Pelagia
@Ljiljana1972
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Professor of philosophy, becoming a nun is not off the table yet
Belgrade
Joined January 2017
Pieces I wrote in 2024 in a thread. A few came out in @ReplyCollective, one was a review of @ProfSteveFuller's book, and one was a piece I wrote bcs @samhaselby kindly invited me to do so. Stay tuned for more in 2025. Lets' start with Petitionary Prayer.
My Christian propaganda continued in 2023 with two pieces both published in @ReplyCollective. Admittedly it got subtler forms 😁. If you missed it here it is in a short thread. God willing more to come in 2024! 🙏
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That's literally what being 'rich' means.
Call me unambitious, but I have zero desire for riches. I only want to wake up without an alarm, surf a little, meditate mid-day, train whenever I want, sip wine, and eat well with good friends. As long as I have the money for that, I’m good.
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Thank you, dear. You should too. 1999, bombing of the hospital Dragisa Misovic, Belgrade
If Russian leadership would rather not be accused of committing war crimes, they should stop bombing hospitals.
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While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many students from unranked programs came & ate with him & his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with grad students from unranked programs?”.
Grad Students: Networking is critical for success in academia. But the real question is WHO to network with. I’ve known grad students who will spend time at conferences drinking beers in the bars with grad students from unranked programs. Is that 1/.
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RWs are making fun of the thesis on smell in lit and yet one of the most memorable moments in Brothers Karamazov is the moment when believers (in horror!) and non believers (rejoicing!) start realizing that Father Zossima started emitting a smell of decomposition.
Thrilled to say I passed my viva with no corrections and am officially PhDone.
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Serbia, 1999, population 7.5 million. NATO bombing started on March 24th, 1999. It lasted for 78 days. NATO launched a total of:. - 2300 missiles against 990 targets. - 14,000 bombs . - 10/15 tons of depleted uranium.We remember.
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The most bizzare thing that I did not know but discovered today: many ppl in Western Serbia are buried in their front yard, beside the house or in their field. Reason that we were given: so that their children do not sell the land.
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A friend just told me that there is some Balkan subreddit where everyone (From Slovenians to Turks and all in between) come to sincerely hate on each other. Occasionally though they express joint fear that the westerners will come and shut the whole subreddit down for hate speech.
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Ppl, ppl I can assure you that you can read Brothers Karamazov in a week if you are 13 and it's summer and you lie under the tree the whole day in the countryside while your mum and dad are taking care of everything. The best time to read it too.
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If we are discussing philosophy in a chat and I disappear for a long time it's not that I ran out of arguments or anything. It's me googling how to spell Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Rousseau. or Tocqueville.
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@PortlyNord How is this supposed to be called? This is not me being annoying I really do not know. 😅.
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Meanwhile in Kosovo
Last night in Paris, at the invitation of President @EmmanuelMacron, it was an honor to join leaders from around the world for the ceremony marking the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral. Notre-Dame, a symbol of resilience and beauty, continues to inspire the world with its rich
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Here in Serbia we have ppl vaccinated with pretty much all vaccines that are out there: Chinese, AZ, Pfizer, Sputnik. Many went to check their antibodies after they got 2 dozes and yes they have developed them. Not time to play ideological games. All these vaccines are fine.
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Zizek is way more interesting than Peterson. Peterson is a run of the mill huckster using his degree in a semi-related field to prey on alienated college aged males. Zizek is raccoon who lived in a dumpster behind a university's library who was transformed into a human by a witch.
Twitter is dying and you get to preserve only one tweet. Reply and link it.
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I have to be honest: As a philosophy prof I really don't care about critical thinking. I want my students to know what Augustine thought happiness was in De Beata Vita.
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Tarkovsky quotes Dostoevsky on Feb 18th, 1972: "Fear of the aesthetic is the first symptom of weakness".
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Dept party. Women of philosophy department, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade. All in black. Not planned.
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Dyeing eggs at the Holy Monastery of Zographou, Mount Athos.[one of my fav pic]
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The meaning of an emoji is its use.
Btw, just, FYI: this emoji "🙏" is not 'praying'. It's 'high-fiving', lol.
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@pschofie79 When you go to the camping equipment store in the Canadian Rockies to get a bear repellent spray and ask the guy there if it works, the guy says: It might. Sometimes.
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Dyeing eggs at the Holy Monastery of Zographou, Mount Athos.The pic to be shared every year. ❤️🙏
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Ok dear ppl I am not leaving twitter but I am going to tweet Dostoevsky and Tolstoy until twitter cancels me. 😁.
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Dear Psychology, .I love you, but I really expect more from you than surveys and discussions that say: Look, I found a correlation btw x & y. You are always welcome to come back home. Yours, .Philosophy.
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Quarantine (the origins): In 1377 The Venetian colony of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) detained travelers from infected places on a nearby island for 30 days. When that proved ineffective the period was raised to 40 days - quaranti giorni - from which derive the word 'quarantine'.
