for exactly this kind of confrontation: dispersing assets, hardening infrastructure, cultivating proxies, deep strategic patience, and turning geography itself into a weapon.

To expect such a state to fold quickly was not merely naïve. It was historically illiterate.

3. The credibility trap

Previous US administrations — Republican and Democrat — all reached the same conclusion: Iran could be contained, but not destroyed.

That consensus was not ideological. It was strategic realism.

Breaking with it was not boldness. It was hubris.

Now the United States faces the credibility trap:

• Back down → appear weak.
• Escalate → risk losing even more.

This is how great powers make decisions that, from the outside, look senseless — but from the inside feel inevitable.

4. Loyalty over competence: the silencing of truth

Bowen highlights a deeper structural flaw: the inner circle built for loyalty, not competence.

• No one contradicts the leader.
• No one challenges assumptions.
• No one risks telling the truth.

Silence becomes the culture. Deference becomes the norm. The system loses its ability to self‑correct.

You cannot run a country — let alone a war — on instinct and impulse. That is how rational states drift into irrational outcomes. The results can even be catastrophic.

5. The military instinct — and the need to restrain it

In 1962, the generals wanted to strike Cuba immediately. They were certain it would work. They were certain it was necessary. They were certain they could control the consequences.

Kennedy, having seen war firsthand, understood something they didn’t: military confidence is not strategic wisdom.

He knew:

• once force is unleashed, events outrun intentions
• the people who pay the price are never the ones in the room
• the role of a statesman is to restrain the military instinct, not amplify it

That kind of restraint — born of experience, humility, and imagination — is almost entirely absent today.

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6. The loss of historical memory

This is one of the most dangerous elements of the present moment: the absence of lived historical memory in those making decisions.

Kennedy had the Pacific.
Eisenhower had Normandy.
Even Johnson, for all his flaws, had the shadow of Korea and the early Cold War.

They felt the cost of escalation in their bones. They had seen what happens when events slip beyond control—when mobilisation timetables, alliance commitments, pride and fear combine into a machinery no one can stop.

Kennedy had just read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August before the Cuban Missile Crisis. He understood how the First World War had not been chosen in a single moment, but assembled—step by step—by men who thought they were still in control. He was determined not to let history repeat itself.

He also did something almost unimaginable today: he kept Eisenhower in the loop. A sitting president, in the middle of the gravest crisis of the nuclear age, consulting his predecessor out of respect for his experience of war and world affairs. There was humility in that gesture, and a shared seriousness about history.

Today’s leadership class—across much of the West—has grown up in an era where war is something that happens on screens, not in their own lives. That distance breeds a kind of strategic carelessness. Decisions are made in a vacuum, without the visceral sense of consequence that shaped earlier statesmen.

When you don’t feel the weight of history, you repeat it.

Barbara Tuchman later called this pattern The March of Folly: the recurring human tendency to pursue policies that are clearly against one’s own interests, even as the evidence mounts. We are watching another chapter being written.

7. Suez, again — but this time with China watching

Bowen ends with a comparison to Suez — the moment Britain discovered the limits of its power and the beginning of its eclipse by the United States.

He suggests this war may be remembered as a similar inflection point in the US–China rivalry.

And the comparison is sobering if not chilling:

China has not fired a shot. It has not spent a dollar. It has not taken a risk.

Yet it stands to gain the most from a weakened, distracted, economically strained United States.

History is full of moments where the real victor is the one who stays out of the fight.

8. The trust deficit: diplomacy after a decapitation strike

Even if Iran negotiates, why would it trust the United States not to strike again?

The war began with a surprise decapitation strike. That kind of opening move destroys the foundation of diplomacy — the belief that agreements will be honoured.

Diplomacy without trust is not diplomacy. It is theatre.

9. The deeper question: belief or avoidance?

This is the question Bowen cannot answer, but which hangs over the entire crisis:

Does the US leadership genuinely believe it can still force a decisive outcome, or is this now about avoiding humiliation rather than achieving victory?

History suggests that when leaders cannot admit error, they double down. Not because they believe in the strategy, but because they cannot bear the alternative.

This is the essence of The March of Folly: the refusal to change course even when the evidence is overwhelming.

Bowen reminds us that previous US administrations — Republican and Democrat — all reached the same conclusion: Iran could be contained, but not destroyed.

That consensus wasn’t ideological. It was strategic realism.

Breaking with it wasn’t boldness. It was hubris.

And now the United States faces the credibility trap:

• If it backs down, it looks weak.
• If it escalates, it risks losing even more.

This is the logic that has pulled empires into ruin throughout history. From the outside, the decisions look senseless. From the inside, they feel inevitable.

