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Dnes jsem měla v itineráři přechod přes Maja e Grebenit do Lëpusche, stoupání 864 vejškovejch metrů, klesání 540, 11 km, cca 4 hodiny. Extrémně snadná trasa, na který absolutně nejde zabloudit a NECHCI o to mluvit, ostatně ten kilák a půl navíc byla marginálie. Zpátky jsem měla dostopovat, ale byla jsem v cíli v poledne, unavená jsem nebyla, tak jsem to vzala i zpátky stejnou cestou: jednak si většinou nepamatuju celou trasu, kudy jdu, protože mám občas v hlavě příběhy, a hlavně v opačným směru to vždycky vypadá jinak. A navíc jedno z mejch guilty pleasure je chůze do kopce. Za celejch 7 hodin chůze jsem nepotkala jedinýho člověka: jen jednu krávu a prase rochnící se v bahně. Miluju bejt sama uprostřed hor: v sedle jsem si sedla (co taky jinýho v sedle žejo), využila toho, že tady nemám skoro tinnitus, a meditovala. A v jednu chvíli jsem v tý rozlehlosti a klidu hor ucejtila tak velkou lásku k týhle planetě, že mi začaly týct slzy. Jsem v horách ráda sama a navíc málokdo zvládá můj styl chůze start-cíl bez pauz na jídlo, ale občas mi bejvá trochu líto, že tu nádheru nemám s kým sdílet, a jasně: píšu o tom a dávám fotky; i tak je ten zážitek nepřenositelnej. Ne, není to úplně zalitý sluncem i přes jasnou oblohu a vedro, pořád mě trápí ty divný zdravotní věci a bojím se: ale jestli mám umřít, tak jsou hory to nejlepší místo ever. #hory #příroda #turistika

The Fracture That Kills the Family The West’s deepest divide may not be left versus right, but whether young men and women still share a vision of the good life. The nuclear family is society’s foundation, yet households struggle to form when the sexes view each other as opponents. Many women see marriage as patriarchal; many men see women as manipulative or exploitative. Relationships shift from mutual union to zero-sum power struggles. Christianity framed marriage as union—two people becoming one. Nietzsche warned the death of God would remove a shared moral foundation, leaving society vulnerable to nihilism and fragmentation. We are living that fragmentation. Young men often retreat into pornography, gaming, and prolonged adolescence. Young women increasingly frame sexual liberation as empowerment. Both chase proximate pleasures while losing ultimate purposes: family, responsibility, continuity, and creating life. Dating data reflects the fracture: among unmarried Americans aged 22–35, only 26% of women and 36% of men are actively dating. Ideology filters matches too—Gen Z and young millennials cite political compatibility far more than Boomers. Research also finds a mismatch: only 0.6 single liberal men per single liberal woman, and only 0.5 single conservative women per conservative man. Cross-ideological pairing has risen from 6% in the 1970s to 22% today. The consequences extend beyond dating: fertility has fallen below replacement across much of the West, and 42% of American adults were unpartnered in 2023. Policy responses—tax incentives, parental leave, baby bonuses—miss the deeper cultural and spiritual problem: you can debate taxes, but it’s hard to build a family when you disagree on masculinity, whether marriage is oppressive, or whether family is worth sacrificing for. The values gap is the disease. The political divide is the symptom. The household is the casualty—and when it cracks, everything built above it loses stability. The question is whether a civilization can survive when the two people it most needs to unite can no longer agree why they should.

