In 2017, Robert Menasse received the German Book Prize for his novel Capital. This book chronicles the political unrest in Brussels and defends the idea of ​​a Europe beyond national egoism. In justifying its decision, the prize jury writes that “Menasse’s book makes it clear: economics alone cannot provide us with a peaceful future.” The humanistic ideal is always worthy of striving for, but never completely achievable.

Arnold Böcklin, Die Toteninsel This man always looked up. There was an evil confidence in his gaze. Those secretly observing this man compared him to Buridan's donkey. Now in this place there are no creatures left capable of making such comparisons. Man considered himself the most sophisticated of God's instruments. The man imagined how he was pumping out their souls from the living. Since childhood, he felt the significance of his destiny and the importance of his own heritage.

“Boredom is the root of all evil, what could be more natural than trying to overcome it.” “The gods were bored and therefore created people. Adam was bored because he was lonely, and that is why Eve was created. From that moment on, boredom entered the world, increasing in direct proportion to population growth. ...And what consequences did this boredom have! Man rose high, but also fell low: first through Eve, then from the Tower of Babel. What is being done today?

On November 19, as part of the BLICK'17 film festival, dedicated to the German documentarian Harun Farocki, films by Vladimir Kobrin , who is called the founder of the Russian avant-garde in scientific cinema, will be shown. The director's films were not simple illustrations of scientific concepts - they served as an allegorical commentary on human existence and became the starting point in the history of Russian experimental cinema.

Is there a God? Will there be anything after death? Questions that, alas, this text will leave unanswered. Everything you will find here are just replicas to the arguments of one bright and very noisy contemporary in favor of the fact that God exists, and that death is not the end. I do not at all consider this a drawback, but I will note that the issues on which this contemporary has his own opinion are truly innumerable. He is no stranger to philosophical and religious topics.