Emotions help, but should not control us. Recently, we have adjusted our understanding of the role of our emotions and the extent to which we can consider ourselves to be rational beings in certain circumstances
Nobel lecture of Svetlana Alexievich
“I lived in a country where dying was taught to us from childhood. We were taught death. We were told that human beings exist in order to give everything they have, to burn out, to sacrifice themselves. We were taught to love people with weapons. Had I grown up in a different country, I couldn’t […]
Do you like contradictions?
What the word “contradictions” is associated with? Something negative, correct? Oxford Thesaurus lists the following synonyms for contradiction: conflict, clash, disagreement, opposition, inconsistency, mismatch, and variance. It used to have a negative connotation for me too. But later it evolved due to my activity as a scientist. In the science, as you know, a contradiction […]
How was it to live in the Soviet Union just after it had collapsed
The USSR disappeared legally in December, 1991. But it was dying for quite some time before and after that date. Not quite as long as Rome did, but it was not an overnight event either. I think we started to feel it soon after Gorbachev introduced his “reforms”. We did not know about the country’s […]
Train as an identity
The dream, that you are behind the train and cannot catch up with it, familiar to many. A group provides for the identification of the individual. How can a teenager (and actually many adults as well) answer the question, who are you?