Study Philosophy First

 

There is a peculiar disease afflicting modern education. We are taught to specialise before we have learned to think. We are urged towards careers before we have asked what constitutes a good life. We master techniques while remaining strangers to ourselves. We accumulate information at a staggering rate yet rarely question the assumptions upon which that information rests.

This inversion is not merely unfortunate. It is catastrophic.

Study philosophy first. Any time left over can be given to other pursuits.

This is not because philosophy makes one employable. It often does not. Nor because it guarantees wisdom. It certainly does not. Philosophy deserves primacy because it alone asks the questions every other discipline quietly assumes.

Before economics asks how wealth should be distributed, philosophy asks what justice is.

Before medicine asks how to prolong life, philosophy asks whether a longer life is necessarily a better one.

Before science investigates the universe, philosophy asks what constitutes evidence, truth, and knowledge.

Before politics promises a better society, philosophy asks what kind of society is worth building.

Every field borrows its foundations from philosophy while pretending it has no need of them. The architect who ignores his foundations may construct magnificent walls, but they will eventually collapse under their own weight.

The modern world worships expertise. It produces engineers who cannot explain why technology should serve humanity rather than dominate it. It produces lawyers who know every statute yet have never reflected on justice. It produces financiers capable of pricing everything while understanding the value of nothing. We mistake competence for wisdom, confusing the ability to perform a task with the ability to judge whether the task ought to be performed at all.

The result is civilisation with extraordinary power and uncertain purpose.

Philosophy is not another subject among many. It is the discipline that teaches us how to examine every subject. It cultivates habits no machine can automate: intellectual humility, logical consistency, conceptual clarity, and the courage to question prevailing opinion.

A philosopher is difficult to manipulate because they habitually ask, "How do you know?" They are difficult to frighten because they have considered death. They are difficult to flatter because they understand the vanity of reputation. They are difficult to deceive because they examine premises before accepting conclusions.

This is precisely why philosophy has so often been neglected. Independent minds are inconvenient.

Many dismiss philosophy as impractical. Yet every practical decision rests upon philosophical assumptions. Every vote cast, every law passed, every scientific experiment conducted, every business founded, every child raised expresses an answer, whether consciously or unconsciously, to philosophical questions.

You cannot escape philosophy.

You can only choose between examined philosophy and inherited philosophy.

Those who refuse to study philosophy do not become non-philosophers. They merely become disciples of whatever assumptions happen to surround them: the prejudices of their age, the slogans of their politics, the morality of their neighbours, or the algorithms of their social media feeds. They mistake conformity for common sense because they have never learned to distinguish the two.

To neglect philosophy is therefore not intellectual neutrality. It is intellectual surrender.

This is why philosophy should precede every other education. A young person who first learns how to reason, identify fallacies, question assumptions, and distinguish appearance from reality possesses a compass that remains useful for life. Every subsequent subject becomes clearer because they now possess the intellectual tools to navigate it.

Without philosophy, education risks becoming little more than vocational training.

With philosophy, every discipline becomes part of the search for truth.

Of course, philosophy is not an end in itself. One must eventually build bridges, write novels, heal patients, compose symphonies, cultivate gardens, raise families, and contribute to society. Philosophy alone cannot feed the hungry or repair a broken engine.

But it can ensure that we know why we are feeding the hungry, what kind of society we hope to build, and whether the engine serves mankind or enslaves it.

Study engineering, but first ask what technology is for.

Study medicine, but first ask what health means.

Study law, but first ask what justice demands.

Study economics, but first ask what prosperity should accomplish.

Study history, but first ask what lessons history can legitimately teach.

Study anything you wish.

But study philosophy first.

For every hour spent learning to think enriches every hour spent learning something else.

Maxxxine - 2024

 

Ti West concludes his X trilogy with a blood-soaked love letter to 1980s Hollywood, blending slasher horror, neo-noir, and exploitation cinema into a stylish, neon-drenched thriller. While MaXXXine doesn't quite reach the psychological heights of Pearl, it remains an immensely entertaining finale that cements Mia Goth as one of modern horror's defining stars.

