muffin top - chalice reject

I look particularly fat in Warrior Two, as I noticed in the large mirror in the workout room at the gym where yoga class is held. The bone thin yoga mistress gave me eyes like I‘m obese and started talking about chocolate as a metaphor for allowing the body to melt into an asana, or letting the mind melt, or maybe the fat will melt away, I don’t know. I glanced around the room to see whether anyone looked like they love chocolate a lot - besides me. Or maybe it’s just a Swiss thing to talk about melting chocolate in yoga class?

* * * * *

Adipose Apron ‘sana

Woman who stood

Arms raised

Tits big

Hair thin

Eyes small

Lips drooped

Body popped

* * * * *

What drives a woman during middle age? Hormones? What drives a woman at all? What drives a man?

Forty-five years, seven months and about nine days since my most recent incarnation began as I exited my mother’s womb. But who’s counting? I must admit that I struggle to formulate philosophy lately. That I struggle to write. But I’m forcing myself as we speak out of spite for all the secrets I don’t wish to keep. As I reluctantly write, I conceive that creativity ain’t cheap.

Forty-five plus years of current incarnation and contemporary socialization. What afflicts this here human woman child matron mum?

Equanimity through change has not been reached. Mission not accomplished.

Too depressed am I, to feel excited about the American philosopher’s message – the first one in several months. Too gloomy feel I, too far gone from philosophy to feel inspired. Indeed? What’s wrong with me? Worn out I feel, by all the new old paths I’m bound to pass, since I left home for greener grass. And green it was while spring was a thing, and a Swiss philosopher showed up like a fling. But the summer drought wrought it all out. I no longer know, when did I last philosophize? When did I last write? Several unfinished notes, potential poems and essays seem trite, absently floating on an accumulated pile of loss. Can I dig through the chaos and salvage a piece?

Behold!!! A Nexistentialist who has lost all sense of self, but not in a good buddhist way, but rather in a solemn pseudo-Western depresso-freak-show icky way.

English teacher to seventy-three students, teaching the difference between common and proper nouns and what to capitalize. The noun defined as a word that names a person, place, thing or idea.  “Students, religion is a common idea, you see, but Buddhism and Christianity are specific ideas, as are Capitalism, Socialism, Communism and their kin.” When they complain about society I tell them to go ahead, as the next generation, to create a society of their liking, as it’s in their hands. And they stare with big middle-school eyes, which, I can only guess what that might mean. It’s difficult not to feel like a mother amidst all these children, driven by a love that transcends any sense of self. Indeed, I still do leave bits of my soul in the classroom.

Perhaps, I’m not depressed but merely depleted. Given all the healers I’ve seen since our arrival in Switzerland, it’s a fair conclusion. I’ve been running on almost empty for years. Now, I’ve embarked on five lines of treatment for my depleted biological battery and perimenopause. But I miss Mac and the horses, I miss American yoga school and its traditional and contemporary sober enchantment. I miss the intellectual gatherings at the public library, where thinkers, readers, writers and philosophers meet. I have lost all sense of belonging and, along with it, all sense of self. Living in a new and temporary home, day-to-day and town, leaves little room for roots to be grown.

And despite its recent consistency, being a mother to my own children transcends any notion of selfness, as much as it is an inherent part of me. And being a mother to my own children will never mean that I give anything less than all of me. Which is kind of contagious, by the way. For, when you love someone sooooo much, it is hard not to love others as well.

* * * * *

The boy was showing his disdain for having to get out of bed early to help clean up the cats’ rowdish fur-clouds-night-time-mess, by carelessly handling the vacuum cleaner, like letting the metal tube drop on the floor with a loud bang. We have to vacuum clean the flat in the morning because the cats’ fur and litter mess threatens to awaken father’s allergies.

So, I called out to him son: “I can’t believe how violently and indifferently you’re behaving! It’s frightening because it’s a general thing. All students behave like this…”

I confess that I was dreading the start of school, experiencing fear of the young, of middle schoolers invading my peace of mind and me not being able to handle it.

“That’s why we’re fucked!” I said with sporadic pessimistic conviction. “Humans are fucked. Humanity is fucked!”

My teenage son almost laughed. “I can’t believe what you’re saying!” He retorted with feigned disbelief. “You’re talking rubbish. What you’re saying is sheer rubbish!”

“I can’t believe how carelessly and violently you’re handling the vacuum cleaner. Why?!”

“I’m not careless, merely violent.” He smart-assed innocently. I decided to shut up.

I love him too much and admire him too much, which drove my subconscious faith that he had understood.

I also woke up thinking about his remarks after the movie we watched Sunday night as a family, Lord of the Rings - Return of the King. Even though I had watched all the Lord of the Rings movies while I was pregnant with him over 18 years ago, I did not remember how sad the ending actually was. “What’s wrong with Frodo? Is he getting on the ship to go off and die?” I said.

My son explained how it’s Tolkien’s way of working through his own trauma from fighting in a world war.

“Frodo has an injury that will never heal,” said my husband.

“What?! Tolkien fought in a world war?” I blurted out. “I think so,” my son replied suddenly unsure. He read all the books in multiple languages and ambitiously desires the 11,377 piece Minas Tirith Lego set for his birthday, which costs a fortune and is, frankly, too large for our little flat.

While watching the movies, I kept asking him, “is this in the book?”
“They walk a lot more.” Of course, I thought, marching is a huge part of military practice.
“The spider actually talks to him.” I’m sure now that Stephen King stole Tolkien’s hobbit-eating spider for his horror story “It”.

