Culture, Humanism, Science
Marilynne Robinson
In Praise of the Human Soul
A world, more or less alien or welcoming, emerges to enrich a reader’s store of hypotheses about how life is to be understood. As with scientific hypotheses even failure is meaningful, a test of the boundaries of credibility. So many voices, so many worlds, we can weary of them.
Culture, Society
Alain Badiou
How to Change the World?
To ‘change the world’, as an infinite process, is always, under pressure from a local event, an active fidelity to the new real that was revealed as the possibility of the impossible.
Culture, Religion
Leszek Kolakowski
On Happiness
If we experience the excellence, goodness and beauty of the entire Universe, are we not happy? The answer is: no, we are not.
Politics, Religion, Science, Society
‘I will show you wat must take place after this’
Politics, Science, Society, War
‘What have you seen? What is?’
Politics, Society
Q&A with Antony Blinken
Politics, Society
Present at the Re-Creation: Restoring the Promise of America in the World
Politics, Society
Introduction Rob Riemen
History, Politics, Society
Antony Blinken
Walls or Bridges?
A defining division has emerged in America that separates us from each other and leads to two very different visions for the future. It is a division between a future of walls and a future of bridges.
Politics, Society
Q&A with Rory Stewart
Politics, Society
Welcome Rob Riemen and introduction Rory Stewart
History, Religion, Society
Alison Wolf
The Guideline is Gone
I am increasingly convinced that one of the reasons that we grapple so unhappily with the question of education, and what it is to be educated, is that we have lost any firm set of shared convictions, growing out of and anchored in religious beliefs and institutions that suffuse communities and countries.
Politics, Society
Thomas Chatterton Williams
Anxiety as Roleplaying?
If we are going to get out of this new age of anxiety, if such a turn of events is even possible given the limitless complexities of the contemporary human condition, we are going to have learn, all of us, to see through the veil of stereotype falling between us.
Philosophy, Politics, Society
Jean-Marie Guéhenno
The Embodiment of Evil?
The Western world has now been engaged for almost two decades in a battle with the external forces of evil, Al-Qaeda, the Islamic state. Is that the battle of good and evil? Or is it a diversion that prevents us from looking within our societies, and eventually within ourselves to find the right battleground?
Culture, Society
Andrew Keen
The Dangers of Social Media
Architecturally, social media have been designed on uncannily medieval principles. We self-select into our own inward-looking virtual villages, according to our tribal affinities. Science is replaced by mysticism, expertise by the cult of authenticity.
Art, Culture, Society
Evgeny Morozov
The Death of the Cyberflâneur
Intrigued, I set out to discover what happened to the cyberflâneur. Cyberflâneurs are few and far between, while the very practice of cyberflânerie seems at odds with the world of social media. What went wrong? And should we worry?
Art, Culture, Society
Valentina Vapaux
Yes, sure, whatever, really
Then they ask you, who is this Generation Z, but it’s really hard to muster an answer. Because the plants are dying and the wildfires keep burning. Even though not here, not now. But somewhere, and that’s enough to make you quiet.
Rob Riemen
Apocalypse Now: The Revelation of our Time
Introducing the topic of the Nexus Conference 2025
Politics, Society
Anand Patwardhan
The flag of democracy
If one cannot safeguard the interests of the planet or the human race through dictatorships and money-controlled democracies, then the only answer is to work to create an alert and effective civil society that fights not necessarily for electoral power alone but sees itself as an ever vigilant watchdog no matter who comes to power.
Climate, Politics
Bill McKibben
From the ashes of the climate crisis
Global warming is a time test – if we don’t solve it soon, we don’t ever solve it, because we will have passed impossible tipping points. Winning slowly is just a different way of losing. And if we’d started in 1990 it would have been hard, but doable – forty years isn’t much, but it’s a hell of a lot better than seven, which is where we are now.
Politics, Society
Colombe Cahen-Salvador
The Equitist Revolution, and why we must fight for it
Out of every crisis comes change. Humanity is at a turning point. A new vision of society is needed to radically shift the direction of our times. I don’t believe a single second that what’s out there in terms of political offer at the moment begins to answer that need.
Philosophy, Politics, War
Avishai Margalit
Proportionality and Total War
Blurring the distinction between combatants and civilians erodes the much needed taboo on total wars. Total wars are wars without distinction; wars conducted by terror.
History, Politics, War
Bruno Maçães
War and Technology: A Fairy Tale
There are many kinds of wars between states, fought for many reasons, and sometimes for no reason at all. The wars that shape history are those fought for the sake of the world order, such as the war between Athens and Sparta chronicled by Thucydides.
Humanism, Society, War
Leon Wieseltier
We and the Syrian Refugees
All our traditions instruct us in the obligation and the privilege of welcome. May we all be, in this terrible crisis, good sons and good daughters of our traditions, and not desist in this work until we find justice for these millions, until they find justice and a home.