Why Good Times Make Weak People The pinnacle of tyranny is a society in which people are controlled without force because they love their servitude. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World explored this idea. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, its citizens are controlled not through terror but pleasure. Soma provides instant relief from discomfort—a “holiday from the facts.” Huxley’s people are not prisoners but satisfied customers: the State produces children, promiscuity is normalized, and entertainment fills every empty moment. As Neil Postman observed, Orwell feared that truth would be hidden from us, while Huxley feared that we would become so distracted that we would no longer care about it. The Softening of Man Good times can make bad times possible. When safety and luxury become normal, people can lose sight of the struggles that created them. Andrew Lobaczewski argued that prosperity can weaken profound reflection. Pleasure becomes dominant, while uncomfortable truths are dismissed because thinking about them requires effort. Those who think critically may even be ridiculed. This creates a dangerous cycle: societies lose the capacity for psychological reasoning and moral criticism, allowing catastrophe to develop unnoticed. Sterilizing Genius Nietzsche understood that comfort, elevated above all else, can destroy the qualities that made civilization possible. Struggle, ambition, discipline, passion, and courage helped create prosperity—but prosperity can weaken the virtues that produced it. The Odyssey illustrates this. The Lotus-Eaters simply lose the desire to return home. Odysseus must drag his men back while they weep to remain. He rejects Calypso’s offer of immortality and endless comfort, choosing the difficult path home. We admire that choice because comfort without purpose is not a life worth admiring. Nietzsche imagined the endpoint in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: a society where safety and sameness become the highest ideals, producing “no shepherd, and one herd.” Anyone who seeks greatness becomes an aberration.