Set six years after the events of X, Maxine Minx is determined to leave the adult film industry behind and become a legitimate Hollywood actress. But as a serial killer stalks Los Angeles and ghosts from her past begin to resurface, her dream of stardom comes at a deadly cost.

The film's greatest strength is its atmosphere. Every frame oozes '80s excess, from the synth-heavy soundtrack and grimy Los Angeles streets to the vibrant cinematography and countless nods to horror history. Ti West clearly has an affection for the era, and that passion shines through in every scene. Mia Goth once again commands the screen with effortless confidence, portraying Maxine as a survivor whose relentless ambition makes her as fascinating as she is flawed.

Where MaXXXine stumbles is in its story. The mystery surrounding the killer never feels quite as compelling as it should, and the final act doesn't deliver the same emotional or thematic payoff as its predecessors. Several supporting characters are enjoyable but underused, leaving the narrative feeling slightly overstuffed despite its brisk runtime. These criticisms have been echoed by many reviewers, who praised the film's style and performances while finding the screenplay less satisfying than X or Pearl.

Despite those shortcomings, MaXXXine never stops being entertaining. It's slick, violent, funny in all the right places, and bursting with personality. As the final chapter in Ti West's trilogy, it may not be the strongest entry, but it's a fitting farewell to one of horror's most memorable modern protagonists.

Rating: 3/5

X - 2022

 

X is a film that understands horror is at its most effective when it has something deeper lurking beneath the bloodshed. On the surface, it is a straightforward slasher: a group of aspiring filmmakers travel to a remote Texas farmhouse in 1979 to shoot an adult film, only to find themselves trapped with a murderous elderly couple. In practice, however, director Ti West delivers a film that is as much about ageing, desire, and the fear of becoming irrelevant as it is about creative kills and mounting tension.

What immediately separates X from countless slasher imitators is its patience. West resists the temptation to rush into violence, instead allowing the audience to spend time with the cast. They aren't disposable stereotypes waiting to die, they're surprisingly likeable people chasing dreams in unconventional ways. Even characters whose professions might invite easy judgement are treated with dignity and humanity. The film never mocks them for their choices, and that maturity gives the eventual horror genuine emotional weight.

Mia Goth is the undisputed centrepiece. Playing both the ambitious Maxine and the elderly Pearl is an astonishing acting feat. As Maxine, she radiates confidence, ambition and determination; as Pearl, she becomes tragic, unsettling and painfully human. Rather than presenting evil as something supernatural, Goth's performance reminds us that envy, loneliness and the terror of lost youth can become monstrous when left to fester.

Visually, X is gorgeous. Every dusty road, weathered barn and golden sunset evokes the gritty exploitation films of the 1970s while never feeling like empty nostalgia. The cinematography constantly pays homage to classics such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but West's direction is confident enough to give the film its own identity. Split screens, slow zooms and lingering wide shots create unease long before the first kill arrives.

The horror itself is brutal without becoming excessive for its own sake. The violence lands because the tension has been carefully earned. Every death feels consequential, and the film's slower pacing allows dread to build naturally instead of relying on cheap jump scares.

Perhaps the film's most compelling idea is its examination of youth and beauty. Maxine and Pearl are reflections of one another, women driven by the same desire to matter, to be seen and to escape ordinary lives. The tragedy is that one still believes the future belongs to her, while the other is haunted by the knowledge that hers has already passed. The horror isn't simply murder; it's watching dreams decay into obsession.

The only criticism is that the deliberate pacing may frustrate viewers expecting a relentless slasher. The first hour prioritises atmosphere and character over body count, meaning those seeking constant action may find it slow. Yet that restraint is ultimately what gives the climax its power.

X succeeds because it refuses to be just another gorefest. It is stylish without being pretentious, intelligent without sacrificing entertainment, and genuinely unsettling because its monsters are driven by recognisably human fears. It stands as one of the strongest modern slasher films, proving that even a genre built on familiar formulas can still surprise when paired with thoughtful writing, confident direction and an exceptional lead performance.

