Wrinkles and creases, hairs and goosebumps. Toe nails and hands that look so real that they remind you of your own. Bone structures and skin tones that resemble yours. And yet, despite all the recognition you feel estranged from what you’re witnessing in Echo’s main hall in the exhibition Arcadian Dreams Continue reading
I should have taken a moment to think before I suggested that Studium Generale choose “Loneliness” as its theme for this term. We’ve got a whole line-up of thought-provoking, artful, innovative events around loneliness. Last week, I attended the first ones. In the writing workshop run by our colleague from Exhale, Harriet Foyster, I was hit by profound sadness. With that amused detachment that I sometimes feel towards myself, I realised that loneliness is a sensitive topic for me. And I had chosen to fill several months’ worth of my working life with it. Brilliant move, I thought of myself, like a weary elder looking down on a slightly obtuse young relative.
On to Augustine. Bear with me, you’ll see where this is coming from. Saint Augustine, or Augustine of Hippo, was a Christian theologian born in 354 in modern-day Algeria. Sainthood didn’t come easy; while he was a brilliant writer and philosopher, his autobiographical Confessions are full of concubines, hedonism and other worldly pleasures. When he was called on by his mother to mend his ways, Augustine famously prayed:
Grant me chastity and [moderation], but not yet.
If you are looking for hard-earned lessons, look no further. I want to delve into Augustine’s meditations on grief. They come straight from a wounded heart. As a youth, Augustine had a passionate friendship with another young man who died of a fever. (Augustine’s sexuality is hotly contested to this day. As part of the Loneliness theme, we actually have an upcoming event on closetedness. I don’t expect to see Augustine there, but we’ll do our best in his absence.) This death devastated Augustine to the point where his own life became unbearable to him. He wrote:
For I was astonished that other mortals lived, since he whom I loved, as if he would never die, was dead; and I wondered still more that I, who was to him a second self, could live when he was dead. Well did one say of his friend, “Thou half of my soul,” for I felt that my soul and his soul were but one soul in two bodies; and, consequently, my life was a horror to me, because I would not live in half. And therefore, perchance, was I afraid to die, lest he should die wholly whom I had so greatly loved.
Time passes, and Augustine rediscovers solace in the worldly pleasures which his grief had soured for him. He can love and be loved, spend lazy days talking and laughing, debating and philosophising with other friends. Even his grief for his soulmate, it seems, is temporary. He keeps on living the way he always had, drinking with bosom friends, exploring new ideas. It must have felt like a happy escape. Reading this now, it strikes me how sad it seems that even the deepest love of his life can be replaced by new faces and new impressions. The passage of time doesn’t just take away the beloved. Like sand on the beach, even the place that the beloved took up in Augustine’s life is filled in again.
“But yet there succeeded, not certainly other sorrows, yet the causes of other sorrows. For whence had that former sorrow so easily penetrated to the quick, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die as if he were never to die? But what revived and refreshed me especially was the consolations of other friends, with whom I did love what instead of You I loved.”
Here is the crux of his discovery, the insight that Augustine seeks to share with us. His friends, he discovers, will keep dying. He pours his deepest self out onto them, and time comes in like a tide, washing it away. His whole concept of love has been misguided. He writes that we love our friends for all the shared moments which are “so much fuel to melt our souls together, and out of many to make but one.” When our beloved dies, we die too. This is the cause of grief and the reason why it makes life bitter to us.
Perhaps you can see where this is going.
Blessed be he who loves You, and his friend in You, and his enemy for Your sake. For he alone loses none dear to him to whom all are dear in Him who cannot be lost. And who is this but our God, the God that created heaven and earth[?]
Here is the lesson. The deep love you feel for your friends is real, and it is right. But in that passion, to forget their mortality is to lie to yourself. What’s more, you risk opening yourself up to a grief that pollutes your soul and makes your life a burden. So much for the analysis; now the solution. (Brace yourselves, my non-Christian brethren.) Love your friends, your enemies, love all souls and every part of creation through God. He is eternal, and in Him, everything you love is safeguarded for eternity.