Why Weak Societies Choose Tyranny The pinnacle of tyranny would be a system that allows politicians, elites, and bureaucrats to control a population without force or coercion because the people love their servitude. Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World, an eerily relatable dystopian novel, with this idea at the forefront. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, there is no overt oppression. The state does not have to stamp on human faces with its jackboots or erect an inescapable surveillance state. Rather, the people of Brave New World happily chain themselves with meaningless pleasure and distractions. The authorities do not rule through terror and rage, the central elements of 1984, but instead give the people everything they ever wanted. A pharmaceutical called Soma becomes the opiate of the masses. Mustapha Mond, the World Controller, likens it to Christianity without tears. While religion requires years of moral training, Soma allows citizens to achieve peace simply by swallowing tablets. It is the perfect escape from reality, a holiday from the facts. Lenina, the female counterpart to the protagonist Bernard, cannot comprehend why he refuses Soma, preferring discomfort to something that can remove it. When Bernard states, “I’d rather be myself, myself and nasty, not somebody else, however jolly,” Lenina sees this as a sort of pathology and repeatedly encourages him to take the wonder drug. Bernard explains, “I want to know what passion is.” He understands that there is more to life than merely being content, craving genuine experience, including suffering and intensity, rather than being emotionally regulated by the World State. Lenina’s bewilderment stems from her conditioning to regard unhappiness as a technical problem, encapsulated in the society’s common saying that “a gram is better than a damn.” The people of Brave New World are not captives but satisfied customers. Children are produced by the scientific state, relieving people of the responsibility of parenthood. This grants them the ability to engage in promiscuity, where everyone belongs to everyone else, while filling their free time with cheap entertainment and endless sporting events—what would be referred to as slop today. As Neil Postman observed, Orwell saw totalitarianism through the lens of fear, while Huxley saw it through pleasure. There was no need to ban a book in Brave New Worldbecause there was no one who wanted to read one. An abundance of low-quality information rendered censorship unnecessary because no one could hear the truth through all the noise. Huxley threw shade at civil libertarians who passionately opposed tyranny because they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions. Humanity in its rawest form is portrayed by John the Savage, an outsider free from the World State’s conditioning. Upon coming face-to-face with this spiritually neutered society, he completely rejects it: “I don’t want comfort, I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.” Huxley’s dystopia is not imposed on an unwilling population but instead requested by a hollow one. Which leads us to the question: How do people become so weak that they get on their knees and beg for totalitarianism? Good times make bad times possible. Once a certain level of luxury and safety is achieved, people start to resemble the hobbits from the Shire. They are so far removed from evil that they forget it even exists and become defenseless in the face of it. Andrew Lobaczewski, who studied the psychology of totalitarianism from inside Poland’s communist takeover, wrote: “During good times, people progressively lose sight of the need for profound reflection. They lose the capacity to differentiate human nature, and emotion begins to dominate intellect. Once a critical mass starts operating on the pleasure principle, any excess mental effort seems like pointless labor.” Lobaczewski warned that it is not as simple as some people losing the ability to think rationally. It is worse, because those people then shame anyone capable of doing so. A clever, liberal, and merry individual is a good sport. A more far-sighted person predicting dire results becomes a wet blanket, a killjoy. The ability to have uncomfortable conversations without emotion taking over is, in Lobaczewski’s view, an indicator of whether a society’s future will be good or bad. It is easier to think about pleasant things. This leads people to eliminate any data or facts that cause them discomfort. That becomes a habit and eventually a custom accepted by society at large. Once the general populace accepts that inconvenient truths should be left unsaid, it becomes incapable of reaching correct conclusions. After all, how could you ever describe a picture that you refuse to look at? “Catastrophe waits in the wings of the communities that lose the capacity for psychological reason and moral criticism,” Lobaczewski wrote. “It is on the other side of this weakening of thought that the processes of the generation of evil are intensified at every social scale until they give rise to bad times.” It is precisely man’s dreams of happiness that can lead to chaos and suffering. This hedonistic view of happiness contains the seeds of misery, feeding the eternal cycle whereby good times give birth to bad times. Friedrich Nietzsche viewed socialism as demanding comfort for the greatest number of people possible. To question whether it is good for the masses to live in comfort has become a form of heresy. This reveals the spiritual atrophy that so many suffer from. Considering only the weak believe comfort to be a virtue, it is what Carl Jung would describe as the infantile dream state of mass dependency: the desire to gently slip back into the kingdom of childhood, into the paradise of parental care. Except this lack of friction has consequences. The perfect state destroys the soil in which great intellect grows. Genius, struggle, passion, strength, and wisdom are required to build a safe and abundant society. Yet once a certain level of comfort is achieved, it can destroy the very virtues required to obtain it. Nietzsche observed that it is the warmest heart that aims to alleviate suffering and hardship but fails to realize that it thereby wills the destruction of its own foundation. Comfort breeds mediocrity, which is then called good. Small people want one thing above all: that no one hurt them. We have taken this pathology to such a degree that we now obsess over hurt feelings and call this virtue. Pleasure, in its proper place, is a byproduct of meaningful goals, not a goal in itself. Aristotle saw that pleasure and comfort distort perception and proper judgment. While they do not cause us to misjudge something like geometry or mathematics, they can destroy our ability to decide what is worth pursuing and, therefore, what to do. Consider The Odyssey. Homer depicts Odysseus’ men on the island of the Lotus-Eaters, where they taste the fruit and lose all desire to go home. Much like Huxley’s Brave New World, they are not imprisoned. Rather, they simply stop wanting anything more. Odysseus has to drag his men back to the ships while they weep to stay. This is what comfort can do to men. It empties them of purpose. We intuitively understand this but fail to apply it to our own lives. We must make the same choice as Odysseus when he refuses Calypso’s offer of endless comfort and immortality. He knows she is more beautiful than his wife Penelope waiting at home. He knows that he and Penelope will grow old and die, a fate he could avoid by staying with Calypso. No one who reads these stories wishes he had stayed. We want him to choose the hard way home because if he took the offer, he would stop being admirable. Yet staying is exactly what our modern society asks of us. We are told that the island is the good life. But what happens to the man who caves to this temptation? In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche imagines a risk-averse society taken to its logical endpoint. The elimination of all struggle produces a man so diminished that he fails to possess even self-contempt or higher aspiration. Safety and sameness become the highest goals, creating “no shepherd in one herd.” Anyone who seeks to be anything more than normal becomes an aberration to be dealt with. Or, as Nietzsche puts it, they have “made the wolf a dog in man himself, man’s best domestic animal.”

