635
To be confined in this matter is not the same as an embedded coal miner waiting for
rescue; or the estimated 170,000+ orphans of Romania’s dictatorship under Nicolae
Ceauşescu.
3
68.2 Circumstances of History
All of the circumstances of history form one of many contexts shaping this debacle
that is man. You cannot lay it off, any of it, to congressional testimony or the stored
wisdom crowding the shelves of an old bookstore in Reykjavik, with its dusty Norse
sagas. Delusionality and ultra-ultra-rapid cycling bi-polar disorder, or something
even more medically disturbing, clearly untreatable. A reign of biocidal terror. Even
at the first signs of our arrival we left a stark, and readable account. A conversation
between a man and his soul, or “Ba,” as figured in the Berlin hieratic Papyrus #3024,
from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom Dynasty (1900–500 BC). And then, in 1605/1606,
Shakespeare’s “Timon of Athens,” whose “churlish Philosopher” Apemantus warns
before Cupid and the Amazons, “Like madness is the glory of this life… We make
ourselves fools to disport ourselves;… Upon whose age we void it up again, With
poisonous spite and envy, Who lives that’s not depraved or depraves… Would one
day stamp upon me: it has been done; Men shut their doors against a setting sun.”
4
Beautiful prose. But what is the part that is beautiful?
The centrality of such target-specificity—the human heart, its enshrouding
minds—seemingly immune to the forces converging upon it to stay the brigandage
at every level concerning humankind, it must be said, and repeated, is of an especial
kind whose ecological fate cannot be doubted. Imagine Rome, circa 133 BCE, the
first city to exceed one million. We scruffily deny and look away, all pretending that
for now we sleep or stand, upon this planet fast orbiting a star.
Our descent into this dead-end has not yet registered. Might it impact foreknowledge? Might we try to change? We collectively can or cannot. Despite all the signage propelling and translating hope, we fail to spell it right or seize beyond the
rally some oddball curve amid the pressures favoring brute force. All of the evidentiary testaments we leave behind will not occupy the mind of our successor species.
We shall have vanished. Given this starting point, ideas of a future haven are but
mathematical fantasies. We can correlate every invented image of the brush, of
music to our ears, assigning numbers randomly to a Michelangelo here, Bach there.
Such numerical topologies do not begin or end, they have no traction because the
equations to describe no exit, final exit, utter devastation, are like some literary
3 See “30 Years Ago Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact,” by Melissa Fay
Greene, The Atlantic, July/August 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/
can-an-unloved-child-learn-to-love/612253/?utm_source=pocket-newtab, Accessed June 21,
2020.
4 “Timon of Athens,” The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare, Edited with a Glossary by W. J.
Craig, Oxford University Press, London, 1947, p. 799.
68.2 Circumstances of History
To be confined in this matter is not the same as an embedded coal miner waiting for
rescue; or the estimated 170,000+ orphans of Romania’s dictatorship under Nicolae
Ceauşescu.
3
68.2 Circumstances of History
All of the circumstances of history form one of many contexts shaping this debacle
that is man. You cannot lay it off, any of it, to congressional testimony or the stored
wisdom crowding the shelves of an old bookstore in Reykjavik, with its dusty Norse
sagas. Delusionality and ultra-ultra-rapid cycling bi-polar disorder, or something
even more medically disturbing, clearly untreatable. A reign of biocidal terror. Even
at the first signs of our arrival we left a stark, and readable account. A conversation
between a man and his soul, or “Ba,” as figured in the Berlin hieratic Papyrus #3024,
from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom Dynasty (1900–500 BC). And then, in 1605/1606,
Shakespeare’s “Timon of Athens,” whose “churlish Philosopher” Apemantus warns
before Cupid and the Amazons, “Like madness is the glory of this life… We make
ourselves fools to disport ourselves;… Upon whose age we void it up again, With
poisonous spite and envy, Who lives that’s not depraved or depraves… Would one
day stamp upon me: it has been done; Men shut their doors against a setting sun.”
4
Beautiful prose. But what is the part that is beautiful?
The centrality of such target-specificity—the human heart, its enshrouding
minds—seemingly immune to the forces converging upon it to stay the brigandage
at every level concerning humankind, it must be said, and repeated, is of an especial
kind whose ecological fate cannot be doubted. Imagine Rome, circa 133 BCE, the
first city to exceed one million. We scruffily deny and look away, all pretending that
for now we sleep or stand, upon this planet fast orbiting a star.
Our descent into this dead-end has not yet registered. Might it impact foreknowledge? Might we try to change? We collectively can or cannot. Despite all the signage propelling and translating hope, we fail to spell it right or seize beyond the
rally some oddball curve amid the pressures favoring brute force. All of the evidentiary testaments we leave behind will not occupy the mind of our successor species.
We shall have vanished. Given this starting point, ideas of a future haven are but
mathematical fantasies. We can correlate every invented image of the brush, of
music to our ears, assigning numbers randomly to a Michelangelo here, Bach there.
Such numerical topologies do not begin or end, they have no traction because the
equations to describe no exit, final exit, utter devastation, are like some literary
3 See “30 Years Ago Romania Deprived Thousands of Babies of Human Contact,” by Melissa Fay
Greene, The Atlantic, July/August 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/
can-an-unloved-child-learn-to-love/612253/?utm_source=pocket-newtab, Accessed June 21,
2020.
4 “Timon of Athens,” The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare, Edited with a Glossary by W. J.
Craig, Oxford University Press, London, 1947, p. 799.
68.2 Circumstances of History