Final Verdict: X is a stylish, unsettling and surprisingly thoughtful horror film that elevates the slasher genre through memorable characters, rich thematic depth and a career-defining performance from Mia Goth. It respects the classics while confidently carving out its own identity, making it one of the standout horror films of the decade so far.

Pearl - 2022

 

Ti West's Pearl is less a slasher than a tragic character study dressed in the colours of a golden-age Hollywood musical. The vibrant Technicolor-inspired cinematography creates a striking contrast with the darkness unfolding beneath the surface, making every act of violence feel even more unsettling.

Mia Goth delivers a mesmerising performance, balancing innocence, desperation, narcissism, and madness with remarkable precision. Her extended confession near the film's climax is one of the strongest acting showcases in modern horror, transforming Pearl from a simple villain into someone both horrifying and deeply pitiable.

Rather than relying on constant scares, Pearl explores the dangerous collision between ambition, isolation, resentment, and fantasy. It asks what happens when someone believes they are destined for greatness but finds themselves trapped by circumstance and incapable of accepting an ordinary life.

The film occasionally sacrifices momentum in favour of atmosphere, and its deliberate pacing won't appeal to everyone. Still, its visual style, psychological depth, and unforgettable central performance make it one of the most distinctive horror films of the decade.

Rating: 4/5

Obsession (2026) — Movie Review

 

There are horror films that try to scare you, and then there are films like Obsession that quietly twist the idea of “romance” until it stops feeling like romance at all.

Directed by Curry Barker, this 2026 breakout takes a familiar wish-fulfilment premise, what happens when you get exactly what you asked for and turns it into something far more uncomfortable. A shy young man, Bear (Michael Johnston), uses a supernatural object to make his crush, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), love him unconditionally. The wish works. The problem is that it works too well.

What follows is not love, but escalation.

The film’s central idea is simple enough to summarise in a sentence, yet it refuses to stay simple once it starts moving. Nikki’s affection becomes totalising, consuming every boundary that normally keeps relationships human. What begins as validation curdles into dependency, then into something far more volatile and disturbing. The horror here doesn’t rely on ghosts or external monsters, it builds itself out of emotional logic pushed past its breaking point.

Where Obsession succeeds most is in how it refuses to let the audience sit comfortably on either side of the story. Bear is not written as a villain in the traditional sense, but his decision carries a moral weight that the film never lets you forget. Nikki, meanwhile, is not simply “the victim” or “the monster”; she becomes a destabilised reflection of what happens when affection is manufactured rather than chosen. Several critics have noted how the film uses this setup to interrogate control, desire, and the darker edges of emotional entitlement.

What elevates the material beyond its familiar “be careful what you wish for” structure is execution. Barker leans into tonal instability, dark comedy bleeding into discomfort, then snapping back into tension just when you think you’ve adjusted. The result is a film that feels slightly off-balance by design. It doesn’t always aim for subtlety, but it is rarely dull.

The performances do a lot of heavy lifting. Michael Johnston grounds Bear in a kind of anxious passivity that makes his choices feel painfully believable rather than theatrical. Inde Navarrette, however, is the film’s most striking presence, her performance shifts between tenderness, humour, and something more unsettling without ever losing coherence. That instability is precisely the point.

If there is a weakness, it’s that Obsession sometimes prefers impact over depth. Some thematic threads, especially around autonomy and emotional control, are introduced with force but not always explored with equal patience. At times it feels less like a gradual psychological descent and more like a series of escalating shocks stitched together by a strong central idea. A number of reviewers have picked up on this unevenness, even while praising its energy and ambition.

Still, calling it “incomplete” misses something important about why it works. Obsession isn’t trying to be a quiet psychological study. It’s closer to a pressure experiment: take a romantic fantasy, remove consent from the equation, and observe how quickly the structure collapses.

And collapse it does, spectacularly.

By the end, what lingers isn’t just the horror imagery, but the question underneath it: how much of love is still love when it is guaranteed, unresisted, and absolute?

That question is what gives Obsession its edge and what makes it stick long after the credits.

