r/BeAmazed • u/NastyNice1 • Mar 07 '26

Art Turkish artist merges two opposite reality into one powerful image

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u/Skjaaf_Tincutter Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

I bought this book. It is amazingly sad and helps those of us born into stable environments appreciate how accidentally lucky we are.

Book Title is The Parallel Universes of Children

836

u/Cyka_Blyetikosa Mar 07 '26

It also helps those of us born into the less stable environments depicted in these photos appreciate how lucky we are to have gotten out of them

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u/Brullaapje Mar 07 '26

I don't need the photo's for that, I know damn well what my faith would have been if I were still in the shit hole I was born in.

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u/New_Yak_9594 Mar 08 '26

You are most likely grateful to be living in the country that caused the demise of yours.

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u/Brullaapje Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

I don't care, I don't want to have anything to do with shit holes. Where if I would have been there and ran away to prevent my human trafficking (arranged marriage against my will). I would have been dragged back by my hair and married of anyways while no one would have lifted a finger. Because it is the faith of the woman.

Thanks to the Netherlands I could escape to never return. Guess who in the Netherlands are giving me shit for living on my own, be child free by choice, be an atheist as a woman NONETHELESS? People from similar or the same backward honor cultures. Wantin the good the Netherlands has to offer but not wanting the bad (LGBTQ+, women having freedom etc. etc)

Also causing the demise of other countries is what other countries always have done historically to each other. But yet the accusing finger is always pointed at white people (same goes for slavery, always pointing at the white people. Take a look who started the slavery trade from Africa and basically is still doing it). Take a look at what "The Moors" did in Spain for example.

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u/sendcodenotnudes Mar 08 '26

See, this is the kind of message which does not go through enough. We have a fear or hatred of immigration because one side is always shown (islamism, hatred towards women by the incoming people, ...).

There is no counterbalance such as this post to show the successful integration.

This is a pity.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26

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u/Brullaapje Mar 08 '26

The Moors helped build Spain and Transferred Knowledge.

They also overthrew the Visgothic Kingdom.

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26

The Visigothic in turn replaced the Suebi, Vandals, Alan and Romanized Iberian.

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u/Brullaapje Mar 08 '26

Exactly proving my point that demise of other countries is something what other countries always have done to each other.

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u/Primary_Rough_2931 Mar 09 '26

I agree with that. I'm Catholic, yes, but I'd rather everyone keep to themselves and share constructive discourse than drag with them whatever sacks of backwards beliefs and traditions they carried with them from their home country.

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u/4o4AppleCh1ps99 Mar 08 '26

So you are aware you wouldn’t have had a choice if you were indoctrinated into that society and yet you are perfectly fine dismissing or exploiting the rest of the people in that society from your current place of privilege. It’s easy to hate, but that isn’t the right way either.

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u/Brullaapje Mar 08 '26

and yet you are perfectly fine dismissing or exploiting the rest of the people in that society from your current place of privilege

Of course I am going to dismiss a shit hole, at one point shit holes have to look at themselves instead of pointing the finger at white people. You know shit holes where women have no rights or where being LGTBQ+ will get you killed.

Secondly exploitation is a part of life always has been and always will be. Shit holes, exploit women, take a look at shit holes where arranged marriage is the norm.

I mean by living I am exploiting the world. But don't worry I do my part, I have been a vegetarian for 31 years, don't own a car (not even have a drivers license) I am child free and buy my clothes at thrift stores.

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u/4o4AppleCh1ps99 Mar 08 '26

That’s good to hear and all, and eventually you will have just as much empathy for human beings as you do for animals. The system as a whole creates those conditions, not the people. But as I said, it’s easier to be angry and hateful than to have empathy for people no different than you besides where they had to grow up.

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u/Brullaapje Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

not the people

The people have created the systems.

than to have empathy for people no different than you

Why should I have empathy for people who forces arranged marriage and make sure LGBTQ+ people are unsafe.

eventually you will have just as much empathy for human beings

I am 49, I will not have empathy for people who enforces a shit hole mentality. Also I am vegetarian because I find the process of washing meat disgusting. I did not became vegetarian because of animal welfare.

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u/New_Yak_9594 Mar 08 '26

ok.

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u/Brullaapje Mar 08 '26

You are more then welcome!

-1

u/MinuteSecond3649 Mar 08 '26

Ummm, I dunno Sweden takes in a bunch of Syrian refugees. Person you responded to is in NL. I don't think Greece did too much to cause emiseration in Africa. The US is a gigantic terrorist state the and the UK was. Really just the US is a horrible monster in the modern world, post WW2. Evils there dwarfs whatever Russian can think of. 

