As the clock strikes midnight, today marks two years since Daria Platonova Dugina became the name of a generation, a turning point, an explosive revelation whose waves are still unfolding.

Ever since the night of 20 August 2022, Daria Platonova Dugina is a standard, a rallying cry, a mantra borne by the hearts and minds of a unique caliber of human beings: the differentiated man and the differentiated woman, the ones who have heeded the call to be radically human in the sway of Heaven and Earth, Gods and Mortals, War and Peace, Life and Death.

In any place, in any time, in any situation, on the frontlines, behind lines, between the lines, these men and women can be found by anyone with eyes that see and ears that hear. They are playing their part, fulfilling their due, truly living and truly dying, being who they truly are, who they were meant to be — as a pledge, a chance, a recognition that they otherwise might never have deserved or realized. Practicing the great powers of philosophy, theology, and art, intercepting the Divine messages for poetic transmission, playing their hands in the spheres of politics, culture, media, etc. — everything in the world under the Moon falls within the scope of their endeavors under the Sun. It takes two to tango: the Daria Platonova Dugina generation is dancing with the World Soul, learning to walk as if for the first time.

The Daria Platonova Dugina generation is not a certain number or category of entities — it is a way of being, an embracing of the meanings and mysteries of Being, a resoluteness to live every moment not as merely another or any other “here and now,” but as the Here and Now, the Augenblick, the kairos. You have been given the chance to live, to know, to think, to love, to do, to be in the world with others, to live on by being meaningful for others. No car bomb can take this away from you. In fact, the only possible deprivation is your own hiding, your own cowardice, your own lack of love for yourself, for others, for the world into which you were thrown with the chance of being something instead of nothing.

Two years and a day ago, on Earth there walked, thought, wrote, and danced a young person. This person was writing her dissertation in philosophy, working in media, creating art, and participating as much as she could bring herself to bear in the dramatic life of her country, her Continent, her family, her comrades, and her growing fields of followers and onlookers. Two years ago, the pawns of a hopeless campaign against life, beauty, thought, and meaning killed her with the aim of extinguishing what their eyes and ears cannot bear. In so doing, however, they committed a basic, foolish error, something that could be called, as we might say in trying to intuit their very limited and mistaken point of view, the “mistake of the century.” In reality, there was no mistake. What happened was meant to happen. What is now supposed to happen is: you. By killing Dasha, they “mistakenly” unleashed the unstoppable torrent, the merciless firestorm, and the serene bliss of the eternal question: “To Be or Not To Be?” Fiddling with technology and setting a car alight as part of a desperate “operation,” they “mistakenly” blew open the gates to the Special Operation of Light that every once in a while pours in out of eternity to illuminate the astonishing revelation of the reality for which we are responsible. Piercing the stormy night sky, Lightning awakens, astounds, humbles, enraptures, inspires, and illuminates the world before and ahead of you.

Daria Platonova Dugina is our generation’s name for that which is already waiting within you, in your best you, in the only you that can ever truly be called you yourself as you exist (ex-ist, stand out). It has many manifestations, many ways, many questions, and many challenges, but they all boil down to one unnamable yet everywhere knowable truth. In ancient Greece, at the temple of Apollo at Delphi, it was expressed thusly: gnothi seauton, “know thyself.” In the sacred books of ancient India, it was expressed thusly: tat tvam asi, “thou art that.” In medieval Rus’, something of the sort resounded in a letter from a monk to the Tsar: “two Romes have fallen, the third stands, and there will be no fourth.” In our days, let it be said: it is high time, better late than never. Your loved ones, your descendants, and unknown masses will thank you for being something instead of so many nobodies and nothings.