We Cannot Control How Long We Remain in Someone Else's Story

Every person we meet is living a story that began long before we arrived and will continue after we leave. We step into those stories as strangers, friends, lovers, teachers, colleagues, neighbours, or even passing faces remembered only for a moment. We often imagine ourselves to be the central character in our own lives, but in the lives of others we are, at best, supporting characters. Some remain for decades. Others appear for only a page. The uncomfortable truth is that we have little control over how long our chapter lasts.

We cannot make someone love us forever. We cannot prevent distance, death, disagreement, or the quiet erosion of time. We cannot compel another person to keep writing us into their future. Every relationship exists by mutual consent, and every story is ultimately written by more than one hand.

This reality can feel deeply unsettling because it denies us certainty. Human beings crave permanence. We invest our hopes in the belief that meaningful connections will endure. Yet life repeatedly reminds us otherwise. Children leave home. Friendships drift apart. Partners separate. Mentors die. Even the happiest relationships eventually surrender to mortality. To resist this fact is to wage war against reality itself.

Yet there is a liberating counterpart to this truth.

If we cannot determine the length of our appearance, we retain complete authority over its quality.

We decide what kind of guest we become.

The metaphor of a guest is an important one. A good guest does not arrive believing the house belongs to him. He enters with gratitude rather than entitlement. He respects boundaries. He leaves the place better than he found it. He understands that his welcome is a gift rather than a right.

Many relationships fail because people cease behaving like guests and begin acting like owners. They assume unlimited access to another person's time, attention, affection, and emotional energy. Expectations replace gratitude. Possession replaces appreciation. What was once freely given becomes silently demanded.

But no human being belongs to us.

Every conversation is borrowed time.

Every act of kindness is an undeserved gift.

Every year someone chooses to spend beside us is a decision they continue making, not an obligation they owe.

Seeing relationships through this lens changes our behaviour. Instead of asking, How do I make this person stay? we begin asking, While I am here, what kind of presence am I?

Do I leave people lighter or heavier?

Do they feel understood after speaking with me?

Do I increase peace or conflict?

Am I remembered for my generosity or my selfishness?

These questions lie entirely within our control.

History remembers countless individuals not because they occupied someone's life for decades, but because of how they occupied it. A teacher who believes in a struggling student for one year may alter an entire lifetime. A nurse who offers compassion during a frightening night shift may never see the patient again, yet remain unforgettable. A stranger who speaks with unexpected kindness can redirect another person's day—or, occasionally, their life.

Duration and significance are not the same thing.

Some people remain with us for fifty years and leave little behind except routine.

Others appear for five minutes and permanently alter our thinking.

Philosophy has long recognised this distinction. The Stoics argued that external events—including the arrival and departure of other people—lie outside our complete control. Our character, however, always remains our responsibility. We cannot choose every circumstance, but we can choose our conduct within it.

This principle extends beyond friendship into every sphere of life.

Parents eventually become guests in their children's adult lives.

Employees are guests within organisations.

Citizens are temporary guests in nations that existed before them and will outlast them.

Even our ownership of the world is an illusion. We are guests upon the earth itself, inheriting its beauty from previous generations and passing it to those yet unborn.

To recognise ourselves as guests is not to diminish our importance but to place it in its proper proportion. Humility is born from understanding that nothing is permanently ours—not our possessions, our positions, or even the people we cherish most.

This perspective also transforms loss.

When someone exits our story, the instinct is often to measure what has been taken away. We mourn the years that could have been, the conversations left unfinished, the future we imagined. But perhaps another question deserves equal attention: While our stories overlapped, what kind of guest was I?

If we answered with honesty, kindness, patience, and integrity, then our chapter—however brief—was complete. The ending may still hurt, but regret loses much of its power when we know we brought our best self into the relationship.

In the end, no one remembers every detail of every interaction. What remains is often far simpler: how we made them feel. Whether we were a source of comfort or anxiety. Whether we listened more than we spoke. Whether our presence made the world seem a little less lonely.

We spend much of life trying to extend our stay in other people's stories. We fear being forgotten, replaced, or left behind. Yet perhaps our energy is better spent on becoming the kind of person whose presence is a blessing regardless of its duration.

None of us knows whether we are writing a lifelong chapter in someone else's book or merely a single paragraph.