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10. Midgley: the human machinery behind folly

Philosopher Mary Midgley helps us see the human architecture beneath the crisis. She distinguishes between:

• Instigators, whose motives become unbalanced—ambition without humility, pride without restraint, certainty without doubt.
• Followers, who drift into complicity through lack—lack of imagination, lack of reflection, lack of moral courage.

Neither group is monstrous.
They are simply unbalanced or unthinking.

And when such people occupy positions of power, the consequences are predictable. The machinery of harm is built not from evil geniuses, but from ordinary human failings left unchecked.

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11. Arendt: the thoughtlessness that enables harm

Hannah Arendt deepens the diagnosis. She observed that great harm is often done not by villains, but by people who have stopped thinking.

Thoughtlessness is not stupidity.
It is the failure to:

• imagine consequences
• see the humanity of others
• step outside one’s own narrow perspective

This is precisely what we are witnessing: decisions made without imagination, without proportion, without the ability to see beyond the immediate emotional impulse.

The danger is not only in what is done, but in what is not done: the questions not asked, the doubts not entertained, the alternatives not considered.

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12. Augustine: evil as absence, not presence

St Augustine offers the most profound insight of all. For him, evil is not a force. It is a privation—an absence of something that should be there.

The crisis we face is not driven by some grand, coherent malevolence.
It is driven by lack:

• lack of humility
• lack of order
• lack of imagination
• lack of restraint
• lack of love for the common good

This is why the situation feels so unstable. We are watching the consequences of absence, not the presence of some dark genius.

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13. Disordered loves: when virtues lose their balance

Augustine’s idea of disordered loves explains the moral architecture of this moment. Harm arises not from loving the wrong things, but from loving things in the wrong order.

When:

• pride outranks humility
• impulse outranks wisdom
• loyalty outranks truth
• victory outranks justice
• strength outranks restraint

the result is predictable: disorder, escalation, and folly.

Tuchman’s March of Folly and Augustine’s disordered loves are, in a sense, describing the same phenomenon from different angles: the way human beings, individually and collectively, let their priorities slip out of alignment until catastrophe becomes almost inevitable.

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14. The restless heart: power without inner peace

Augustine’s “restless heart” describes the temperament behind the disorder.

A restless leader:

• cannot tolerate limits
• cannot sit with uncertainty
• cannot reflect
• cannot imagine consequences

Restlessness plus power = instability.

This is the psychological engine of the moment we are living through: a leadership class that cannot be still long enough to think, to read, to listen, to imagine. Action becomes a substitute for thought. Escalation becomes a substitute for strategy.

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15. Humility: the ordering virtue

Humility is not weakness. It is the virtue that keeps all others in balance.

Without humility:

• ambition becomes domination
• instinct becomes recklessness
• confidence becomes arrogance

Humility is what allowed past leaders to step back, to imagine catastrophe, to restrain themselves. It is what allowed Kennedy to say “no” to his generals, and “yes” to history. Its absence now is what makes this moment so dangerous.

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16. Hope: the refusal to let disorder win

And yet—we must not despair.

Hope, in Augustine’s sense, is not optimism. It is steadiness:

• the refusal to let fear dictate our actions
• the refusal to collapse into cynicism
• the refusal to let the world’s disorder become our own

Hope is the stance that allows us to see clearly without being crushed by what we see. It is not a prediction that things will turn out well. It is a decision to remain human, proportionate, and thoughtful even when they may not.

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17. Courage: the quiet strength to remain human

Courage is not heroics. It is the daily refusal to be swept away by the world’s noise.

Courage is:

• thinking when others react
• imagining consequences when others refuse to
• staying humane when others harden
• remaining proportionate when others exaggerate

This is the courage that sustains hope. It is quiet, undramatic, often unnoticed—but it is the difference between drifting with the current and standing, however modestly, against it.

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18. Presence: inner order made visible

When humility, hope, and courage come together, they create presence—the quiet steadiness that others feel.

Presence:

• calms
• steadies
• widens perspective
• restores proportion

Presence is influence without force. It is leadership without noise. It is the atmosphere created by a person whose inner life is ordered, even when the outer world is not.

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19. Legacy: the quiet imprint of a steady life

Legacy is not achievement. It is the imprint your presence leaves on others:

• the steadiness you give them
• the clarity you offer
• the humanity you preserve
• the proportion you model

This is the legacy that matters—and the legacy that endures. Not the legacy of headlines or monuments, but the legacy of having lived in such a way that others, however few, saw more clearly and stood more steadily because you were there.

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20. Conclusion: diagnosis as the first step toward healing

We are at a dangerous moment in history. But danger is not destiny.

By tracing the crisis back to its roots—to the absence of humility, imagination, and thought—we recover the possibility of healing. Because if the crisis is rooted in human nature, then the remedy is too.

Humility, imagination, courage, presence—these are not abstract ideals.
They are lived virtues.
And they are still possible, even now.

Especially now.