Monday, December 29, 2008

This explains a lot.

I'm reading now a book called "Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration" by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. Basically (I love when historians bring order to the world with one giant, cosmic bolt of clarity) humanity has searched for diversity since its very beginnings. We've looked for different people to co-join with, to trade with, to profit from, to procreate with. This has been the force that through green fuse drives the flower.

It's easy for us in Plastic-land to see increasing homogeneity. In fact, contrary to how we may feel when we are barraged by an onslaught of processed everything, we likely have a greater fecundity of trade, thought and chromosomes than in any time in human history.

OK, no real point here. Or maybe a bit of life affirmation from a misanthrope of the highest order. Today, if you need to know when Bogart was born, how old Bacall was when they married, what the word vitiate means or do you suck the venom from a cobra bite before or after dousing the wound in milk, that information is virtually at your fingertips. I suppose that access to a diversity of information and in a sense culture that is unparalleled in human history. That's amazing.

(Bogart was born in 1899--he died at 57. Bacall was 21 when they married, he was 45. Vitiate means to make faulty or defective. And suck out the venom first, rinse your mouth with milk and be sure to spit.)

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