That uncertainty is beyond our command.

What remains entirely within our hands is whether our words add hope, wisdom, courage, or compassion before the page turns.

For we cannot control how long we remain in someone else's story.

We can only decide what kind of guest we are while we're there.

The Burning House

 

The scenario is stripped of ornament: a house is on fire, time is collapsing, and one life can be saved. Not two. Not both with ingenuity or heroics. One. The choice is between one’s child and one’s spouse. No abstractions can dissolve the fact that the decision, if it must be made, is final and irreversible. Ethical theory often thrives in complexity; here it is confronted with brutal simplicity.

At first glance, instinct appears to answer faster than reason. The pull toward the child feels primal, almost pre-moral. Evolutionary logic would not hesitate: the child represents continuation, genetic investment, the future. To save the child is to preserve potential. The spouse, in this framing, is a partner in that project but not the project itself. Biology, indifferent to vows, would incline the hand toward the younger life.

Yet human ethics begins precisely where instinct ceases to be sufficient. A marriage is not merely a reproductive alliance; it is a chosen bond, entered into freely, often solemnised by explicit promises. To save one’s spouse can be seen as an affirmation of those promises, an insistence that commitment, once made, is not contingent on changing circumstances. The child, though loved, did not enter into a mutual contract. The spouse did. To prioritise the spouse, then, is to uphold the integrity of voluntary obligation over involuntary attachment.

This distinction reveals a deeper fault line: whether ethical weight lies in chosen duties or natural ones. The child did not choose dependence; it is total and unavoidable. A parent’s responsibility arises not from contract but from causation. One brought the child into existence; one bears the burden of that act. In this sense, the duty to the child may be considered more absolute, because it is not negotiated. The spouse, by contrast, is an equal agent, capable of self-sacrifice, even capable of consenting to be the one left behind.

But this reasoning cuts in multiple directions. If the spouse is capable of agency, then abandoning them in their moment of greatest vulnerability might be judged more severe, not less. The child may not fully comprehend the situation; the spouse does. To choose the child is to knowingly forsake a conscious partner who has shared one’s life, perhaps for decades. The moral weight of that awareness cannot be easily dismissed.

Another axis of analysis concerns replaceability, a term as uncomfortable as it is unavoidable. From a purely functional standpoint, a spouse might be replaced in ways a child cannot. One might remarry; one cannot recreate the same child. This argument is often deployed bluntly, yet it risks reducing persons to roles. If the spouse is treated as interchangeable, then the commitment of marriage is hollowed out. If the child is treated as irreplaceable, it may be because of emotional investment rather than moral principle.

There is also the question of temporal investment. A child represents future years, education, development, unrealised identity. A spouse represents shared history, years already lived, experiences accumulated, a narrative jointly authored. To choose the child is to privilege the future over the past; to choose the spouse is to assert that what has been built is not expendable, even in the face of what might be.

Some ethical frameworks attempt to impose order on such dilemmas. A utilitarian calculus might ask which life would produce more total well-being if saved. This quickly becomes speculative to the point of absurdity: predicting the arc of two entire lives under conditions of extreme uncertainty. A deontological approach might insist on adhering to duties, but here duties conflict irreconcilably. Virtue ethics might ask what a good person would do, yet the very fact that reasonable, decent people divide on the answer suggests that no single character trait settles the matter.

The scenario also exposes the limits of impartial morality. In theory, each life has equal value. In practice, the decision is made by someone embedded in relationships that are anything but equal. The moral demand for impartiality collides with the reality of partial affection. To act as though the child and spouse are strangers would be to deny the very structure of human life.

There is, finally, the silent presence of the individuals themselves. One can imagine the spouse urging the rescue of the child. One can imagine the child clinging, incapable of understanding sacrifice. These imagined responses do not resolve the dilemma; they intensify it. They introduce loyalty, love, and expectation into a decision already strained beyond abstraction.

What remains is not a solution but a tension: between instinct and principle, contract and causation, future and past, equality and attachment. The burning house reduces philosophy to a single act, but the act carries within it the weight of every theory that attempts to justify it and every doubt that follows.