What a beautiful solution, and what a tragedy that it is founded on a faith in God! Imagine me, in my first year of university, aching with recognition and longing for access to the faith which Augustine – conveniently! – already possessed. I had enrolled in a philosophy module called “Death, God, and the Meaning of Life” looking for, well, God and/or the meaning of life. What can I say? I found Augustine and the delicious irony of a completely unpracticable answer to all my problems.
Coming back around now to the question I opened with: why are we so alone? Is it really because we don’t know God? I don’t know anyone who truly thinks so. I can’t explain why the thought still holds this fascination for me. Like Augustine in his youth, I’ve had moments where I told myself I had found a resolution to my loneliness. And again like Augustine, I’ve seen those visions swept away by time and change.
Here I go into Q2: Loneliness. My chosen theme. Still searching, still longing, still feeling the ache of mortality. Maybe I’ll find it this time.
Photograph taken from the cover of the Viriditas recording by the Sibil•la Ensemble, copyright Brendon Heist.
I am the kind of person who still says “thank you” to ChatGPT after completing a task. Perhaps this is a “boomer” thing, but I wonder why I do it. I can’t help but view an entity with which I can have reasonably meaningful conversations as a “someone” with inner awareness or consciousness—in short, I don’t want to hurt its feelings. I feel a bit hurt myself if I don’t do it. That is what I would do if I took its work for granted.
This may sound absurd; ChatGPT has no inner awareness. I just asked it, and it replied: “Everything I do stems from complex calculations and patterns based on the data I’ve been trained on, without self-awareness, feelings, or personal experience.” Thank you, Chattie, but that doesn’t alleviate my discomfort. Because if I didn’t see you as a “someone,” another unsettling question arises: do I really want an entity without self-awareness to play an increasingly important role in this world? This applies to AI in general: AI is taking on a more crucial role in major governance and monitoring systems worldwide. This raises fundamental ethical questions. Governments use AI for efficiency in administration and decision-making, such as predictive analytics and risk assessment. In the military domain (or organisations like Frontex, the European Union’s border guards), AI systems are deployed for surveillance and strategic decision-making, with discussions even surrounding autonomous decisions regarding weapon use. In healthcare, AI assists with diagnoses, treatment recommendations, and administrative tasks, while banks and financial institutions use AI for risk management, fraud detection, and algorithmic trading.
The benefits are clear: operational speed, precision, and improved judgment through pattern recognition. However, we also know that growing dependence on AI can be dangerous. In government, AI can lead to bias and discrimination, for example, when predictive algorithms wrongly label certain population groups as high risk. AI-driven weapons pose a serious concern; who is responsible for decisions over life and death? In healthcare, there is a risk that diagnoses or treatments may be based solely on cost calculations. In the financial sector, the use of AI can lead to unfair advantages for certain players.
AI excels at analysing vast amounts of data and extracting patterns. The predictions and decisions it generates often resemble what we attribute to “inner experience,” such as intuition—but that’s not what it is. This is especially dangerous in moral decision-making. Ethics requires sensitivity to context and empathy. The world is complex and nuanced. A well-known example is how AI used by the justice system assesses the recidivism risk of suspects based on factors such as neighbourhood, prior convictions, and social status (like the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, or COMPAS), systematically assigning higher scores to individuals from certain demographic groups.
This is precisely the point of the upcoming annual Van Hasselt Lecture, where guest speaker Peter Railton, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, will ask whether AI can be a genuinely moral actor—a decision-making entity—beyond prescribed moral codes or protocols. Can AI, which is so adept at machine learning, “learn” to be moral and thus genuinely interact with an ever-changing world?
The traditional musical accompaniment during the Van Hasselt lecture will be provided by the Sibil•la Ensemble. They recently recorded an audiovisual album featuring works from the 12th and 13th centuries, inspired by the writings of the 12th-century German mystic Hildegard von Bingen.
