I have been absent from these plains. I apologize.
Wait… I’ve said that already.
Well anyway, the primary reason was the neglect of my computer, which happens whenever I come to an electronic ’saturation point’, and the sight of anything remotely evocative of diode-intelligence becomes irrelevant and vaguely nauseating.
I have been fighting a battle with myself. The outcome is still not clear. Large, roving armies clomp about on blood-stained fields, and the dismembered bodies of foes and friends alike constitute the charred, organic landscape in their death-poses. I am besieged and running out of food. We have a well in here but each day the water we draw out is less clear, muddied with a rustic silt. I fear that the blood that is being spilled outside the city walls is seeping far into the soil and tainting the ground-water. We are growing accustomed to imbibing the life of our dead.
A bleak sight, to be sure. But I have a trick or two stashed in the cow-shed. We must be discrete with ourselves. It is the only way to assure victory.
Check out these remarkable drawings by zoologist and artist Ernst Haeckel.
He was one of the primary influences of Darwin himself, coined many of the biological terms that have become ubiquitous today and even mapped out a genealogical tree connecting ALL lifeforms far before any such thing was even deemed possible. Many of his theories seem remarkable and futuristic even today, the most fascinating of which is in these three words: “Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny”.
Which is to say that the course of individual physiological/psychological development parallels or mirrors the course of the species’ physiological/psychological development. This is especially fascinating when you start to think about how many social theorists have argued along the same lines, including those stalwarts Freud and Marx. “Civilizations and Discontents” rests its entire logical postulate on this relationship, as does the connective tissue between Marx’s individual nature and collective nature. Even Hegel to an extent argues the same thing with his Historical Reason.
But this opens up an entirely new can of squid: If individual psychology can be altered to experience transcendental states, then, if we accept the former postulate, how do those states manifest themselves in larger social structures? Do they become objectified in architecture and art? Do they have the capacity to change the underlying ontology of civilization itself?
Bah, humbug! I must get back to the ramparts. The enemy has found a crack in the walls.
