Илья Марголин – The First Quarter Of My Century (страница 1)

The First Quarter Of My Century

Ilya Margolin

© Ilya Margolin, 2026

ISBN 978-5-0069-2897-8

Создано в интеллектуальной издательской системе Ridero

Introduction

This book emerged from a simple yet inevitable desire: to record my own experience of thinking at the moment I turn twenty-five. A quarter of a century is neither a milestone that demands final conclusions nor an age that presupposes definitive judgments. It is merely a point at which it becomes important to understand what has shaped my perspective, which ideas have sustained me, and what conclusions I have drawn from encounters with people, from circumstances, and from my own inner work.

I do not seek to present my thoughts as final, closed, or claiming universal validity. On the contrary, I am fully aware that some of the positions expressed here may change over time. Certain themes may lose their significance; others, by contrast, may acquire new meanings. This is natural: life moves forward, intellectual work continues, and consciousness develops precisely through the ability to revise one’s own foundations.

For this reason, this book is neither a monument to a set of views nor an attempt to secure an authoritative position. It is a fixation of a single moment in life. It is a document of who I am now, at twenty-five, with the volume of experience I have lived through and with the questions to which I have arrived.

The one hundred essays collected here are not a random assortment of reflections. They are the result of a prolonged process of inner selection. In each of these texts, I sought to understand specific forms of human experience: loss, maturation, the fallibility of forecasts, the nature of conflicts, self-deception, generational change, the workings of consciousness, the structure of judgment, motives of behavior, choice, responsibility, conscience, loneliness, the need to belong, and the attempt to understand oneself and others. This is a wide range of themes, but they are united by one thing: they are my personal attempts to comprehend the structure of human life through the prism of real situations, concrete circumstances, and clear philosophical logic.

I do not offer ready-made answers. I offer a practice of thinking. This practice can be accepted, challenged, or continued independently. But it is always directed toward one aim: a sober understanding of reality and an honest conversation with oneself.

What is this book for the reader?

The answer is simple. Each of us passes through similar questions. Age, biography, and circumstances create differences, but the structure of inner work is largely the same for everyone. We try to understand who we are, why we make certain decisions, what shapes us, what destroys us, what helps us, what distorts us, where the source of strength lies, where weakness resides, and what remains when everything external disappears.

This book may be useful to those who are searching for a language for self-analysis. To those who encounter similar experiences and do not know how to think about them. To those for whom clear, consistent arguments matter more than emotional reactions. To those who want to see how one consciousness – neither better nor worse than others – attempts to impose order on what appears to be a chaos of thoughts.

Each essay is not an answer, but a tool. Each text is an invitation to think. It is an attempt to show the path I myself have taken and to pass on the points of support that I have managed to discover.

I do not claim that my position is true. But I am certain that it has been honestly lived. And if it helps someone see their own path more clearly, then the work has not been done in vain.

This book is my way of leaving a trace not in the space of convictions, but in the space of reflection. My way of fixing who I am today, in order later to be able to compare how differently I may think at thirty, forty, or fifty.

This is not a completed project. It is the beginning of a long conversation – with time, with myself, and with everyone who opens these pages.

Welcome to my one hundred thoughts. Welcome to a space where I try to be honest with myself and with the reader.

The Price of Instant Alertness

An essay on the quiet war that contemporary culture of instant pleasure wages against its own consumer. On how the market for energy drinks and stimulants cultivates dependence on the illusion of alertness, disguising societal fatigue behind bright cans and sweet chewing gum. The price of this instant alertness is health, awareness, and self-control.

In an era when advertising promises awakening in three seconds and alertness is sold in an aluminum can, it becomes necessary to ask what this instant energy actually costs. Store shelves are filled with caffeinated chewing gum, taurine-infused ice cream, and energy candies containing additives few can name. What is most striking is not that the market for such products has grown severalfold, but that its target audience has become noticeably younger. Packaging stylized as comics and memes gleams enticingly on display shelves, teenagers film TikTok challenges counting consumed energy drinks, and global brands increasingly launch product lines aimed at children and adolescents.

What drives this market? Why has the culture of instant effect become an integral part of the contemporary world? And what consequences follow from an alertness whose price will be paid far longer than its effect lasts?

We live in an age of fatigue. Fatigue has become chronic, permanent, nearly unavoidable. A society driven by the idea of productivity no longer recognizes the right to rest. A rested person is a suspicious person – either unemployed or lacking initiative. One of the unspoken commandments of our time reads: if you are not tired, you are not working enough. This fatigue is imposed less by objective workload than by the rhythm of culture itself, where the flow of information never stops and where being late means ceasing to exist.

When the body’s natural resources fail to keep pace with this rhythm, products of instant effect come to the rescue. Yet alertness poured into cans and molded into bars is not real energy. It is mobilization – working on credit, a debt that must later be repaid. While classic energy drinks once raised concern because of their contents and possible consequences, the new wave of energy products – ice cream, chewing gum, candy – is perceived as harmless entertainment. Meanwhile, a generation is forming for whom alertness without cause is the norm and rest is a weakness.

The market of instant solutions is not accidental. It arose from the need to compensate for the impossible. The human body is evolutionarily unprepared for modern burdens – informational, emotional, physiological. Rather than changing the rhythm of life and social and labor systems, humanity chose another path: to create the illusion of adaptation. Energy drinks and other stimulants function as social prosthetics, simulating performance. And the further this market develops, the more sophisticated it becomes. If ten years ago energy drinks were associated with adults – extreme athletes, long-haul drivers, students during exam periods, night workers – today their formats and advertising are actively tailored to adolescents and even children.

Manufacturers target younger audiences deliberately. Habit formation at an early age is a reliable way to secure a future consumer. Children and teenagers are more susceptible to marketing triggers, more responsive to packaging, design, and social media advertising. Energy chewing gum shaped like comic-style bombs, ice cream with a «boost effect,» candies «for drive» – all of this is not merely product, but strategy. It instills a belief: alertness can be bought. Energy comes not from within, but from a box. There is no need to care about sleep, nutrition, or routine – taking a «pill» is enough. Once the habit is formed, the adult becomes an ideal consumer of stronger stimulants, from energy drinks to antidepressants.

The illusion of alertness these products provide is their most dangerous feature. Physiologically, most energy products do not add energy so much as temporarily redistribute the body’s resources. Caffeine blocks adenosine receptors in the brain responsible for the sensation of fatigue; taurine and glucuronolactone increase excitation; sugar produces a brief spike in blood glucose. But the effect is deceptive. This is not an increase in strength, but a temporary mobilization of internal reserves. When the effect wears off, fatigue deepens. The body is depleted, the nervous system thins, and the need for stimulation grows. The paradox is clear: the more alertness one buys, the greater the subsequent exhaustion.

Why is the culture of instant effect so appealing? Because it aligns with the dominant social imperative of our time: results matter more than process. We are accustomed to getting everything quickly – fast food, fast dating, fast money, fast likes. Deferred gratification has lost its value. Few are willing to wait, invest, or plan. This culture has become embedded in both consumer behavior and social ethics. Energy products are merely one of its most visible manifestations.