The Pinnacle of Tyranny The pinnacle of tyranny would allow politicians, elites, and bureaucrats to control a population without force or coercion—because the people love their servitude. Aldous Huxley’s *Brave New World* explores this idea through an eerily relatable dystopian society. Unlike Orwell’s *1984*, Huxley’s world contains no obvious oppression. The state does not need to “stamp on a human face—forever.” Instead, citizens willingly chain themselves to pleasure and distraction. Authorities do not rule through terror, but by giving people everything they think they want. Soma, a government-approved drug, becomes the opiate of the masses. Mustafa Mond, the World Controller, compares it to Christianity without the suffering. By swallowing a few tablets, citizens can escape reality—a temporary holiday from the facts. Lenina cannot understand why Bernard refuses Soma, preferring discomfort to something that can remove it. When Bernard says, “I’d rather be myself, myself and nasty, not somebody else, however jolly,” Lenina views his desire for authenticity as a kind of illness. Bernard wants to experience passion and recognizes that life involves more than contentment. He craves genuine experience, including suffering and intensity, rather than emotional regulation by the World State. Lenina’s confusion results from her conditioning, which teaches her to view unhappiness as a technical problem. This belief is captured by the saying, “A gram is better than a dam.” The citizens of *Brave New World* are not captives but satisfied customers. Children are produced by the state, relieving people of the responsibilities of parenthood. Their free time is filled with promiscuity, cheap entertainment, and endless sporting events—what might be called “slop” today. As Neil Postman observed, Orwell saw totalitarianism through fear, while Huxley imagined a society where oppression would be unnecessary because people would willingly surrender themselves to pleasure. There would be no need to ban books, because no one would want to read them. An abundance of low-quality information would make censorship unnecessary; the truth would be drowned out by noise. Huxley warned that people’s “almost infinite appetite for distractions” could make tyranny not only possible, but welcome.

Contraception and Western Culture In the 1960s, the birth-control pill became widely available. Sexual liberation is usually presented as a story of freedom and progress, but its biological consequence is rarely discussed: sex could now be separated from reproduction. Every Western nation has experienced below-replacement fertility for decades. Oxford anthropologist J. D. Unwin anticipated this pattern in *Sex and Culture*, a study of 86 societies. He expected to disprove any link between sexual restraint and civilizational achievement. Instead, he concluded that cultures practicing strict monogamy generated energy expressed through art, science, conquest, and commerce. Relaxing sexual restraint, he argued, consistently weakened that energy within three generations. Unwin also predicted that such societies would abandon rationalism, deism, and monogamy. Three generations after 1960 brings us near the present, and some of his predictions appear increasingly visible. Religious affiliation has collapsed, marriage is declining, the median age at first marriage is at a record high, and a record share of people will never marry. Rationalism also appears to be giving way to egoism, identity, and emotion. Contraception helps explain this transformation. Evolutionary theory distinguishes between a behavior’s immediate purpose—such as pleasure—and its ultimate function, such as reproduction. Sex traditionally served both purposes. Contraception severed that connection, preserving the behavior while disconnecting it from reproduction. Female education, urbanization, workforce participation, economic growth, and the rising cost of living also correlate with declining fertility. Yet many of these changes depend on technological control over reproduction. Career-first lifestyles, extended education, and mass female workforce participation would be far more difficult without it. Women may have gained freedom from child-rearing, but they may have fewer daughters to inherit that freedom. Institutions that promoted this transformation now import replacement populations that may not share its values and could eventually reverse them.

It was a pleasure to exchange views with members of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations in Helsinki. 🇫🇮🇺🇸 As trusted allies, our cooperation and trade are stronger than ever. We must also continue supporting Ukraine. U.S. leadership is essential to maintaining pressure https://t.co/k38vuGYYIG #USFinland #TradeRelations #SupportUkraine #US #FN #UA

It was a pleasure speaking with PM @andyburnham . We discussed the situation in Ukraine and support for Ukraine's defense. UK’s leadership in our region is strong. The bilateral relationship between Finland and the UK and our defense cooperation are stronger than ever. #Ukraine #FinlandUK #DefenseCooperation #UA #UK #FI

Who knows the story behind some of this stuff, but as president, this really is his Achilles’ heel: an apparent relish for his enemies’ misfortunes that may have its own story, but which gives the appearance that he shares with the left a readiness to take sadistic pleasure in #Politics #Leadership #Sadism #Therearenospecificcountrymentionsinthetweetprovided.