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1 must-know Serbian concept that will improve your life: ИНАТ 👿.
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This below is absolutely cold take. Everybody for at least 60, 70 years now writes philosophy as the most boring administrative document. I urge you to go back to exciting mystery. We are suffocating ourselves here.
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@pschofie79 The other of my fav bear related stories is from Yukon. I was scared a lot, tried to calm myself by thinking: you are scared bcs you are not a local. They are used to them. Bet they are not afraid. The 1. local we meet: Bears? Man I so much don't like to see them. Scary stuff.
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Nobody in my gen who grew up in late socialism in the 70s, '80s believed that classics were for the rich. Never crossed our minds. Everybody got to read them. A friend electrician with the 3 years of high school read Magic Mountain during breaks.
There’s a vision there that attracted to me to the classics/Great Books that hasn’t been realized. But I really do resist the idea that these sorts of things are inherently elitist.
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"For us, religion now is not liturgy, not feasts, not the idea of the world as a cosmos - but morality only . Putting it crudely, it is smth made in Germany. The Church is made up of ascetism and mysticism; in Protestantism we get only their surrogate - morality". P. Florensky.
Charles Taylor, channelling Ivan Illich, has shown how the decline of religion is down to the suppression of popular festival and reduction of religion to morality and organised charity. It is not down to science, or progress or inevitable. (strangely many readers miss this).
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We drink for the reasons people always drank: to have a break from themselves for a while and feel cheerful if only for the evening.
Why do people in 2024 still drink? . It’s proven to destroy you mentally and physically. It's proven to be a depressant. It's proven to be literal poison. It's proven to make you feel like shit. Yet there’s still a massive drinking culture. Why are you still drinking in 2024?.
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@jordanbpeterson This was literally a wet dream of many prolockdowners in the west who complained how proper lockdown has never been done.
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I am 48 today. On the brighter side I still have one year to go before I reach my intellectual peak according to Aristotle.
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I came to twitter for a spiritual life, latin sententiae, and disturbing medieval art, but here I am constantly tempted to make nasty political comments.
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Florensky on Nietzsche: "His entire life Nietzsche was in essence drawn only to Christ, and rejected Christianity only because it is too accepting of evil.".
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A Greek senator from Asia Minor about those living on the Danube: "The inhabitants . lead the most miserable existence of all mankind for they cultivate no olives and they drink no wine.".
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So hubby is reading a book on Mongols and cannot help but shout the stories from the other room. The latest one: Viennese finally captured one of the Mongols that turned out to be. an Englishman who went to live with Mongols bcs he found their way of life more agreeable.
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I just want to say that Desert Fathers had the most subtle understanding of ethical questions, of our every day dilemmas, and human predicament that I have ever seen. Deontologists, utilitarians, and Aristotelians can just dream of it.
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"The lithium deposit in Western Serbia is not worth mining in terms of environmental risks. bcs it will certainly destroy the one of only three water-bearing areas in Serbia." Scientific report published in Nature, 24th July, 2024.
Serbia’s Jadar lithium project is an opportunity to contribute to the green transition at home & abroad. It would grow 🇷🇸's economy & make it a leader in Europe’s RE sector. This can be done in a way that meets the highest env. standards & protects Serbia's natural resources.
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It's ofc! I am full prof now which in Serbia means: finally tenured. But, expect no substantial changes. You'll find me doing the same as always: writing stuff that will be labeled 'not phil' and ignoring current hot topics that bore me to tears. Might revive phil letters though.
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Here is a piece of philosophical confession or rather confessional philosophy that I wrote for @ReplyCollective .I hope you enjoy it.
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Now that the likes are private nobody can see how incoherent my worldview is. 🔥.
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Dear @X the account of Helen De Cruz @Helenreflects has been suspended. The reasons why are beyond me. She has never ever posted anything remotely offensive. On the contrary.
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Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored. - Tarkovsky.
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I wish ppl would read more of Roman military treatises. If they did they would know that personal heroism is discouraged & punishable, open battle is to be the last resort, victory with many casualties is hollow & that 'war seems sweet only to those, who have not experienced it'.
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In a world where there is a real threat of a war capable of annihilating mankind; where social ills exist on a staggering scale; where human suffering cries out to heaven—the way must be found for one person to reach another. Tarkovsky.
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Ppl doing philosophy and being proud of not knowing anything about history is one of the reasons this discipline is bankrupt. Do not @ me.
Fodor on teaching and writing a book about Hume without knowing anything about him. h/t @griceposting @jos_b_mahoney
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I am not theologian nor do I know doctrinal matters. My faith is mostly intuitive and is informed by some Desert Fathers and Dostoevsky. It's more or less illiterate.
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My father would have been 105. When I was a preschooler we would go for long walks & he would ask me: what do you think how nonliving things become living, how consciousness emerges? I didn't know. He neither. But we had the best time & I turned into a philosopher. Miss you, dad.