In fact, Second Lieutenant Tolkien fought in the First World War at the Western front in one of the biggest and bloodiest battles, the Somme offensive. He contracted trench fever from lice and was invalided to England. He never returned due to recurring illness and hospitalization. Wikipedia quotes his children John and Priscilla Tolkien talking about their father:

In later years, he would occasionally talk of being at the front: of the horrors of the first German gas attack, of the utter exhaustion and ominous quiet after a bombardment, of the whining scream of the shells, and the endless marching, always on foot, through a devastated landscape, sometimes carrying the men’s equipment as well as his own to encourage them to keep going.

This to me explains Frodo’s quest and company. There was so much violence in the movies that I found hard to handle this time around, too much warring, too much cruelty. Of course, Tolkien would tackle the matter of evil, what it does to men, what it is that drives devastation and destruction, as he witnessed with his own eyes and experienced with his own body and mind during an atrocious world war. Now I feel like I need to read the books, or book, myself even though I am weary of war.

Because I just finished reading Nora Bossong’s “Reichskanzlerplatz” (2024), which has not been translated into English yet. In fact, it was this discovery that prompted me to encourage my children to use their multilingual skills and love of literature to become literary translators, as a side job while they complete their studies. My son is seriously considering it, but he is also considering becoming a Swiss guard to the Pope. In Switzerland, military service is obligatory for young men as they reach the age of eighteen. Within weeks of moving back here, my son received a letter from the army recruiting him to his civil duty. But he is going to take the option, similar to what Tolkien was able to do, to enlist only after he is done with his studies. I suppose he could become a papal Swiss guard, as he is the only child we baptized in the Catholic Church.

Bossong retells the story leading up to the Second World War from the German Mitläufer perspective, the hack, the uncommitted person who just kind of followed along somehow. In an interview, Nora talks about four perspectives from which to narrate the time surrounding the Third Reich: from the perspective of those who became innocent victims; from the perspective of the resistance fighters; from the perspective of the actual perpetrators; and from the perspective that applies to most people, of kind of being part of it and kind of not being part of it, kind of steering through, swinging a flag at some point but then internally not agreeing with all of it, all the so called followers who made up the majority of the people of that time.

So, in a world full of hacks, what are you?

Anyway, I will no longer avoid reading the worldwide German bestseller All Quiet on the Western Front (1929, 1993) by Erich Maria Remarque. In German the title is Im Westen nichts Neues (1928) and literally translates to “Nothing new in the West”. My son and I talked about how the literal title maybe was more appropriate as war, indeed, is nothing new in the West. But the first translator’s choice does sound poetic. I read the following passage to my son from the Wikipedia article about the novel:

Paul [the protagonist] visits home, and the contrast with civilian life highlights the cost of war on his psyche. The town has not changed since he went off to war, but he has: he finds he does “not belong here any more, it is a foreign world”.

“That’s what happened to Frodo when he returned to the Shire, he didn’t feel at home anymore,” said my son.

He grabbed the paper that had arrived in the mail and asked me, “Are you going to vote yes?”

The Abstimmungs-Zeitung zur Schweizer Neutralität (Voting Newspaper on Swiss Neutrality) elaborates on eight pages of newsprint the importance of voting YES on the people’s initiative on the Preservation of Swiss Neutrality (Wahrung der schweizerischen Neutralität (Neutralitätsinitiative)).

“In Switzerland, a popular initiative (German: Volksinitiative, French: initiative populaire, Italian: iniziativa popolare, Romansh: iniziativa dal pievel) allows people to suggest laws on a federal, cantonal, and municipal level.

On a federal level it may only change the federal constitution, not propose an ordinary law. Along with the popular referendum and in some cantons recall elections, it is a form of direct democracy.” (Wikipedia)

I leafed trough the papers perusing the arguments to make sure it’s not just propaganda, words like “peace” and “security” jumping out. Neutrality protects us against wars, says a former politician. Switzerland’s neutrality is characterized by three pillars, it explains. Swiss neutrality is perpetual, armed and integral. I shy away from exaggerations. I know Switzerland was not perfectly neutral in either war. Plus, is absolute neutrality not a hack? As Nora Bossong tries to emphasize in her novel, every choice one person makes has an impact on the direction a people’s story takes.

At the end of a day, I’m a hippy at heart, all about peace and love, yall! But loving mankind is not enough. Thus, I must, at least, vote.

“Given that I am fundamentally pro peace and anti-war,” I responded to my son, “I will vote yes on this initiative as that is what comes closest to what I stand for.”

* * * * *

“Feminist-in-progress” Jameela Jamil shared an interesting perspective in an interview on The Tea podcast with Dr. Myriam Francois (YouTube, 2025):

Women were not the target of patriarchy. I think men are the target of patriarchy. I think that patriarchy was designed to subjugate men to be able to send them off to war. We don’t count how many men die at war. To send them to do the most dangerous jobs, to send them down the mines, into the diamond mines. Go and do all this unnecessary shit that we don’t actually need as a planet. All this excess is all created so that wealthy can send young healthy men to do the dogsbody work for them. Often […] working class men or people with lower status. Men are victims of higher violence than women. […] Patriarchy is so damaging for men. 60% of the gun deaths in America are men turning the gun on themselves. […]
Patriarchy is designed to subjugate men. And what they did, which was so genius, was to tell men, “Oh no, women are the target. So, you subjugate them and you won’t notice how much we are subjugating you, how much we are stealing from you.”