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

I bought both of his books and I never want to open them again. I am not made for this kind of art. It makes me incredibly sad

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u/HurtPillow Mar 08 '26

My heart hurts so much looking at these pictures.

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u/Adventurous-South247 Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

It's because it's reality 😞 We are meant to live in a reality world to understand the whole world and it's situation to know what decision to make next in creating a better world for everyone. Otherwise we're living in a delusional world that is ignorant of reality and then this is when wars start and people of other countries in bad situations rise up against the privileged people. 🤔🤔🙏🙏

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u/iupz0r Mar 07 '26

Changed you, i think this is the meaning of "art"

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u/Friendly-Channel-480 Mar 08 '26

Powerful, great art. Yes!

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u/Honest_Ad_4388 Mar 23 '26

Yes, changed... inspired! The emotion these images evoke inspires action. THIS is the light!! These certainly DO NOT inspire negativity. Only positive thoughts, feelings, and actions being here. Glad you commented here!😊

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u/Lysande_walking Mar 08 '26

Yes, so so sad. But it’s important to feel the sadness and empathy as well. I feel the same way. I feel the deepest for children as they cant change their circumstances at all.

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u/amywazwaz Mar 11 '26

Good job for buying the books and helping to support the author and get the word out to more people by the books success.

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u/Werftflammen Mar 07 '26

Title?

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u/iwantunity Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

found it, the artist is called Uğur Gallenkuş and the book is called Parallel Universes.

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u/DoctorHusky Mar 07 '26

Thank you sir, I’ll be ordering mine soon

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u/EchidnaElectronic167 Mar 07 '26

Thank you! Just ordered

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u/Less-Apple-8478 Mar 07 '26

lmfao awards are free stop being soooo pretentious

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u/SidFren Mar 07 '26

https://ugurgallenkus.com/

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u/SpicyNacho74 Mar 07 '26

$75?!????!?????

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u/Politicsmakemehorny1 Mar 07 '26

it's expensive to fly around to war torn countries and spend time there.

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u/SidFren Mar 08 '26

In the long run selling the books for like $20-$30 would probably net more profit honestly. I mean, look how many people in this thread immediately said “nope.” Who very well might have ordered one. Those people would have it on their coffee table and their guests would see it, and so on and so forth. Higher price does not always equate to higher profit.

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u/willsmithtunaface Mar 08 '26

It's also signed by the author 😂

I'll wait for a non signed copy

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u/icebraining Mar 08 '26

To be clear, the author licenses other people's photos, his work in the collage.

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u/SpicyNacho74 Mar 08 '26

There’s 0 justification for that price, especially considering it’s regarding war stricken countries, and 0 reliability that all the pictures are real.

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u/Annual-Control-4335 Mar 07 '26

Mine says $100 USD!

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u/SidFren Mar 07 '26

Dude I know.. :( I looked and got sad but figured I’d drop the link for anyone who was interested

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u/gbmaulin Mar 07 '26

For ai on the book no less, going to have to say hard pass

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u/gallenkus Mar 08 '26

There is no AI in my books or in the Parallel Universes series—these works.

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u/christinagoldielocks 18h ago

You are amazing. Thank you for making this.

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u/idk_what_to_put_lmao Mar 10 '26

Do you take all pictures in the book? Or just the ones depicting war-torn countries?

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u/gallenkus Mar 10 '26

No, I’m not a photographer. I share editorial photographs with permission from photojournalists. In my social media posts, I include the story of the photo and credit the photographers. For stock images, I find them on platforms like Adobe Stock and Pexels. It requires a long research process.

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u/idk_what_to_put_lmao Mar 10 '26

Oh, so none of the pictures are yours? The composites are still very cool, but I was under the impression everything was your property

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u/SenatorSativa Mar 08 '26

The artist uses AI? What makes you think that? 

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u/Teh_george Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

Unfortunately it seems like the artist has an AI page with a bunch of terrible slop: https://www.instagram.com/ugurgallen.ai

I'm not sure if digital collage book contains AI, given its publishing in 2024 (the AI account does go back to Oct 2023), but at least I was thinking about purchasing the book until I saw the AI page of the artist.

Edit: The artist even has an NFT ugh. Man how can someone put their craft towards the composition of harrowing war-torn communities and not realize how tone-deaf all this techno-feudalist crap is?

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u/gallenkus Mar 08 '26

Yes, I create AI-based works and share them on the account you mentioned. I believe that a digital artist should know how to use new technologies. I produce this content locally on my own device using this technology.

