So far I’ve got:
- The Anthropocene and the end of the world
- The prospect of a permanent human presence in space: the Moon, asteroids, and Mars
- Human cultural evolution
- Graffiti
Let’s start from the last one, graffiti. It’s a transnational cultural language that arose only quite recently in human history. And it arose at about the time humans first set foot on the Moon. I figure that if an advanced alien civilization is watching us, trying to figure out whether or not we should be admitted to The Club, they’re going to use the state of graffiti and street art as a prime index.
Human cultural evolution is what pulled us pushed us from the animal world. It’s been going on for centuries, even millennia. But not much longer. It’s only recently that cultural evolution has been recognized as such and that recognition has been fitful at best. These days there’s been a resurgence of interest, but that resurgence hasn’t quite gotten on to the idea that human culture has progressed, that it’s directional – though there is Robert Wright’s Nonzero.
Of course, I see graffiti in the light of cultural evolution, as the fulcrum on which we’ll lever the next era. And the next era will find us in space? I’m still pondering that one. Seriously pondering.
But it would make a kind of sense to go there on the cusp of the Anthropocene, after the end of the world, as Tim Morton would have it. The Anthropocene, of course, is a geological era named after the human presence of earth. It’s now been so significant has to affected earth’s trajectory at the geophysical level. That being so, perhaps it IS time we take to the stars, or at least the Moon, asteroids, Mars, and then the solar system!
That’s going to require one hell of a mythology to make it real. Looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me in the coming year.
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I almost forgot! There is this: Tight Like This: A Tale of High Adventure in Ancient Nubia. Yes indeedy do! It's going to take lots of jivometric mind jolts.
Made me smile.
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