This was a provocative and enjoyable essay. I've restacked it with some further thoughts. It's great to read intelligent work by someone grappling seriously with the future.
I'm of the view that the next age will involve a reclamation of all within the boundaries. That it will be about restoration and rebuilding in some fashion the old whilst rejecting infinity.
I had thought that we'll be heading in a more Ulyssean direction. Still think that though this is an interesting notion.
Yes. I’m working on a post called ‘The Diversity of the Left and of the Right’. Its purpose is to present a healthy view on how the many can be contained within one society without homogenizing them
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Also, I like the Ulysses reference. Joyce’s aestheticism is quite important for the Guildrim project.
I assume you realize you’ve essentially described Nietzsche’s distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian principles. Your “box” is an apt and homely description of the Apollonian principle, and most of us would agree recent history has expressed a surfeit of Dionysian energy and values.
Frustratingly Substack doesn’t allow me to upload an image but I’ll send you a DM with a relevant passage from the Introduction to the Cambridge edition of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy
excellent piece with a nice rhythm. i found myself looking at your image and only noticing the black spider coming out of it. quickly found out "the box" it was emerging out of was the prime symbol right in front of my face that I couldn't see. well done!
the vision you lay out aligns well with the christian triumph emerging out of the decline of the roman empire and classical antiquity. a growing army of discontents mixed with new generations of elites who were attracted to the inversion of focus from greco-roman material and worldly striving towards inward, spiritual development.
Your reveal of the shape as a box led me to lift my head from my phone and observe that literally 70% of everything in the room I was in was some form of box, the rest arrived there in some form of box, and the room itself is just a sub box of the larger building box. An amusing vignette in retrospect.
Now that you mention it, the prevailing trend in garden design is for a series of varied "garden rooms" where the garden space is split up via barriers into segments, and each segment fulfills different purposes and uses different styles: a paved section with tender seasonal displays in pots, past a planted trellace to a gravel seating area with Mediterranean style borders and aromatic perennial herbs, past a thin hedge to a shaded fern garden or wildlife section with long grasses and a pond, etc.
Is it normal to respond with some dread when it's revealed that something has been acting through you without your knowledge?
Yeah, I don’t get why so many people are so cynical. We’re living during the most exciting period in the history of the world. I’m extremely grateful to be part of it.
Really interesting and provocative piece. Along these lines, unless I'm missing the point, I'd say the desperate search by so many for meaning--any meaning--will result in the creation of new boundaries defining what human life is and can be. A sign of a dying civilization struggling for inversion.
Interesting essay. It brings to mind Christian religious orthodoxy, a boundary that frees its adherents, a valuable fence. Also, the discipline of art and craft, composition, Japanese joinery (sashimono?). The refusal of slop.
This was a provocative and enjoyable essay. I've restacked it with some further thoughts. It's great to read intelligent work by someone grappling seriously with the future.
This means a great deal coming from you. I appreciate it.
I'm of the view that the next age will involve a reclamation of all within the boundaries. That it will be about restoration and rebuilding in some fashion the old whilst rejecting infinity.
I had thought that we'll be heading in a more Ulyssean direction. Still think that though this is an interesting notion.
Pandoric is an interesting idea.
Yes. I’m working on a post called ‘The Diversity of the Left and of the Right’. Its purpose is to present a healthy view on how the many can be contained within one society without homogenizing them
—-
Also, I like the Ulysses reference. Joyce’s aestheticism is quite important for the Guildrim project.
Thx I can't wait for your next essay these are quite good.
I assume you realize you’ve essentially described Nietzsche’s distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian principles. Your “box” is an apt and homely description of the Apollonian principle, and most of us would agree recent history has expressed a surfeit of Dionysian energy and values.
Makes sense. Nietzsche was an early influence on my intellectual development. Although I moved on several years ago.
Frustratingly Substack doesn’t allow me to upload an image but I’ll send you a DM with a relevant passage from the Introduction to the Cambridge edition of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy
excellent piece with a nice rhythm. i found myself looking at your image and only noticing the black spider coming out of it. quickly found out "the box" it was emerging out of was the prime symbol right in front of my face that I couldn't see. well done!
the vision you lay out aligns well with the christian triumph emerging out of the decline of the roman empire and classical antiquity. a growing army of discontents mixed with new generations of elites who were attracted to the inversion of focus from greco-roman material and worldly striving towards inward, spiritual development.
Your reveal of the shape as a box led me to lift my head from my phone and observe that literally 70% of everything in the room I was in was some form of box, the rest arrived there in some form of box, and the room itself is just a sub box of the larger building box. An amusing vignette in retrospect.
Now that you mention it, the prevailing trend in garden design is for a series of varied "garden rooms" where the garden space is split up via barriers into segments, and each segment fulfills different purposes and uses different styles: a paved section with tender seasonal displays in pots, past a planted trellace to a gravel seating area with Mediterranean style borders and aromatic perennial herbs, past a thin hedge to a shaded fern garden or wildlife section with long grasses and a pond, etc.
Is it normal to respond with some dread when it's revealed that something has been acting through you without your knowledge?
Yes. But it’s not necessary.
The Pandoric Age. Got a nice hyperpop / chromatic ring to it. Great article - the highly optimistic read mindset sorely needed right now.
Yeah, I don’t get why so many people are so cynical. We’re living during the most exciting period in the history of the world. I’m extremely grateful to be part of it.
I think people are already polarised and they don’t realise they can ‘unplug’ and create their own solutions. We have so many tools, so many.
Really interesting and provocative piece. Along these lines, unless I'm missing the point, I'd say the desperate search by so many for meaning--any meaning--will result in the creation of new boundaries defining what human life is and can be. A sign of a dying civilization struggling for inversion.
Yes. We should be glad of it. And help people along.
Another way of saying the box would be the body. In the body is the key to eternity.
That could be it yes, I like that! Great thinking William.
Will thinking outside the box be the flailing of reactionaries?
Interesting essay. It brings to mind Christian religious orthodoxy, a boundary that frees its adherents, a valuable fence. Also, the discipline of art and craft, composition, Japanese joinery (sashimono?). The refusal of slop.
That would be the optimistic take.