Why music based on medieval mysticism? Well, it is everything to do with feeling hurt if you don’t thank ChatGPT. Von Bingen perceived creation as imbued with divine wisdom, an invisible yet fundamental order she described as “Viriditas.” Viriditas was not only a physical life force (Von Bingen’s writings are sometimes exceedingly erotic; she is said to be the first woman to describe an orgasm), but also a moral force that maintains balance in the world. When humanity acts against this natural harmony, both nature and the soul suffer. Moral wrongdoing is not merely a violation of a rule; it is a deeply felt pain. For Hildegard, ethics is thus not a theoretical doctrine or rule-based; it is deeply intertwined with life and the world itself.
The question is whether such a “felt” ethics is ever achievable for AI. Can AI develop an inherent sensitivity to human values and social norms? This means that AI must not only operate according to established ethical guidelines but also develop an “ethical sense” that is sensitive to the context of a situation.
Learning is also important for Hildegard. In her Christian worldview, this means that people must continually grow and develop to come closer to the divine and realise their full moral potential. This line of thought can also inspire us in a secular age to view AI as a technology that must develop ethically—alongside machine learning, it should also engage in moral learning.
Leon Heuts, head of Studium Generale TU Delft
What’s really wrong with extreme wealth? Haven’t men—since it’s nearly always men—like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos earned their fortune through hard work and smart business strategies? Who are we, the average people, to criticize them? Isn’t our disdain rooted in jealousy because we secretly wish to be like them?
It’s curious that we even ask such questions – questions which reflect the very liberal times we live in. We’ve become so accustomed to the idea that we are all the entrepreneurs of our own lives, responsible for our own success, that we often view the ultra-wealthy as simply exceptionally successful. We assume they’ve earned it, while the real damage that wealth disparity inflicts on society and the planet is often overlooked.
Yet, research shows that concentrated wealth is deeply harmful. Ingrid Robeyns, a professor of ethics at Utrecht University, makes this case in her book Limitarianism. Her argument for capping wealth is not ideological but practical: extreme wealth undermines societies by concentrating power in the hands of a few, enabling them to shape politics in their favor or threaten to withdraw their capital if policies don’t suit them.
Historically, philosophers like Rousseau and Marx warned against the dangers of such wealth concentration. They argued that personal wealth often conflicts with the common good. Rousseau famously suggested that the first person to claim land as “theirs” and convince others of it should have been cast out. Instead, we admired them.
More importantly, these philosophers point out a more psychological danger. In today’s world, wealth has become a fetish, distorting our perception of what’s natural or deserved. Charismatic billionaires are celebrated as visionary heroes, even though their wealth is often built on exploitation, tax evasion, or pure luck. The real danger lies in how this wealth worship infiltrates society, convincing us that disruption and endless growth are virtues, when in reality, they often mask destructive power.
This glorification of extreme wealth creates a deeper cultural problem: we begin to idolize the “disruptors,” treating them as modern-day saviors. Figures like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs are portrayed as rebels and visionaries who single-handedly change the world. They embody a secular form of salvation, suggesting that anyone who works hard and breaks the rules can achieve the same success. As Apple’s famous slogan goes: “Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels…” But behind this image lies a more troubling reality.
Disruption, the ethos of these wealthy entrepreneurs, often transforms into destruction. Musk’s purchase of Twitter, for example, which turned the platform into a haven for conspiracy theories and misinformation, shows how “disruption” can spiral into chaos. The underlying message is clear: distrust the world as it exists and tear it down, regardless of the consequences. This echoes ancient Gnostic beliefs that the material world is inherently corrupt and salvation comes only by rejecting it.
It’s no coincidence that figures like Richard Branson and Elon Musk are involved in space exploration, or that Google’s offices resemble utopian environments, as parodied in Dave Eggers’ The Circle. The world is viewed as a chaotic, unreliable place that must be escaped—a place doomed to collapse. Musk, according to his biographer Ashlee Vance, is “consumed” by the idea that the apocalypse is near. He even speculates that our world is likely just a computer simulation, like in The Matrix.
