Essays

Commerciality and Entertainment of Current Sport

Bodybuilding or fitness is a new-old sport. Strength training was carried out in ancient times, but current bodybuilding and fitness are the result of 150 years of development. In the modern period, bodybuilding was originally closely linked with various sorts of strength events. Gradually, however, it became a sport of its own. Bodybuilding became...

The Film Gladiator as Spiritual Experience?

In recent years, Finns have been busy reading Yuval Noah Harari's books on humanity: Sapiens. A Brief History of Humankind (2016) and Homo Deus. A Brief History of Tomorrow (2017). Harari, who has been awarded the Polonsky Prize for his creativity and originality in the humanities, has also been popular internationally and his works have been...

We live in extraordinary times. As someone familiar with the history of ideas, I would compare the present to the beginning of the modern era in the 1400s and 1500s. At that time, e.g. printing, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the "discovery" of new continents significantly shaped the world and worldview.