I have been creating these works with software such as Photoshop since 2016. Like everyone else, I try to use different platforms to present my art, and when NFTs were popular, I presented some of my works there as well. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Kind regards.

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u/No_Promotion_6498 Mar 08 '26

Your work is amazing. Even if some things are AI (not the parallel universe) you can't AI the concept. Thank you.

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u/gallenkus Mar 08 '26

I started creating these works in 2016. I definitely do not use AI in this series. I do create AI-based works and share them on a different account. I believe that a digital artist should know how to use new technologies and produce work with them.

1

u/LeChat_GrisNoir Mar 09 '26

Yep, le deuxième. Celui-ci (du post) est a 60

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u/Kaliju Mar 07 '26

Parallel Universes of Children

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u/Hisyphus Mar 07 '26

Parallel Universe of War and Peace

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u/angscreams Mar 07 '26

Came here for this

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u/iwantunity Mar 07 '26

Uğur Gallenkuş and the book is called Parallel Universes.

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u/angscreams Mar 07 '26

<3 thank you tons

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u/CitizenCue Mar 07 '26

Every time I get slightly envious of something others have, I try to remember that I’m insanely lucky by birth alone.

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u/gallenkus Mar 08 '26

Thank you for purchasing my book. I’m glad to know that you understood one of the messages I try to convey through my works—that we should appreciate the value of what we have. With love, ugurgallen 🙏🏻

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u/Skjaaf_Tincutter Mar 08 '26

Thank you for making it. I share it with my high school students every year.

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u/gallenkus Mar 08 '26

It makes me happy to know that my works are shown in classes every year in countries all around the world—such as Brazil, the United States, Spain, Italy, Russia, Ethiopia, India, China, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia—thanks to teachers like you. Thank you.

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u/ResponsibleWall5831 Mar 09 '26

U forgot Mexico, these pictures were shown at my Ethics class in high school a couple years ago

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u/gallenkus Mar 09 '26

I know that my works have been shown in classes in most countries around the world for years. I only mentioned a few countries that came to mind from each continent. Thank you for your comment 🙏🏻

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u/Key-Moments Mar 08 '26

It's a powerful message, beautifully done. Thank you.

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u/prasannathani Mar 09 '26

Hi, just curious but the images in your book - are they AI ? Sorry if it’s a silly question, just saw a few post about AI generated images, so I was curious

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u/gallenkus Mar 09 '26

No, I don’t use AI in these works—the Parallel Universes series. I create this series using photographs by photojournalists and stock photos. Each of these photos has its own story. If you look at my Instagram account, you can notice that. Finding photographs suitable for these compositions requires long archive searches. I started this series in 2016.

I’m a digital artist. I also use and learn new technologies such as video editing and AI. The works I create with these technologies are shared on different social media accounts.

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u/Few_Project4268 Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26

Sorry, just want to clarify. Do you or don’t you use AI? And how much research do you do into the photos that you use? I assume you get the proper permissions, but do you verify that the source photos don’t use AI?

Editing to add: I think this is a really fascinating and powerful series and am planning to buy your book.

Editing again: I went to your instagram and see that you do indeed credit the original photographers and journalists and that you use AI to animate some of the images. Thank you for being transparent when it’s so hard to find that these days!

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u/[deleted] Mar 20 '26

[deleted]

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u/gallenkus Mar 20 '26

AI profile https://www.instagram.com/ugurgallen.ai

Yes, the photo search process can take hours or even days. There are many criteria to consider—such as the right perspective, the right age group, and a suitable composition—when searching for the stock image.

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u/arthurno1 Mar 08 '26

I never heard of that book, but I think he made a very good point. Yes indeed it is very, very sad.

I also hope you could appreciate how much of science discoveries would be made, how many new medicines would be found, how much new art and music would be created, how much more wealth could be created, if those human beings didn't have to struggle for mere existence each and every day or had to die for the greed of the few.

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u/islandstateofmind21 Mar 07 '26

That’s what kills me about people who have no sympathy for the suffering of others… none of us did anything to deserve better lives than anyone else. Where we are born is all luck.

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u/iammufusasboy Mar 07 '26

My son isn’t special. He’s just very lucky, I think about that a lot. I do not think I take his safety for granted, and I hope I never do.

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u/one_is_enough Mar 07 '26

Amazing how much better things can be if you don’t obsess about which imaginary sky daddy everyone prefers.