I’ve long held that hierarchical, patriarchal systems disfavor both women and men. Nora Bossong’s novel also shows that at the top are the industrialists and capitalists who enrich themselves by subjugating entire populations. War doesn’t destroy them but enriches them instead.

Vier Reichsmark am Tag zahlt das Unternehmen für jeden Häftling an die SS, […] bei gelernten Facharbeitern sechs, und die Akkumulatoren liefert Quandt and die Regierung. Wenn einer unter der körperlichen Belastung zusammenbricht, wird er […] ersetzt. Herzmuskelentzündung steht dann auf dem Totenschein. Man rechnet mit einem monatlichen Verlust von achtzig Mann und nennt es betriebswirtschaftliche Notwendigkeit.
(Four Reichsmark a day is what the corporation pays for each prisoner to the SS [Schutzstaffel, Secret Service], six for trained technicians, and the accumulators are delivered to the government by Quandt. If someone collapses due to physical strain, he’s replaced. Then, Myocardial inflammation is written on the death certificate. The company estimates a monthly loss of eighty men and calls it economic imperative.)

Quandt is the corporation that produced the uniforms for the German army during World War One. It continued to feed the military industrial complex during the Third Reich and its world war with uniforms and storage batteries, large rechargeable cells that also worked underwater in submarines. The war and the exploitation of prisoners paid off. Today, the Quandts are still one of wealthiest and most economically powerful families in Germany (Bossong, 2024).

* * * * *

As the Ayurveda practitioner massaged along some mysterious lines on my body, images of nadi maps came to mind. Damn, I thought, ancient Indian science was spot on! The Western woman shaman was targeting my subtle body, and I perceived its presence within as if countless invisible little cables had been turned on throughout my entire structure. But as I lay there motionless focusing only on my breath, I also perceived the shapelessness that we embody, hers and mine, as light. When she left the room, I saw the quality of light change through my closed eyelids. And when she moved and her joints gently cracked, I sensed both her and my body as removed from a larger phenomenon – energy?

Weeks ago, I met a massage therapist who restored my sleep for a night through Lomi Lomi. She told me that she had an incisive experience on a retreat in India during her youth. She had experienced pure being beyond all matter, which transcends death and all that’s temporary. She encouraged me to break up with fear, who I’d entertained now for decades with my implacable anxiety and intrusive thought processes. She encouraged me to laugh at fear and be goofy, to bawk like a chicken and shake my elbows every time I felt anxious. She encouraged me to engage with faith instead.

Faith for fear, I can’t say that I’ve succeeded. Old lovers can be insistent. Fear is your friend; a fellow philosopher once told me. Years later, he put a gun to his head. But his death was published in the newspaper as a motorcycle accident, as is common when bougie middle-aged Mexican men die unexpectedly by choice. You see, in Mexico, for a man to suddenly become an avid motorcycle rider in his middle-age is respectable. It’s cool if he dies from that. But suicide is taboo.

So, I broke up with fear officially. But that thing with faith isn’t working out just yet.

* * * * *

As I realized, that the fellowship of the ring may have been about Tolkien working through his war trauma, all jokes in me began to subside. Jokes about how I was going to write the saga of the Lady of the Rings. Of course, because hardly any women show up in the story. But, of course, because it’s a story about the tragedies of men! Jokes about how instead of battles, there would be love scenes, the rings a metaphor for marriage, the quest about relationships and lovers and partners and break-ups and all the good stuff. A satire.

But war is painfully real and it’s no adventure. In his opening of “In the west nothing new”, that literary masterpiece about the First World War, Erich Maria Remarque writes:

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war.

That’s why Frodo had to leave.

* * * * *

YOG’ XIII

Stand,

don’t march.

And reach up your hands,

palms touch.

Allow your prayer to land

in front of your heart as a crutch

for all the manned

who clutched

what life was destroyed

as they were deployed

without asking too much.

Banned

from peace and such.

Don’t be annoyed,

these men aren’t a void.

Most are dead.

Instead,

bow to them overjoyed!

Depressed

You sit gloomy at the table with
your loved ones laughing,
unable to laugh and stiff.
In fact, you feel annoyed
but not with their laughter
but with yourself,
your inability
to be happy.

Disabled by stress.
What stress?
Hormonal, organic, circumstantial,
ancestral or emotional stress?

And it makes you wonder,
what hurts less?
Laughterlessness
or that inner sense of isolation?

Deprimida

Te encuentras oscura sentada en la mesa
con tus seres queridos quienes ríen
y tu sin risa eres presa.
De hecho te da hueva
pero no de los demás sus carcajadas
sino tus propias pendejadas,
tu inhabilidad
de ser feliz.

Estás incapacitada por el estrés.

¿Pero cual es?
¿Hormonal, orgánico, circunstancial,
ancestral o emocional a caso es?

Y te preguntas,
¿cual es el menor infierno,
la ausencia de alegría
o aquella sensación de aislamiento interno?

Deprimiert

Du sitzt düster am Tisch mit
deinen Lieblingsmenschen die lachen
aber du bist steif und lachst nicht mit.

Tatsächlich bist du genervt

aber nicht von ihrem Gelächter

sondern von dir selbst,

von deiner Unfähigkeit

zur Glückseligkeit.

Stressbehindert.

