Илья Марголин – The First Quarter Of My Century (страница 12)

In any live situation, the first word decides more than everything that follows. It determines whether a conversation will take place at all – especially when you do not know who stands before you, or which topic you are about to touch upon.

When you do not possess the material, your task is not to conceal this, but to relate correctly to your own position. You must not demonstrate competence you do not have. But you can maintain a form in which lack of knowledge does not turn into weakness.

The point of entry is not a topical question, but a correct clarification of context. If you do not understand what is being discussed, ask: «From which perspective are you looking at what is happening right now?» This allows the other person to speak within their own coordinates, without adjusting to yours.

In conversation with an unfamiliar interlocutor, it is important not to rush toward the essence. Begin with what creates a condition of trust: a formulation that is fixed, neutral, yet open. For example: «You often work in conditions that are difficult to grasp from the outside. What should one pay attention to first in order to avoid distortion?» Such a question is neither superficial nor provocative, but immediately invites the interlocutor to speak precisely.

If you find yourself in a situation where you must ask a question without mastering the subject, do not look for something «sharp» – look for something fundamental. The best question in such a case is: «What do you consider an oversimplification when your field is discussed from the outside?» This relieves tension and returns initiative to the one who knows.

The main rule is not to intervene in the subject until you understand the level at which your interlocutor is accustomed to conducting the conversation. People rarely refuse to answer when they feel respect for the scale of their thinking. And they almost always close off when they sense that someone merely wants to «extract material» from them.

Do not ask for explanations. Ask for clarifications. This minimal difference makes dialogue workable. The question «What do you think?» is often useless. Better are questions like: «How would you sharpen the main risk of what is happening now?» or «Which point of view, in your opinion, is currently underrepresented?»

Conversation is not about mutual openness. It is about a precise distance at which one person can be understood, and the other does not lose self-respect. This distance is set by the first question. If it is imprecise, the conversation disintegrates into remarks. If it is posed correctly, it saves dozens of minutes.

When you find yourself face to face with someone, it is better to be cautious than informed. Better to clarify than to make an inaccurate entry. Better to let the other speak than to try to shorten the exchange. This is not a matter of «good manners.» It is an effective strategy in any environment where you do not set the rules.

You’ll Live Long Enough – You’ll Understand

In this essay, I examine the widespread notion of maturity as a consequence of age. I am interested in why life experience does not always lead to inner depth, and in the difference between outwardly mature behavior and genuine stability.

The idea of maturity as a direct result of age is a cultural convention. The phrase «you’ll live long enough – you’ll understand» implies that experience automatically produces clarity. This is false. Time in itself does not create maturity. It only creates conditions in which a person may either build an inner structure or reproduce a defensive mechanism.

Maturity is not the result of a long life, but the consequence of an ability to endure complexity without simplifying it away. A person becomes mature not when they stop making mistakes, but when they accept their limitations without fleeing into justification. This is not a position of strength. It is the discipline of seeing what one does not wish to acknowledge – and not collapsing under that vision.

Maturity is not guaranteed by outward behavior. Calmness, restraint, consistency can be signs of maturity, but they can just as easily be symptoms of psychological closure. Silence may indicate composure, but it may also conceal fear. Acceptance may arise from understanding, or it may be a manifestation of learned helplessness. Behavior is an incomplete marker. It does not answer the question of the depth of one’s position.

A person may appear immature – emotional, impulsive, vulnerable – and yet possess a more stable and more responsible inner structure than someone who maintains composure by avoiding confrontation with themselves. Maturity lies not in control, but in the ability to live with uncertainty without replacing it with a schematic substitute.

A mature person is capable of acknowledging guilt without performance, making choices without external support, abandoning illusions without an immediate turn toward cynicism. They do not search for culprits and do not rely on borrowed righteousness. They correlate actions with consequences, without shifting responsibility onto circumstances or onto others.

Age provides an opportunity – but no guarantee. To live long is not the same as to develop. One may repeat the same explanatory pattern for decades. One may accumulate biography without advancing in the understanding of one’s own logic. Experience without analysis turns into confirmation of prior beliefs rather than work on oneself.

Psychological maturity is neither the accumulation of knowledge nor the control of emotions. It is the ability to act within complexity without reducing it to a convenient model. It is precision in assessing oneself and others. It is the capacity not to destroy the surrounding environment even when inner balance is absent.

For this reason, maturity is determined not by words, not by intonation, and not by social status. It is determined by a person’s position in relation to themselves. Either one is capable of not simplifying – or one will reproduce simplified explanations. Either one can bear responsibility – or one will search for a language in which responsibility can be avoided.

In this sense, maturity is not a universal trait, but a mode of existence that may arise, disappear, and be restored. It is not granted once and for all. It must be sustained. And the one who is capable of recognizing it is not the one who looks at behavior, but the one who looks at the structure of decisions.

QWERTY

I wrote this text to fix a simple but important mechanism: how accidental technical decisions turn into norms that no one revisits. QWERTY is a particular example. It shows how a decision once made continues to operate simply because it is difficult to undo. What interests me is not the history of the keyboard, but the way everyday life places a person inside standards they did not choose, yet are compelled to reproduce. This is a question of how order becomes fixed – not through reflection, but through repetition.

The QWERTY layout is a standard that emerged by chance. It was designed in the nineteenth century for mechanical typewriters in order to prevent keys from jamming. The solution addressed a specific device and a specific technical problem. The problem eventually disappeared, but the solution remained. The reason is inertia. Once technology, training, and production adapted to QWERTY, changing it became economically and practically disadvantageous. People grew accustomed to it. Systems solidified. The resistance to change proved stronger than the need for reconsideration.

QWERTY demonstrates how irrational solutions become norms. Not because they are optimal, but because they were institutionalized first. Repetition turns the temporary into the permanent.

This is not an exception. It is the rule. Most of the standards a person encounters daily were formed outside any personal choice. No one chose the keyboard layout, the format of reports, the school curriculum, or the structure of a browser window. These decisions were made earlier. Later, it simply became inconvenient to change them.

QWERTY is not about keys. It is about how we live inside decisions none of us made. They function not because they are better, but because they are stable enough to avoid being questioned.

This is how modernity operates: not through choice, but through repetition; not through argument, but through habit. And the most resilient system is the one no one feels the need to discuss.

Untimely Departures

Dedicated to Diogo Jota, Mark Snow, and Julian McMahon

This essay is a philosophical reflection on three nearly simultaneous deaths – those of Diogo Jota, Mark Snow, and Julian McMahon. I did not know them personally, yet each became significant for me – not because of their cultural stature, but as figures connected to key episodes in my own experience. The text does not evaluate their work; it examines how private memory is shaped from fragments of the external cultural field, and how the death of a person with whom one had no direct contact can nonetheless produce a structural impact. I am noting not loss, but a shift: the disappearance of those who served as stable reference points. This is not an emotional reaction or a commemorative gesture, but a work with what persists after disappearance.