QUARTAVEL

  “All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”   Lev Tolstoy, Anna Karenina   Russian President Vladimir Putin used a series of statements to justify the invasion of Ukraine. He claimed he was protecting Russian-speakers from an alleged "genocide" and that the goal was to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine. These statements mask a clear ambition for territorial expansion to challenge the post-Cold War order. Putin invoked a sense of historical resentment and national humiliation over the "greatest geopolitical tragedy" of the 20th century: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent expansion of NATO into the former Soviet bloc.   Ahead of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, many Western nations were similarly hesitant to directly confront Russia, largely due to economic dependence on Russian energy and a general reluctance to engage in a major conflict. This perceived lack of resolve, particularly after R...

  In a reality far more complex and wondrous than reason alone can contain, man, through reason, arranges his ordered tiles on the carpet of life, which GOD promptly disarranges. Kant had erected the austere edifice of Reason against the unpredictable tides of love, a cold and glittering citadel, a meticulously ordered garden. Before the tribunal of the categorical imperative, love would have been condemned to become a mere duty, almost a guiding light. But love between two souls is a burning fire, an unstoppable frenzy, a feverish passion, a leap of irrational passion, a chaotic wave that overwhelms everything. Nietzsche, the philosopher of the hammer and the noon, would have placed love in the box of the will to power. But even the will to power collapses before the Will of GOD. Job lacked the will to power; only God pulled him out of trouble. Job 42:10. Love is a vital force, almost a creative impulse: When you love, you don't think; you are. You don't calculate; you c...