Welcher Stress verhindert?

Hormoneller, organischer, Umstandsstress,

Stamm-, oder Gefühlstress?

Und du fragst dich,

was ist weniger ärgerlich,
Lachlosigkeit

oder verinnerlichte Vereinsamung?

Brain fog

And suddenly, just now, as I begin to write this spontaneous blog to losen up a block I suffer from lately, I remember the muscle whose name I've been trying to think of all day. I got as far as it has to do with the lumbar spine. Not the multifidi, which are everywhere. Always afraid of mother's Alzheimers history, forgetting hits hard. Plus, I've been feeling depressed. 

Last night at the New Orleans meets Zofingen Jazz Festival, I projected my anxiety onto the seasoned musicians on stage as they masterfully played their instruments. What is art? I tried to ponder. Great effort over time, repetition ten-thousand times... So what does it mean to philosophize? If philosophy is the art of perception.... yadda, yadda, yadda. My mind just didnt't wanna. I had such a hard time letting myself go into the music all night. Was I artless? If the world were to end indeed, I entertained my fears instead, would the musicians play like the band on the Titanic as it sank? Lover reminded me that humans are but a millisecond of this Earth Planet's life and what a joy to experience being human given such odds. Really? I thought to myself feeling stubbornly gloomy inside. Point is, it will end. Could the recent earthquke catastrophe in Venezuela have stirred up some subconscious trauma from my childhood in Mexico City and its terrible earth quake of 1985, which caused immense destruction? But what I remember isn't that bad... mother being thrown from wall to wall in the hallway coming to check on us... mother holding us wrapped in a big towel or blanket in the middle of the hallway as the eight-story-building shakes... building toy brick buildings and crashing them onto toy cars and dolls, playing that superheros fly in to save everyone, probably superman and superwoman...

Anyway, I didn't work today since the school year is basically over. So, I was able to go to the only weekly morning yoga class at the local gym for a change. My glutes were messed up from all the walking and standing and semi-dancing between crowds of people on the uneven cobble stone plazas in front of the festival stages downtown, where the Middle Ages have been structurally preserved with great care. Is it just gluteus maximus or also ... ??? I could not remember the name of the muscle and it killed me. Too much German, too little anatomy and yoga study. The German yoga names are often strange. My multi-lingual brain is structured in a certain way, I concluded. Specific areas organize each language. My yoga and anatomy knowledge is bound largely to English. But the brain is now especially stimulated by the Swiss and German environment and even some French - completely different areas! - while at the same time neglecting the reinforcement of yoga and anatomy. How am I supposed to recall a certain muscle out of the blue? Even if I used the word a lot at some point. I also remember conssciously repressing it months ago. An athletic student of mine walked in complaining about back pain, I saw her posture, I had an impulse to tell her about those muscles in the lower back that .... stop. You're a substitute English teacher, I thought, and, frankly, this fourteen-year-old girl doesn't care. Then I wondered, did I taint my scarce anatomical knowledge forever with such self-oppression?

However, I must also blame the severe iron deficiency the Swiss doctor uncovered last week, with a value of 4.9 of 15. Less than a third of the norm! Now I know why I've been in a state of chronic fatigue for years. It's not just peri-menopause. The doctor prescribed iron pills and I've been making a point of eating more beef though horse meat and blood sausage would be better, but I can't. It will take at least 3 months to get my iron back up, the doctor said, maybe a year. I'll notice when I start having more energy. It must be all that heavy bleeding. After menopause, he assured me, I won't have that problem anymore. When he suggested that I might put a net on my uterus, which he referred to as an "elegant" solution, in order to reduce the bleeding or take contraceptive pills, I told him I was done doing things to my femininity. The body clearly thinks it can bleed a lot. It clearly also needs iron. Is that why middle aged women died in past times? Well, the doctor said that you can't die from iron deficiency, which is the only upside. Because both body and mind lose what little energy they have fast.

So, I hoped that yoga class might trigger the yoga knowledge part of the brain. Asana and viynasa did re-align the body. Pigeon position helped the gluteal area. I walked out in better shape than I'd had walked in in. What I appreciate the most about asana is the way it gives me a check on the state of the body as it awakens muscles, joints, fascia and nerves. All the daily moving this Swiss lifestyle requires plus new workouts and exercises have strengthened and reshaped the body in meaningful ways that I wasn't aware of until I put the body through a systematic yogasana practice in class under the guidance of a seasoned teacher, who understands body mechanics. I noticed my body switch on the memory of other yoga teachers I've had who understand anatomy and movement. The biggest difference I noticed with being in class as opposed to making attempts to practice on my own, was the ability to steer my attention with singular focus on my breath and body - as opposed to having to think of what position to get into or how to structure my practice or all the to-dos that surround me at home. Help is underrated. But I still refused to check an anatomy book or the internet. I stubbornly insist on my brain to recall what I know must still be there. Maybe the mind takes longer to go through an ever expanding cognitive library of organic data stored biologically and asymmetrically over the course of several decades and counting. Must make the brain work.

Luckily, yoga also shows up randomly in public places, like the cobble stone ground of the town plaza or the chaise-lounge by the pool, where I make up new asanas - if I can recall the right words...

QUADRATUS LUMBORUM

Ludwig Wittgenstein - Cynic or Sage?

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics, delivered in November 1929 to the Heretics Society at Cambridge University, is a problematic provocation with a cynical and pessimistic flair.

