Abandoning Ourselves
The article explores existential regret, linking it to anxiety and guilt, and argues that authentic decision‑making can mitigate its pain. Drawing on philosophers like Kierkegaard, Sartre, and Nietzsche, it shows how confronting mortality and freedom leads to more purposeful lives. It illustrates the concept with the author’s own battle against anorexia, highlighting how daily micro‑choices and therapeutic reframing foster recovery. Ultimately, embracing authenticity and acceptance of fate can transform regret into personal growth.
Unbounded
Emmy Noether, a pioneering early‑20th‑century mathematician, formulated two groundbreaking theorems linking continuous symmetries to conservation laws, providing the missing mathematical foundation for energy conservation in Einstein’s relativity. Despite lacking a formal position and facing gender discrimination, she taught unofficially, built...
A Duty to Oneself
The essay interrogates whether genuine duties to oneself exist, contrasting Kantian claims of rational autonomy with sceptical views that self‑obligations merely serve personal happiness. It introduces African philosophical concepts—harmony (ubuntu) and vitality—as alternative foundations that treat self‑respect as a form...
What Is Electronic Music?
An archival BBC video from 1969 revisits the birth of electronic music at the Radiophonic Workshop, the unit established in 1958 to produce sound effects and experimental compositions. The footage features interviews with pioneers like Daphne Oram, who demonstrate the hands‑on...
On Her Own Terms
The piece revisits Doris Lessing’s unconventional career, from her colonial upbringing and communist activism to her 2007 Nobel Prize, emphasizing how works like “The Golden Notebook” and “The Summer Before the Dark” challenged literary norms and feminist discourse. It intertwines...