My not-so-secret motivation is a desire to kick the shit out of the old 20th century paradigm -- the one in which history was seen as the mechanical unfolding of a predetermined sequence of stages, and human imagination and creativity counted for nothing.
In its place, I humbly offer a two hundred thousand year long saga of wild improvisations and ad hoc problem-solving, in which humans have time and again responded to the cosmic imperatives which surround them by becoming the active masters of their own destiny.
- The First Alchemists Were Masters of — Glue
- Visions of History (I): The Algorithms of String
- Visions of History (I): Female Magic
- Visions of History (II): The Invention of Society
- Visions of History (III): Mind on the Edge of Chaos
- The Bottleneck and the Great Migration
- Part I: The Cycle of Regeneration
- Part II: The Era of Science and Democracy
- Part III: The Death of Reason
- Part IV(a): The Screwballs
- Part IV(b): The Democratization of Higher Knowledge
- Part V(a): The End of an Era
- Part V(b): An Age of Chaos
- Part V(c): The Times They Are A-Changin'
- Part VI(a): From Hipsters to Hippies
- Part VI(b): The Search for Meaning
- Part VI(c): The Proto-History of Holism
- Part VI(d): The Rube Goldberg Principle
- Part VI(e): Moral Agents
- Part VII(a): The True Voice of Chaos
- Part VII(b): Nothing But a Pack of Cards
- Part VII(c): We're All Mad Here
- Part VII(d): The Wood Where Things Have No Names
- Part VIII(a): In All This Shit, There Must Be a Counterculture
- Part VIII(b): The Alchemical Marriage of Chaos and Holism
- Part VIII(c): When the Vertical World Turns Horizontal
- Part VIII(d): Everything Changes
- Part IX(a): "Alice--Mutton. Mutton--Alice."
- Part IX(b): Unalienable Rights and Universal Consciousness
- Part IX(c): You're Doing It Wrong
- Part X(a): Russian Nesting Dolls
- Part X(b): The World Beyond the Hill
Upper Paleolithic:
- The Shamanistic Theory of Ancient Art
- Of Hollow Bone Flutes and the Imperative to "Be That Empty"
- Geeks at Work
Epi-Paleolithic:
- The Invention of the Neolithic, 1
- The Invention of the Neolithic, 2: The Ancient Alchemists
- The Invention of the Neolithic, 3: The First Urbanites
Neolithic and Early
Civilizations:
- Of Seas and Skies
- Searching for Once Upon a Time
- How We Got So Pretty
- Civilization beyond Civilization, Part I
- Civilization Beyond Civiliation, Part II: The Aristo Factor
- The Efflux of Osiris
Modern Archetypes:
The Paleolithic Indo-Europeans Once upon a time, the world was emptier than it is now, and our ancestors wandered through it freely, lured onward by the prospect of marvels just beyond the next hill. Those days are long gone, but their spirit remains in our dreams, in our stories, and in the very languages we speak.
Speculations
on
the Tarot Origins, meaning,
and cross-cultural references. (Long-dormant, but I promise
to pick it up again one of these days.)
Border courtesy of
FDZ
Graphics