Wittgenstein begins his lecture by giving an explanation for Ethics as “the general inquiry into what is good”, however, neglects to explain what “good” actually is, perhaps, because he will soon go on to discredit the word “good” with a few examples. But first, he seeks to offer more clarity on the matter of Ethics through a series of synonyms, which he compares to the composite portraiture of Sir Francis Galton, who in the 1880s used photographic superimposition of two or more faces by multiple exposures to create composites, which he presented as human ideal types and concepts. Galton considered his technique to investigate common types of humanity an extension of the statistical techniques of averages and correlation.[1]

Wittgenstein talks about showing his audience a Galtonesque collective photo to make them see “a typical Chinese face” as a simile for his attempt to give them “a rough idea as to what it is that Ethics is concerned with” by listing several possible definitions. Whether he succeeded in giving the Heretics Society such an idea, we will never know. Nonetheless, his proposition suffers from a problematic undercurrent. To even speak of “a typical Chinese face” is sheer ignorance, at best, given the vastness and diversity of the Chinese population, not to mention its culture, with fabulous philosophies, and languages in the several hundred. Between 1850 and 1931 the Chinese population grew from an estimated 436,100,000 million to 474,780,000 million![2] The only typical face is the human one, millions of times over, and this one varies in great detail. Unfortunately, the attempt by certain movements to typify select portions of humanity has never had good consequences, instead, underlining the unethical streaks of human hubris[3]. Seriously, what can a 19^th-century British technique reveal about the realities of humanity across the globe? To superimpose various images of real faces in order to create some abstract ideal, is to erase the human right to be an idiosyncratic individual variety of the vast human collective. Erasure is unethical and leads nowhere good. Galton’s 19^th-century Britain also brought forth the eugenics movement, which spread to most European countries, like Germany, but also to the United States, Canada and Australia. The word “eugenics” comes from the Greek composition “eu – good, well” and “genes – born, come into being, growing/grown.” On the surface it can mean good genes or born well, but this name was deceiving, for the eugenics movement were a set of cruel and murderous beliefs and practices that aimed to improve the genetic quality of a particular human population.[4] The kind of misguided and unethical movement that went hand in hand with racism and the antisemitism that fueled the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. Little did Wittgenstein know in 1929, that the worst was yet to come, in the form of death camps and a Second World War killing and causing inconceivable suffering for many millions of humans across the world.

Of course, Ethics doesn’t claim to actually know what is good but merely to inquire into what might be. That’s why it is of utmost importance to carefully review the terms on which the inquiry is made. Wittgenstein settles on the following notions about ethical inquiry:
- what is good
- what is valuable
- what is really important
- on the meaning of life
- what makes life worth living

Thus, what might a “rough idea”, as he proposes we imagine, look like? Because we already encounter a very rough and problematic road to imagining what’s genuinely good or valuable or important or meaningful, with the loose guidance Ludwig bestows upon his interlocutors, a group of, probably gentlemen – though the Heretics Society was open to women. Jane Ellen Harrison, a British scholar, linguist and England’s first paid woman career academic, found an audience at the Society. Doctor Harrison is one of the three founders of modern studies in Ancient Greek religion and mythology, and her methods of applying 19^th-century archeological discoveries to the interpretation of ancient Greek religion have become standard today.[5] On Decemeber 7^th, 1909, she gave an inaugural talk at the Heretics Society, which was published in 1911 as the essay Heresy and Humanity, “an argument that warned of the dangers of group-think and implored the audience to realize that we are constantly negotiating the line between egotism and herd instinct, but that how we navigate that line matters.”[6] On May 18^th, 1924, influential modernist English writer Virginia Wolf used the Heretics forum to reply criticism of her novel Jacob by the writer Arnold Bennett. Her much-cited phase addressing the arrival of modernism “on or about December 1910, human character changed” has gone down in history. She was referring to English painter and critic Roger Fry’s exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists and argued, through the examination of two generations of writers, that as times change, writers and the tools they use must evolve as “the tools of one generation are useless to the next”.[7] Wolf viewed modernism as an inherently unstable society and culture in flux. Overall, the Heretics Society appears to have been characterized by nonconformism and the exposition of novel ideas.

So, what were the gentle souls like in the auditorium of the Heretics Society in 1929, when Ludwig Wittgenstein stepped up to the podium? What would they have imagined as good? A humanity characterized by abstraction, whereby the conception of a typical face was viewed as valuable? Or a humanity where various points of view are really important and diversity gives meaning to life? Unfortunately, it is not clear what rough idea Ethics has for Wittgenstein.

My own rough idea of what is good, valuable, important and makes life worth living goes something like this:

Ethical is what takes variety and idiosyncrasy into account in a way that guides and serves the common wellbeing of not only humanity but also planetary life at large. Ethical is what makes life worth living through inclusion, justice and equal opportunities to pursue health, wealth, happiness, equanimity and liberation from suffering for living creatures alike. Ethical is what gives all humans the right to shelter, water, food, hygiene, healthcare, education and protection from injury and disaster. Ethical is what enables individuals to come together as communities and express their creativity freely. A meaningful life is possible when the basic necessities of survival are accounted for all and the means for thriving available to all.