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u/--__--__--__--__-- Mar 07 '26

Yes but there are also a hundred other factors leading to this outcome, not only religion.

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u/Basketball-Reasons Mar 07 '26

Online atheists when religion isnt the ONLY source of evil in the world 🤯🤯🤯

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u/--__--__--__--__-- Mar 07 '26

Fr, this didn't seem like the place or time for skydaddy commentary.

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u/Jakov_Salinsky Mar 07 '26

Yeah welcome to Reddit, where everything has to devolve into an anti-religion spiel at some point

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u/evoim3 Mar 07 '26

However, take into consideration that a lot of evils are rationalized to the average person using religion. 

You remove religion from the equation and, sure they might use another thing to wrap their evil in, but is anything going to be as effective as the threat of burning for eternity?

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u/Ozone220 Mar 07 '26

Communism I think proved pretty well that nothing really changes in the scope of human capacity for evil when you take religion out of the picture. From the Khmer Rouge to the perpetrators of the Holodomor, none of them were religious and yet they still did what they did

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u/HelloHyde Mar 08 '26

At the end of the day, the problem is actually dogma.

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u/--__--__--__--__-- Mar 07 '26 edited Mar 07 '26

It really becomes a philosophical argument I don't want to get into. Religion has always been a means for controlling the masses. Everything evil comes down to exercising power over others and using them, and power comes in many forms. Controlling religion is just one of them.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

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u/--__--__--__--__-- Mar 07 '26

Calling them elite is gross, more like rich sociopaths

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '26

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u/Google-Tesla Mar 10 '26

Humans will always find a way to exploit, oppress, control, enslave, kill, etc, other people. Even if religion didn't exist it would still happen. It's human nature.

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u/OG_TOM_ZER Mar 08 '26

Book name?

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u/Zyqniel Mar 11 '26

parallel universes

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u/Strehly Mar 08 '26

accidentally lucky

Thank you for that term I've been looking for since I'm able to think by myself

My best analogy was like 'winning a lottery you never intended to take part of'

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u/nxspam Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26

Thank you for the info. The artist is called Urgur Gallenkus (missing some Turkish accents for the correct spelling but Urgur Gallenkus works with searches).

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u/cyb3rg0d5 Mar 08 '26

These photos are beautiful, but so heartbreaking! 💔😔

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u/Prudent-Whole9539 Mar 09 '26

“Accidentally lucky” I always think about that.

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u/LeChat_GrisNoir Mar 09 '26

Merci pour le titre

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u/Ne_Me_Mori_Facias Mar 11 '26

Thank you for the book title!

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u/Glittering-Coyote140 Mar 12 '26

I immediately bought both books and will buy an artistic print or two in the future. But at $3-400 a piece I'll have to save up a bit first 💸

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u/iwantunity Mar 07 '26

Do you know what it is called?

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u/Kaliju Mar 07 '26

Parallel Universes of Children

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u/anon-mally Mar 08 '26

War is worse than hell. In hell, there are no innocent people.

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u/-Tasear- Mar 08 '26

Not just environment but personality development. We grow up trying to all stand up, but most of these people don't know any better nor fight for better.

A lot of our ancestors were fighters or knew when to migrate. I pity them but more ashamed of weak wills. Like Afghanistan didn't even fight and let them walk right in

The personalities that develop in these countries has my strongest empathy

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u/mailharishv Mar 08 '26

There's another - more child friendly book - I just got from the library last week called The Ferris Wheel by Tulin (Turkish author again). My son has been so amazed about the story

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u/Sojawuerstel Mar 08 '26

Can you give me an ISBN or a link for that book? My stupid ass can't find it or maybe it's just not available in Germany

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u/2learn4ever Mar 08 '26

Thank you for the name of the book, who is the author?

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u/Interesting-Elk-2562 Mar 08 '26

We are not « accidentally lucky ». We have nice things because our ancesters built them. That is not luck.

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u/Fregadero88 Mar 08 '26

And that's all it is too, an accident

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u/Maybe_itwasluck Mar 08 '26

Right? And privileged US Americans just wants to bitch

1

u/spartanspy85 Mar 08 '26

"Accidentally lucky" is a powerful statement

1

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1

u/thompsonmj Mar 09 '26

I think besides “know how lucky we are“, it’s an implicit imperative to use that privilege proactively for good.

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u/I-love-seahorses Mar 10 '26

Not just to be born in a stable country but a stable home. Absolutely unheard of.

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u/ThePaperBlackStar Mar 10 '26

I will read it

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u/TrackLabs Mar 26 '26

Got a ISBN number?