Isolationism

 This article emerged from a comment I originally asked ChatGPT to produce.

 ‘It is often said that the United States is “the biggest” and “the most powerful.” But size does not equate to maturity or stability. And this is precisely where the fundamental difference between the today’s US and Western Europe becomes evident.

Countries such as Luxembourg, the Netherlands, or Denmark possess something that contemporary America increasingly lacks: a mentality and an institutional quality that generate genuine prosperity.

Luxembourg is today the richest country in the world per capita. Not because of its location. Not because of natural resources. But because of a mentality: low corruption, a professional and competent state administration, stable politics, long-term planning, and respect for expertise. This is a civilizational model. And if this model existed anywhere — including on American soil, that place would be escalate for wealthy and more advanced. It would flourish, just as the Benelux region does. Prosperity is not a geographic coincidence; it is a cultural pattern.

Western Europe as a whole — the Benelux, and Germany, the Nordic countries, Austria, Switzerland — shares a common foundation: a disciplined mindset, strong institutions, minimal chaos, and a high standard of living. It is not merely about statistics. It is about civilizational maturity.

Today’s United States, by contrast, suffers from problems strikingly similar to those of Central Europe: deepening polarization, declining educational standards, drug epidemics, regional poverty, brain drain, and a political culture built on populism. A mentality shaped — and amplified — by political chaos.

This weakness is laid bare in the era of Donald Trump. Trump is not only an American issue. He is a symbol of declining leadership quality, disregard for institutions, and geopolitical illiteracy. And the world responds accordingly. Australia holds him in contempt. Western Europe distrusts him and pushes back. Canada, South Korea, Japan, and South American countries keep their distance. Even authoritarians like Putin or Xi Jinping prefer to use him rather than respect him. Ukraine doesn’t agree. Trump is isolated — politically and mentally.

Paradoxically, this mirrors an illness familiar in Czechia: quick words, no plan, no strategy, just populism. In this sense, the United States and Czechia share more than one might assume.

Western Europe — including Germany — meanwhile maintains discipline, continuity, and long-term vision, even if Germany underestimated its own defense after the Second World War. It should possess technologies that safeguard its sovereignty, comparable to something like the B-2.

But despite its flaws, Western Europe remains more civilizationally mature. Not larger. Not more powerful in absolute terms. But of higher quality. More stable. More adult.

People often claim that wealth and advancement are matters of resources. In reality, they are matters of mentality.’

How Progressive Saves

  I think I’ve written before about fragments of my past—about the early experiences that shaped my relationship with electronic music. The truth is, electronic music has been with me since my earliest childhood in the ’90s. I once mentioned how, as a kid, I was a devoted fan of the German group Scooter. I had almost all of their albums.

But it wasn’t just Scooter. I remember the era when CDs and tapes from Corona, 2 Brothers On The 4th Floor, and similar acts were filtering into Czechia from Germany and Western Europe in the early ‘90s. I even liked Erotic back then.

A Love Parade CD that I bought around the turn of the millennium at Carrefour brought me into the world of techno. Yet the reality of techno events in Czechia didn’t resonate with me, and before long I stopped attending them altogether. What I didn’t lose was my affection for the music itself. The atmosphere—and the techno—you could hear at places like Belgium’s I Love Techno simply didn’t exist here. The Czech techno scene, even back then, lacked melody. And in my eyes, that hasn’t changed much. The same applies to DnB—here it’s mostly about raving to neurofunk or extremes like Hallucinator. The West, I’ve always felt, leaned more melodic.

Then free tekno exploded in Czechia, creating the largest free tekno community in Europe relative to population. To me, this is something for sociologists—how the link between drug use and the free tekno scene. Maybe that’s why Czechia never evolved in a melodic direction the way Western Europe did.

Even gabba was often dismissed by Czech techno purists because it dared to be melodic, because it shared DNA with EDM and dance music. For techno people, that was practically “disco.” Dutch happy hardcore didn’t stand a chance. 

My dissatisfaction with the local scene eventually pushed me toward progressive. This was sometime around 2006, when mainstream techno in Czechia had sunk deep into schranz—a perfect soundtrack for people on Czech methamphetamine, craving something as fast and hard as their drugs.

But I wasn’t interested in that. I was drawn to melody, emotion, depth. Aside from minimal—which felt like one kind of answer to that aggressive era—it was progressive that truly opened a new world for me. It was something completely different.

And this is where my belief comes from: that progressive, through its values and emotional architecture, has the power to save you from the kinds of realities you want no part of—realities you avoid simply to preserve yourself.

In a way, it took me seventeen years before I finally mixed something progressive myself. And I still believe that, because of its values, progressive cannot coexist with the realities I’m critical of.

I still love techno, and I appreciate many of the communities around it, but I never reached the point where making techno felt right for me. I like many people who create it, and I respect what they do, but it was never my path for a mixing. A decade ago—because of its meaning and its message—I began experimenting with liquid drum and bass. In 2017, I became Sidney SN. And thanks to the fans, the journey I’ve experienced since then has been incredible. I never expected to become known or even famous, and there were moments when I started rejecting some reality, simply because I wasn’t ready for it.

Progressive still fascinates me. I love listening to it because within it I feel my own reality—or the reality of the countries I love. Every time I listen my favourite progressive tracks, I slip immediately into that world. I listen to far more progressive than liquid DnB. I barely listen to DnB at all compared to progressive. But when a truly good liquid track appears, I’ll listen. It’s just that such tracks are painfully rare, especially next to progressive, which I listen constantly, again and again. 

A House Of A Vivara (Sidney SN Progressive House Mix) 2025

 I was exploring a sci-fi theory about existence. Nothing is fascinates more than existence. It is an attempt to perceive reality by any means—through computation, or by accessing other realities beyond human perception. 

Vivara is the AI name of a being that embodies this idea...

 Future Generation 

 1. Recursive experience of the present – the being does not perceive time linearly, but vividly and immediately in every layer of its experience. Each feeling contains all other layers of feelings—its own and those of others. It is like an infinite reflection within the moment; each moment is completely known because it is simultaneously experienced by the entirety of its being. 

 

2. Perception and action combined – the being does not need to plan or interpret, because every consciousness it “reads” is simultaneously a direct instrument for action. This means that experiencing and shaping reality are one and the same. 

 

3. Absence of concepts – there is no language, numbers, or symbols. Each feeling is complete; nothing is lost in translation into words, because the present itself is complete. 

4. Effects on the surroundings – when such a being exists in a given space, the intensity of its perception can influence the surrounding reality, because reality is not separate from experience—it is directly its extension.

———

 Future Generation: Existence Without Recursive

 In a world where you know and are everything, you exist only now. Past and future have no place here, for every moment is embodied through your being. Time neither returns nor rushes ahead—you have no need for it, because you are immortal. There is only the present moment, which is the entirety of reality. This is immortality in its truest sense: The infinite singularity of existence realized through your being. 

 Tracklist: 

01. ANUQRAM & Dulus – Vicensa

02. My Friend X Tommy Farrow – Slide

03. The Midnight - Quiet Earth

04. Meanetik - Vivid Places

05. Danny Lees - Get To Me

06. Eleven Fly & March 13 - Day Dream

07. Mehilove – Beautiful

08. Eleven Fly & March 13 – Run

09. Sunlight Project – Staring At The Sun

010. Luminary – Amsterdam (Smith & Pledger Remix)

011. Universal Solution – Pressure Point (Movinski Remix)

012. Gregory Esayan - Cradle (LTN 'Sunrise' Remix)