Perhaps, Wittgenstein is unspecific to make his provocative claim on linguistic doom. That “we cannot express what we want to express and that all we can say about the absolute miraculous remains nonsense.” A philosophical punch line to appeal to an audience who is into nonconformism. Why offer clear definitions and ideas? The Heretic Society was founded on the questioning of traditional authorities in general and religious dogmas in particular.[8] To hear the absolute miraculous be dismissed as nonsense may have tickled the anti-dogmatic fancy of the Society more than presentation of genuine wisdom with clear guidance, often misread as traditional authority, as opposed to being understood as timeless truths enabling the surviving and thriving of humanity for millions of years. Could Ludwig imagine that tickling the heretics would result in a paper considered Western philosophical canon? Or did his joke of the moment merely blow their minds like a cannon?

Wittgenstein resorts to negative definitions, like guilt, and weak measures, like pleasure, to continue exploring the relative notion of the absolute good, that is Ethics. He also employs strong measures for good, such as awe, appreciation and safety. But he uses them to prove what can’t be imagined. For example, he claims that “it is nonsense to say that I wonder at the existence of the world, because I cannot imagine it not existing.” This is kind of a silly assessment, because you can naturally wonder about the world not being around. As the old Indian sage Markandeya did, who “had a vision about how the world would come to an end. Just as human beings die, the world also experiences death. This is called Pralaya, when all the mountains, forests, lands and rivers get under the sea, where they dissolve into the waters. This frightening sight where even the stars and the planets are consumed by the sea was witnessed by Markaya.”[9]

The story of Markaya’s envisioned doom underlies the yoga position known as Child’s Pose or, in Sanskrit, Balasana. Because the sage Markandeya, who indeed imagined the world not existing, also visualized “a banyan leaf, cradled by the waves of the waters of doom. On this banyan leaf was a child, a baby sucking its toe. […] Markandeya was reassured that what he had seen as the terrifying end of the world was just an event in the lifecycle of the cosmos. Death would be followed by rebirth, not only for all living creatures, but the world itself. The gurgling happy child represented how the divine considers even the greatest of catastrophes and calamities as just one event in the infinite flow of events that take place in the universe.”[10]

Asanas, or positions, are not only ancient, but they represent basic Yoga canon, philosophical guidelines for good living, physical Ethics, if you will. An ancient Indian sage, exponent of visions, inspired a very accessible solution for dealing with doom – which results from the inevitable conclusion that the world, too, will cease to exist – in the form of a simple pose. Balasana is a calming position available to anyone, anytime, anywhere and is conducive to individual and collective well-being, health, equanimity, happiness and creativity. Child’s Pose, amongst many others, is a concrete and clear expression of Ethics that all humans can employ.

Just kneel on the ground with your knees together or spread apart. Then, drape your torso over your thighs or let it settle between them. Allow your head to hang loosely resting on the ground. Place your arms stretched out in front of you on the ground or next to along the sides of your body. With every inhalation feel your torso expand and lift you gently. With every exhalation feel yourself drop deeper into the calm of the ground beneath your body. Breath on, in and out, always aware of the breath moving through your body until you feel yourself let go into calmness of a grounded space.

The yogic child position captures Ethics beyond language, as it offers a way for the well-being of everyone, a strategy for and expression of goodness in terms of health, happiness, equanimity and calm. Yoga positions, or asanas, capture Ethics in a very physical and complete way that transcends words. And yet, each position also has a name. For a yoga practitioner “Balasana” can mean an absolute miraculous kind of calm.

But maybe it would have been too much to ask of a group of post-World-War-One Europeans, embedded in a Great Depression and surrounded by the rise of fascism, to imagine the non-existence of the world. In this context, Wittgenstein’s provocative cynicism, maybe makes sense, when he states that: “To be safe essentially means that it is physically impossible that certain things should happen to me and therefore it is nonsense to say that I am safe whatever happens.” In truth, Europeans were not safe. For, fascism and another war were about to erupt and destroy millions of lives.

And Wittgenstein insists on the notion of nonsense throughout his lecture. He considers it nonsense to say that experiences and facts have absolute value. “It is the paradox that an experience, a fact, should seem to have supernatural value,” he states. But experiences can, in fact, even as expressed in words, give insight into phenomena that transcend them, insight into what lies beyond.

Still, Wittgenstein considers what’s miraculous to be irreconcilable with science. “The truth is that the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way you look at it as a miracle,” he states. But this must not be the case.

We could understand what Wittgenstein considers as “miraculous” to be that which lies beyond facts and experiences, which science is devoted to capturing in structured and systematic ways, rendering miracles beyond the capture of science, even though these can be experienced on a different level, one out of the reach of language according to Wittgenstein. Indeed, another approach is possible to the reconciliation between science and that which may lie beyond, as explored by the Western yogi, mediator and author Michael Singer in his book The Untetheres Soul – The Journey Beyond Yourself (2007). Singer considers spirituality to be “the commitment to go beyond, no matter what it takes”, essentially the pursuit of the miraculous in the absolute sense, to use Wittgenstein’s language.