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Favorite soviet joke: the KGB brings a man who was shouting: Down with a dictator with mustaches! to Stalin. Stalin asks him: Ok, who did you have in mind? He says: Hitler! Good! says Stalin and turns to the KGB ppl: And who did YOU have in mind?.
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My Christian propaganda for 2021 in chronological order (a thread) in the case you missed something. 😊.It all started with a piece on Dostoevsky for @im_1776 .
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Jacobins, Ottomans, communists . all of them turned churches into stables, warehouses you name it. or simply destroyed them. But turning them into buffet is really the mark of our times.
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For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living for all live onto him. Luke 20:38. Христос васкрсе!.Christ is risen!
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Can't wait to see Steven Pinker's inspiring tweets again. 🥲
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New piece from the popular Guardian series "Serbs are Orcs" but this time from the local Orc who tells the truth abt his fellow Orcs! The piece regurgitate the same myopic vision of the country & can be compared to the best Guardian pieces in this genre.
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I read many pieces on happiness and parenthood and how parenthood makes you less happy on average. But what is striking about all this research is the presupposed hedonic def of happiness. Once you start with eudaimonic def you'll get diff results.
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This level of brutality has no human face and saved no one. This has nothing to do with sacrifice. Sometimes orderly society is far more cruel than 'authoritarian anarchy' where the rules are broken and treated more as a guideline.
The personal sacrifices made by millions of people during this pandemic have been colossal. We haven’t forgotten.
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To believe in God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. Wittgenstein.
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Come to Serbia this summer! We might not have the sea but we are open, no quarantine, we have plenty of Roman sites, we have stunning Medieval monasteries, and dark humour. Never a dull moment here. 😊.
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Say something nice about Serbia: indoor smoking, medieval monasteries, no by laws, best kafanas, ex part of Roman Empire, rakija. the birthplace of Constantin the Great is here, dear friends!
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On the news: Since February 104 000 Russian citizens and 24.000 Ukrainian citizens officially registered as residents in Serbia. The numbers are probably higher.
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This time Dostoevsky ruined me. Can't read novels by anybody else.
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You really need to stop taking Nietzsche srsl once you are out of your teens.
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What I learned on a Friday night: .Tutivillus, the literate demon introduces errors into texts. He also makes monks mispronounce words in prayer. Later in Hell they must carry sacks of words they mispronounced.
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This all brings memories that I buried long time ago. I am eternally thankful to Romanians who were the ones to help me cross the border when I was going to the Can embassy in the middle of bombing. Unknown ppl who helped all the way & back. 🙏.
Apparently, thousands of Romanians have been waiting in their personal vehicles to pick up #refugees at one of the NE borders with #Ukraine. I'm not often elated at news from back home, but this makes my heart swell. #StandWithUkriane #standwithrefugees
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I went into philosophy so that I do not have to read textbooks. Srsly all other departments at Faculty of Philosophy used textbooks except philosophy. There is nothing more boring than people telling you their version of what other people said for the sake of 'being easy'.
Like the question is, are Plato and Aristotle the BEST way possible of introducing people to a certain way of thinking?. Is it not possible to have rewrites of those more friendly to people who are reading them for the first time? The same ideas but a gentler learning curve.
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I cannot tell Steven Pinker from Peter Singer and it's a problem.
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Od COVID19 je juče preminula dr Biljana Natić Ljumović, spec ginek iz DZ Niš. Molimo sve lekare u Srbiji da sutra 26.03.2020g u 10h minutom ćutanja odaju počast našoj preminuloj koleginici. Brinite o svojim lekarima da bi oni brinuli o vama!.Sindikat lekara i farmaceuta Srbije.
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"When a grown up man is into Nietzsche there is generally something wrong with his sexual nature" - Pelagia.
@Ljiljana1972 "When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally something wrong with her sexual nature." - Nietzsche.
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I received communion, fasting is over, Christ is risen, Hristos Vaskrse! 🙏
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Removing Tchaikovsky from the repertoire to support Ukraine is where we are at as a civilization 🔥🔥🔥.
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The level of hatred that otherwise proper left wing liberals, prolockdonwers, sci lovers, maskers & vaxxers . unleashed toward Serbs and Serbia re Djokovic case is stunning. I almost forgot the 1990s but I am freshly reminded of what it means to be a Serb in the lib West.
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Just read in an Orthodox outlet that one of the Monasteries in Athos fell to the schism. As a result the rest have been trying to evict them for a while now. In 2013 police came but schismatic monks & their Abbot fought back with Molotov cocktails. I thought our phil dept was bad.
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I finished War and Peace for the first time (young me tried and gave up several times). So, I must admit that Tolstoy definitely ruined me for anybody else. I will have to start with Dostoevsky in small dozes to recover.
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This is not insta, I'm aware, but I am very excited to be ginger now 🤗
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Qualified architects could not be found to build the Tiber Bridge in Rome (380s) & the bridge collapsed. Nobody knew how to build the harbour mole at Akko (7th c) until retired architect was found. Made me think how skills that we take for granted vanish unless we cultivate them.
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