If he likes butt stuff with other men, he’s gay. If he only likes butt stuff with women (including being pegged) he’s straight. I think people don’t understand the differences between attraction/ sexual orientation and sexual pleasure. #SexualOrientation #Attraction #SexualPleasure #Thetweetdoesnotmentionanyspecificcountries #sotherearenocountrycodestoreturn.

🚨🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Jude Bellingham: “This group deserved to finish on this high note. Obviously not what we came for but the highest finish since ’66 is something to build on”. “Thank you again England fans, this summer has been unforgettable for so many reasons. It’s been a pleasure”. https://t.co/ytK5FGPvEj #JudeBellingham #ThreeLions #EnglandFans #GB

Indeed, has been immense pleasure working w/you @FedorovMykhailo both on the digital agenda and on 🇺🇦 Support Loan! The victory in cognitive warfare - showing the world that russia is not winning has been critically important! @EUDelegationUA https://t.co/fYhjQzVp23 #CognitiveWarfare #UkraineSupport #DigitalAgenda #UA #RU

1603. Today, on the 1603rd day of Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine marks the Day of Ukrainian Statehood. Big day with many leaders in town. It is no coincidence that 🇪🇺 Commission President Ursula von der Leyen chose to be in Kyiv today. It was a great pleasure to welcome https://t.co/ojzYKVFng8 #UkrainianStatehood #StandWithUkraine #RussiaInvasion #UA #RU #EU

A pleasure to meet @planet at the @AspenSecurity Forum. Their satellites provide critical geospatial imagery and near-real-time Earth observation, supporting Ukraine and strengthening military decision-making. @BelgianDefence will enhance its space-based capabilities in the https://t.co/pkPgR1pxTZ #Geospatial #EarthObservation #MilitarySupport #UA #BE

Ollaan herra Tasavallan Presidentin kanssa samassa tilanteessa: en route à Paris ☝🏻 Hän on tosin matkalla päämieskokoukseen sekä kansallispäivän sotilasparaatiin, itsellä on enemmän pleasure-tyyppinen matka 😅 Terkkuja Normandian alueelta! #topireissaa 🇫🇷 https://t.co/ToxcrpXhIQ #matkailu #Paris #Normandiassa

It was a pleasure to address the International Law Commission. At a moment of great challenge to international law & multilateralism, its work has never been more vital. The Commission helps find legal solutions to today’s crises, reinforces justice & human rights, and shapes https://t.co/3fqZL5XUPF #InternationalLaw #Multilateralism #HumanRights #Nospecificcountriesarementionedinthetweet.Therefore #therearenocountrycodestoreturn.

Always a pleasure to talk with @vonderleyen. We discussed Russia's illegal war in Ukraine and how to strengthen European defense. Europe supports Ukraine. Europe is taking more responsibility for its own security. https://t.co/0rRtliWMzP #Ukraine #EuropeanDefense #Security #RU #UA #EU

Always a pleasure to welcome my good friend and colleague @Braze_Baiba to Tallinn, this time as part of Latvian President @edgarsrinkevics' state visit to Estonia. We discussed the key issues on our agenda, from next week's NATO Summit in Ankara and increasing pressure on Russia https://t.co/u7yRCpZfLV #Tallinn #NATOSummit #Estonia

Το Part 2 είναι εδώ με απλό subscribe. Ο @blue_G_OF με στήνει σε κάθε γωνιά και με ανοίγει μέχρι να με χύσει. Υποταγή θα πει να σταματάει η ελευθερία σου εκεί που ξεκινούν οι καύλες του άλλου. Μπες τωρα στο καναλι μου : https://t.co/8AOBwAeGbB https://t.co/NtpJW5bybo https://t.co/ULkoCzfOcC #Subscribe #Domination #Pleasure

Finished the day at Budapest City Hall, where I had the pleasure of being welcomed by the Mayor of Budapest. Looking ahead to tomorrow pride as we join the celebrations and stand together for equality, freedom, and love. 🏳️‍🌈 https://t.co/r18SDf8EBY #Budapest #Pride #Equality #HU