“The foundations of spiritual growth and personal awakening are very much strengthened by the findings of Western science. Science has shown us how an underlying energy field forms into atoms, which then bind together into molecules, and ultimately manifest into the entire physical universe. The same is true inside of us. All that goes on inside also has its foundation in an underlying energy field. It is the movements in this field that create our mental and emotional patterns as well as our inner drives, urges, and instinctual reactions. Regardless of what you call this inner force field – Chi[11], Shakti[12], or Spirit – it is an underlying energy that flows in particular patterns through your inner being.”[13]

Thus, science can strengthen spiritual experiences, or that which is miraculous. Science is a form of language. And Wittgenstein does consider that words gain meaning through their use within forms of life, and that language has a fluid, social character.[14] It follows that, precisely because language has a fluid and social character, and words gain meaning through their use within forms of life, that the most important aspects of life give language its descriptive capacity, expanding it rather than being limited by it. Thus, rendering language, a significant tool of Ethics. Language feeds on everyday life, fixed definitions and abstract correspondence to reflect an interlocutor’s intentions. Not language limits life, but speakers do. Sadly, Wittgenstein appears to limit language by rendering it absolutely useless and nonsensical.

Even more sadly, science, too, is but an expression of humanity and subject to its ingenuity, inspiration and impulsivity. Perhaps, Wittgenstein was wary of human expression and sought to pull people off their high horse by questioning the most fundamental aspects of human interaction: ethics and language. What is meaningful in a world full of nonsense, indeed?

The late 19^th century didn’t only give rise to the Heretic Society that gave the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein a platform for his rough ideas. The father of nuclear chemistry, Otto Hahn, was born on March 8^th, 1879, and lived to witness the abhorrent consequences of his extensive research. He discovered nuclear fission, the science behind nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, with the support of woman nuclear physicist Lise Meitner (1878-1968) and others. In the early 1920s, Hahn created the new line of research known as “applied radiochemistry” taken up all over the world. The United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasake during the final days of World War Two on the 6^th and 9^th of August, 1945, killing up to 246,000 civilians. This represented the first and only uses of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. The war in Europe had ceased on May 8^th with Germany’s surrender. Hanh and other scientists, almost all of whom had worked on the German nuclear weapons program, had been put under arrest on April 25^th by an armored British-American task force. They were informed of the atomic bombings in Japan in captivity and were shocked that the Allies were more advanced than them. Hahn noted that he was glad they had not succeeded, but the German nuclear scientist drafted a memorandum that made sure it was known who had discovered nuclear fission to begin with. Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Peace Prize in Chemistry “for his discovery of the fission of heavy atomic nuclei” and found out about it via the Daily Telegraph on November 18^th, 1945.

Back in 1909 at the Heretic Society, Jane Ellen Harrison had implored the audience to realize that we are constantly negotiating the line between egotism and herd instinct and that how we navigate that line matters. But the German nuclear scientists still satisfied their thirst for recognition and an egotistical Otto Hahn cashed in on the Nobel Peace Prize, despite the abominable destruction and devastation he had fathered. But the instinct for survival of the German scientists was stronger than any ethical considerations, and they went on to use the pseudo-apologetic narrative that Germany lost the war because of the moral superiority of its scientists to secure the survival of German academe.

“[I]t is not difficult to see that the most primal energy flow is the survival instinct,” Michael Singer writes at the turn of the twenty-first century. “During eons of evolution, from the simplest of living forms to the most complex, there has always been the day-to-day struggle to protect oneself.”[15]

When considering the unethical story of nuclear science, one that led to unimaginable suffering, Wittgenstein’s observations are plausible. Language can be deceiving. A peace prize for war crimes? Does it get more unethical than that? While truths can seek expression in language, however, they only have meaning if expressed in lived experience as well. Thus, knowledge is stored and taught in order to recreate meaningful human experiences and to avoid repeating unethical mistakes.

Language plays an important part in carrying human experience forward and philosophy finds meaning in abstractions capable of transcending mundane misgivings. Both definitions and daily use determine meaningful language. Words are shaped by circumstance, but meaning, embedded in words, also shapes activities, contexts and life itself. One sentence alone can capture meaningfulness that transcends a given time, space and activity, or a contextual interpretation thereof. For example, the isolated sentence “Death is part of life.” encompasses a larger existential context, that embraces countless mundane situations faced by creatures beyond humans themselves.

While it is true that there is no single universal rulebook for language, we must acknowledge that underlying structures exist and must be taken into consideration. Both in a courtroom and at a family dinner, phenomena like power dynamics and social stratification can play a role. Racism and other isms can show up similarly in various contexts, as can justice, empathy and love.

What makes language possible in the first place, is an interesting question. Language works because it is an expression of human experience. Words are robes for meaning. The greatest challenge is to capture meaning beyond it’s many cloaks, the art of language is to reflect meaning in the nude. Thus, it would have been more appropriate to award Otto Hahn the Nobel War Prize in recognition of the destructive extent of his impactful scientific work. Of course, such a prize is nothing to celebrate. Such suffering is too big a prize to pay for human games of nonsense, such as making weapons with no other purpose but to kill and cause harm. Does it get more unethical than that?

Meaning is both something we participate in together and something we can privately construct in isolation. Otto Hahn constructed the meaning surrounding his nuclear discovery privately, while writing his memoirs in captivity and subsequently found support in his fellow scientists, ultimately going down in history as the father of nuclear science, regardless of his role in the terrors of World War Two.

So, how does language actually work? Language works in tandem with meaning. And meaning is rooted in life. If language appears mysterious and paradoxical when abstracted from ordinary use, it’s because life itself can appear mysterious and paradoxical. Philosophical problems arise because unethical situations challenge the mind’s love for wisdom. Zero wisdom lies in the creation of weapons. Warring is driven by pathology and fear. Philosophical problems arise when the weakest and most afflicted aspects of humanity seem to drive society into insanity to the point that language itself appears as nonsense. But words have functions that transcend ordinary speech. And languages are designed to dance with meaning to reflect life and stop at nothing. Thus, languages abound with great diversity, creativity and variety.