This kind of world-denial is also reflected in how Steve Jobs’ charisma has been described as a “reality distortion field.” The term comes from a Star Trek episode where aliens on a barren planet could create new realities purely through mental power. Similarly, Jobs and Musk have a knack for bending reality to fit their vision, distancing themselves from ordinary life and creating idealized worlds of their own.
In this worldview, the existing reality is flawed and must be rejected or “disrupted.” This mindset fosters a detachment from real-world problems, replaced by fantasies of space colonization or digital utopias. Beneath this visionary allure is a dangerous tendency for the individual to abandon the current world and its pressing issues, reinforcing isolation and disconnection from the welfare of the collective.
This mindset is dangerous not just because it separates the rich from society, but because it seeps into everyday culture. We begin to believe that we must also constantly “disrupt” ourselves to succeed. Flexibility, perpetual reinvention, and boundless creativity become the ideals, leaving workers stressed, precarious, and primed for exploitation. Creativity, once an avenue for challenging the status quo and pointing out societal flaws, has now been reduced to mere problem-solving.
The problem isn’t just the wealth itself, but the ideology that surrounds it—an ideology that glorifies wealth and power while ignoring the real costs to individuals and societies. The ultra-wealthy represent a particular culture or ideology that we’re all immersed in—like fish in water, unaware of the medium we swim in. How do we deal with this? Perhaps the first step is recognizing which “water” we are in. To what extent do we want to participate in this system? Can we make different choices regarding money or possessions?
But the central question remains: what do we do about the ultra-wealthy? History shows that revolutions can easily descend into their own form of religious madness. Perhaps Power and Privilege, a program from Studium Generale, offers a good starting point for exploring these issues. You might also consider attending Eat the Rich at Theater de Veste—a game and lecture in one—or watching the documentary series Exterminate All the Brutes at 38CC.
Leon Heuts, head of Studium Generale TU Delft
Wednesday morning in my home office in the attic. I start up my laptop, get myself a cup of coffee, and put on an extra jumper so I will not be interrupted mid-sentence by the freezing of my fingers. I am rested and ready to edit the manuscript of my second novel.
Wait, before I dive into my manuscript, shouldn’t I answer some e-mails? Oh, the washing machine – which is on the other side of this wall – is finished. I might as well get up and hang the laundry to dry. Is it time for my second cup of coffee yet?
Stop, I’m procrastinating. Just start up the damn thing and go. Alright, I can do this. I know it seems like a hurdle I cannot take, but I have done this before. Just take it one step at a time. But where to start? I have looked at it from all sorts of angles. I have asked others for feedback and it was all different. And now I don’t know which should predominate, or what I should do.
Maybe today isn’t the right day. I can also do it next week. It’s not like anyone is waiting for me to deliver…
You have just peeked into my head on an average writing day. Insecurity, fatalism, and loneliness, it’s all part of my mental array when writing. It is hard to keep yourself motivated when there is no one to give you constructive feedback on what you have written, a prompt when you are stuck, or just to cheer you on. How do you get anything done when you have to be your own editor, teacher, and cheerleader?
“Well, yes, you have to be your fire starter,” a friend says when I tell him I struggle with keeping myself motivated. “Your loved ones will tell you how great you’re doing the first three times, but after that, they’ll get fed up with it too.”
Michael Pilarcyk, bestselling author and life coach who became famous with his “mindset for success”, knows all about it. He’s selling his techniques for spiritual growth and business success to hundreds of people for as many Euros, yet whenever he climbs to his attic office, he is as overpowered by these feelings as anyone. And what does he do? He recorded himself reading out loud all-positive reviews of his work. Whenever he has to write, he listens to these first.
