genesis or æolian dust

The always intriguing Æon magazine invites us to imagine an ecosystem that’s parallel to our own familiarly flourishing one but possibly quite independent—not quite like the writhing, invisible world of microscopic beings that Anton van Leeuwenhoek saw for the first time in the 1670s as this discovery did not have immediately recognisable and world-shattering consequences, since these animalcules seemed to have less to do with the majesty of man than anything imaginable—and along side the life that we know in such a radically different and unorthodox way so as to be completely alien in organisation and expression.
I think there are good indicators that our prejudice is slowly succumbing to surprise and serendipity—the resourcefulness of biology, as the search continues for extra-terrestrial intelligence and we find niches of creeping and reproducing beings in the most unexpected of places, but for all these positive developments, we still could fail if our criteria for thriving only cleaves to what we know and expect. Of course it would be more exciting and apparent to be confronted with the mute artefacts of an otherworldly civilisation or megafauna lopping across far-away plains—rather than enigmatic crystals, sludge, erosion, curious matter circling the drain, or creatures perpetuated by human belief in numerology or patent medicines and are happy hitchhikers. One concrete example given of a seemingly biogenic phenomena (that may have originated in a genesis before the one that’s our creation narrative or afterwards, like viruses, plasmids and preons that seem to prey on our weaknesses) is in the patina called desert varnish, debated since before the time of Darwin whether vegetable or mineral, of a sheen that forms on the surface of rocks, that’s extremely hydrophobic and contains elements not native to the local environment. The varnish, however, is inchoate, endemic to deserts around the world, from Africa to the Antarctic, and is even that verdigris that was scrapped away by our ancestors to produce the most ancient and enduring petroglyphs as signs that we were here too.

huginn and munnin

Though it is probably more likely that the later Czech sociologist Karl Deutsch expressed the sentiment to the effect that, “the essential part about nationhood is getting one’s past all wrong,” rather than the earlier French historian and orientalist Joseph Ernest Renan (whom it’s been attributed to), Renan did certainly write that the coalescing of a state requires that people have a lot in common as well as a collective amnesia—remarking that no respecting member of the New Republic dare own up to the frenzied, shameful massacre of the Albigensian Crusade.
This theologian who had a crisis of faith while looking deeper into the historical personage of Jesus and was unable to reconcile Church doctrine with the time-line was writing during a period of transition, the late nineteenth century, generations from the French Revolution, the terrors and resurgence with the Napoleonic Wars and during a time sadly insatiate for what was called progress. Posthumously, and despite Renan’s own critique of tribalism, certain elements of his readership championed his works as justification for colonialism, empire-building, and later eagerly advocating fascism and the politics of race. It nonetheless rings true, I think, that it’s an essential part of a founding, abiding myth—from Rome, England and to America—that a people joined or lumped together be mistaken about certain contexts and have heroes to worship. The later Deutsch, inheritor to all this misguided zeal, in contrast, helped people realise their folly and installed counter-measures.  Huginn (Thought) and Muninn (Remembrance) are the pair of cosmic ravens that surveyed the Earth and roosted with and reported to the Norse god Odin—sort of like the private counsel of a conscience or complimentary set of shoulder-angels.

5x5

vapour-lock: intoxicating atmosphere of the breathable cocktail chamber

cachepots: origami planters that grow with the plants they hold

loving-cup: whimsical, personal hand-crafted trophies (not pictured)

shiver ye timbers: EU Pirate Partei representatives save freedom of panorama

dot-dash-diss: in 1903 a white-hat hacker disrupts Marconi’s telegraph demonstration, via Kottke

bagful of wits or the fox and the hedgehog

Greek poet Archilochus, reflecting on the perils of being too clever, said of the fabled fox that he knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
I wonder which character society finds more palatable, to be peripatetic and know a hundred means of escape, evasion, succeeding that we can adapt—or try to in the moment—to a given situation or be content, hunkered down with one sure and reliable idea. Reflecting on the ongoing centennial of the Great War and the horrors that followed, ideologies that took root in the scorched pastures of Europe where God and King were beforehand disbanded by terror and revolt and brief revanchment by Napoleon and the brittle empire of the Hapsburgs that couldn’t hold the centre led us down terrible paths that put us off outwitting ourselves—for a generation at least. Maybe ideologues do admit of one core idea driving their agenda but in practise and execution, it’s only maybe a fox disguised as a hedgehog. Presently, I fear we’ve again acquired a taste to be clever and forgotten about the dangers of nationalism and rank hypocrisy in wealth and technologies. We don’t need to dart down those manifold paths—a hundred routes to utopia—another time and hopefully we’ve learned enough from history to restrain and humble ourselves.