For Wittgenstein, what matters most is not something we can neatly define, but something we can only gesture toward in action, attitude and lived experience. And yet, we must seek to define ethics in a way that is meaningful to following generations. A national or multi-national constitution, for example, must reflect clear guidelines for the actions, attitudes and lived experiences of the people it seeks to embody in a way that is conducive to a collective well-being while honoring individual idiosyncrasies. It is irresponsible to claim that definitions don’t matter, because they very much do as they transcend individual experiences and carry on meaning for living for hundreds and thousands of years. More importantly, we must seek our definitions carefully to elicit meaningful lives for generations to come. We must seek ethical lives that are free of destruction, war, hunger, suffering, deceit and senseless strife.

As logic exists outside of language, so do other phenomena. Patterns are expressed in the structures of life and language seeks to recreate these patterns. Mathematics and physics are examples of language varieties that seek to express the patterns humans observe in the universe and to make human creation and manipulation possible. Ethics must be a wise guide for human creativity and manipulation. Ethics must teach humans to enable individual and collective well-being instead of war and destruction. And there are many ways to describe meaning. Language can be expressed beyond words through art, as well.

There is no humanity without expression and sharing. Thus, Wittgenstein’s proposition that what cannot be spoken of must be passed over in silence is problematic in the context of both wisdom and injustice. Wisdom needs to be shared to protect well-being. And mistakes cannot remain unnamed for justice to prevail. It may be true, that not everything important can be captured in theoretical terms, but, perhaps, it must for the sake of wisdom and education. Everything is significant for the human creature as exhibited by their tireless attempts to express it through language and art. Meaning that is embedded in lived practice is felt, but meaning embedded in language can transcend the one and become knowledge and life for many. This is the undeniable responsibility of ethics, the inquiry into what is good, important and valuable. As we define the meaning of life for humanity, will determine how we live.

Indeed, any aspect of human experience, whether mystical or mundane, can remain unexpressed. Plenty of day-to-day experiences go largely unarticulated, like going to the bathroom, eating, taking care of the body, et cetera. Repetitive mundane experiences go unarticulated far more than mystical ones. Speculatively, in terms of quantity due to the sheer amount of experiences required to through life on a day-to-day basis. But, sadly, in Western culture also in qualitative terms. How many of us habitually meditate, pray, light fires, engage in daily rituals, chants or other spiritual practices, like venerating a deity or engaging reverently with nature or the universe, like kissing the earth or staring up at the sky? Plenty of practices died as they got waved off as pagan by religion. Can they be revived? We have language to thank for holding on to ancient traditions! But how many monks, nuns, renunciates and devotees actually spend more time in mystical experiencing than taking dutiful care of the daily demands of terrestrial mortal life?

What is the absolute sense of the term miraculous? Wittgenstein doesn’t say. Perhaps, “absolute” is but an exaggeration, while “ethical” is a useful aspiration.

If “all we can say about the absolute miraculous remains nonsense,” is all Wittgenstein can say about the “absolute miraculous”, then it is nonsense. Is to qualify certain experiences, such as the existence of the world and language, as absolute miracles too ambitious? Can we agree that life is miraculous and that this word is indication enough? “Miraculous” expresses how marvelous life is and invites us to experience the awe, reverence, humility, gratitude, appreciation and sheer joy the realization of life’s miraculous existence evokes.

Perhaps, Wittgenstein simply remained too scarce in his use of language, while synonyms and literary techniques abound to capture the value and importance humans express through language, of the miraculous life and fascinating world they’re a part of. Perhaps, the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of their own minds. But would it have been too offensive to tell this to the men of the Heretics Society to their face? That their minds are bound. Language can be used as a scapegoat, too.

I’m left to wonder, was Wittgenstein a sage provocateur or a disillusioned cynic?

The closing statement of his lecture sounds bleak. “This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless, Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science.” Yes, science fails humanity every day that it produces weapons of mass destruction, which are neither good nor valuable nor meaningful for life. “What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.” Which he does. Wittgenstein not only ridicules science but also the human mind, and rightfully so, we’ve seen what atrocities it is capable of. But at the same time, only if we can transcend our afflictions through genuine ethics, characterized by the respect for the miracle of living, do we stand a chance to call ourselves good philosophers and human beings, who seek well-being for all and the common good for generations to come.

Switzerland, May 2^nd, 2026

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_portrait

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_China

[3] hubris – exaggerated pride or self-confidence; arrogance (www.merriam-webster.com)

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Ellen_Harrison

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kay_Ogden

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Bennett_and_Mrs._Brown

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kay_Ogden

[9] Devdutt Pattanaik with Matthew Rulli. Yoga Mythology – 64 Asanas and Their Stories. 2019. HarperCollins Publishers, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. p.255

[10] Ibidem, pp. 255-256

[11] Vital force in traditional Chinese philosophy.

[12] The Universal Power that underlies and sustains all existence in Hinduism.

[13] Michael A. Singer. The Untethered Soul – The Journey Beyond Yourself. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., Oakland, CA. p. 59

[14] Christopher Bray. Philosophy Club Notes – Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Language. Sandy Library, April 18^th, 2026.

[15] Michael A. Singer. The Untethered Soul – The Journey Beyond Yourself. New Harbinger Publications, Inc., Oakland, CA. p. 59