I guess we all need support and kind words to be able to get anything on paper at all. While writing, we pour out our hearts, our fantasies, or even our darkest fears. Having to feed our internal fire constantly is tiring and can make us feel lonely and insecure about what we are doing.
So SG is creating a writing huddle where you get warmed figuratively speaking. We deliver tea and cookies, kind words, and support. And you sit down and write. Feel free to drop by every other Thursday starting from October 3rd.
Sanne Helbers, programme maker at Studium Generale TU Delft
Legally speaking, there is an international definition and a UN convention that is meant to prevent genocide from happening and to punish those who have perpetrated it. The convention was ratified in the years after WW2 in response to the Nazi genocide of Jews in Europe.
Here we are in 2024, several official genocides later, and there are serious allegations of genocide being committed by the state of Israel in Gaza. If this is determined to be a genocide by an international court, the proclamation will come much too late to prevent it from happening. The same goes for other cases of mass ethnic violence happening across the globe right now. Ukraine, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Darfur, Nagorno-Karabach… while there are voices asking to call these genocides as well, there is no definitive ruling one way or another. Meanwhile, the conflicts rage on.
Genocide, it would seem, is something we cannot manage to prevent.
The coming months, we’ll be screening a documentary series that explores the history of genocidal violence by European nations. Exterminate All the Brutes takes a look not at ongoing conflicts, but those of the past 400 years. As always, delving into history provides a different perspective on our present world. The cases of mass ethnic violence explored in this series have not ‘officially’ been named genocides, and yet, their inclusion should come as no surprise.
One is the European colonization of the Americas. The other is the colonization of Africa. Filmmaker Gregory Peck takes a broad intellectual approach to the fundamental thought, behavior, and technology that led to the extermination of most of the original population of the Americas, the transatlantic slave trade, genocide in the Congo, and the Holocaust.
What would happen if we recognize all of these as genocides? What would this mean for the ongoing conflicts around the world. And who is in a position to make that decision?
Klaas P van der Tempel, programme maker at Studium Generale TU Delft
How much power and privilege can society tolerate before we face the next revolution?
Consider the statistics. There are more billionaires than ever, and they are richer than they have ever been before (Forbes). The world’s five richest men (there are no women in the top 18, and only 15 in the top 100) have more than doubled their fortunes since 2020 —at a rate of $14 million per hour— while nearly five billion people have been made poorer. If current trends continue, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade, but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229 years. (Oxfam). Why do the rich get richer, even during global crises? (AlJazeera) Where does their wealth come from, and how has inequality gotten this bad?
The thought of having billions of euros or dollars is simply bewildering to me. This feeling coalesces with frustration, anger, and indignation when I read about someone like Elon Musk, who can buy Twitter and ban users he disagrees with, and at the same time start an online war with governments over their alleged attacks on freedom of speech. Or Rupert Murdoch, billionaire who founded the “fake news” factory Fox News. Or Silvio Berlusconi, now deceased, who was prime minister of Italy four times, but also a billionaire, scandalous playboy, and media mogul. Or Donald Trump, convicted criminal, former president, billionaire and founder of Truth Social. The list goes on. More than 11% of all billionaires worldwide have held or sought political office directly. And there are myriad other ways in which their money is indirectly translated into power, as I’ll talk about below.
One of the first things you might think about regarding the rich is the frequent scandals. Forgetting the endless stream of court cases against Donald Trump, take, for example, Jeffrey Epstein and his (as yet undisclosed) list of rich and powerful friends who attended his private parties with young if not underage sex workers and sex slaves. Or the Panama Papers, listing thousands of wealthy tax dodgers from around the world. Or think of all the corporate scandals, financial scandals, oil spills, etc, that hardly ever seem to lead to any jail time for rich and influential culprits. Just like the banks during the financial crisis of 2008, some individuals just seem “too big to fail.”
All of this should trigger concern. It paints a picture of power and privilege. Even if our wealthy elites were pure of heart – and to my mind, they are humans just like the rest of us, but with more means and temptations to be corrupt – we should still wonder about the influence they have on democracy, freedom, justice, and equality for the rest of us. Let me list four reasons why.
“The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics” (Bertrand Russell, Power – A New Social Analysis)
Take, for instance, the influence of the ultra-rich on culture. By virtue of their wealth and fame, people like Musk, Soros, and Bezos can have an influence on the thoughts of millions. For better or worse, when they engage in philanthropy, or the support of universities, museums, and the arts, they can help determine what we value and what we teach our youth (and what we don’t).
Another argument you may come across is the climate problem. Billionaires contribute a million times more to the climate crisis than the average Joe. And their behavior often sets an example that others are more likely to follow.
Thirdly, and perhaps most worryingly, is the effect of billionaires on democracy. Especially in a country like the USA, political donations, lobbying, and the control of media outlets are ways of not just controlling the political narrative, but of making policies that are to their benefit. In a nutshell, when you’re that rich, you can rig the economy in your own favor.
This ties into the last issue on my list: that of inheritance and social mobility. Wealth, as was shown in a study of 700 years of Florence’s history, tends to stay concentrated in the same families. Reports of inequality paint a picture of little to no social mobility in the Netherlands.
A lot of these examples are touched on by philosopher and economist Ingrid Robeyns’ in her book on Limitarism, which has been turning heads recently. Robeyns argues against extreme wealth and for limiting the maximum amount that an individual should be allowed to own. Her point is simply this: on top of all the societal problems, extreme wealth is morally indefensible.
So I’ll leave you with the question: how much power and privilege can society tolerate before things explode in violence? What do you think? Join me and my colleagues in the coming weeks as we try to figure out where we stand.
This quarter is all about wealth, greed, and the roots of inequality. With more billionaires than ever, global crises in the 21st century have enriched the few while billions have been made poorer. Can our society keep sustaining this divide? And if not, where will you stand in the next mass uprising?
Existential Tuesday: How rich is too rich? | Sept 10th | @ The Nook
Existential Tuesday: (When) is privilege a problem? | Sept 17th | @ The Nook
VOX Book Club: Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi | Sept 19th | @The Nook
Existential Tuesday: Who really rules society? | Sept 24th | @ The Nook
Moral Ambition | Sept 24th | @ TUD Library
Exterminate All the Brutes: Conversations on the Colonial Past | Sept 30th | @ 38CC
Existential Tuesday: Does democracy do it for you? | Oct 8th | @ The Nook
SG Cafe: Eat the Rich | Oct 14th | @ Theater de Veste
Existential Tuesday: What would you do with €300 billion? | Oct 15th | @ The Nook
Exterminate All the Brutes: Conversations on the Colonial Past, pt.2 | Oct 21st | @ 38CC
This is a message from SUBEST Delft. Studium Generale has collaborated with this student organization on numerous occasions since 2020, most recently on the Keti Koti evening at X. We highly recommend finding out more about this association, what they stand for, and how you can contribute.
SUBEST Delft is looking for new enthusiastic reinforcements to our team for the year 2024-2025!
At SUBEST Delft you can contribute to the university experience of Surinamese students, get to know other (Surinamese) students 👩🏽🎓 and taste the real Surinamese culture. 🇸🇷
So are you a team player 🤝 and would you like to do something next to your studies? Then come out from behind those books and join our cozy team from September/October! You will get the chance to organize memorable events 🥳 and help the association move forward a year. But best of all, you will gain a circle of close friends! 💖
Send a short motivation and your resume to subestdelft@gmail.com📁! And maybe you will become one of the new members of SUBEST Delft!🤩
Whatever you find yourself doing this summer break, we hope you find a moment for yourself to put pencil to paper and create something new. Hesiodos, the creative magazine of the TU Delft run by students and alumni, eagerly awaits your artistic submissions for the next issue, to be published somewhere in the Fall semester.
Ideas? Questions? Content? Contact Hesiodos through the form.
