Some days it feels like we're at the edge of a story our cultures have been telling themselves for the last 250 years - since the crafting of states around colonies, and the dawn of modern nationalism in a myth of ethnic purity inflamed by a British judge going to India and realizing that Sanskrit shared a common origin with European tongues.

We've built so much of our sense of the world around what's ultimately a blip of a cultural idea in deep history.

Will we live to see what comes afer it?

(Also, hello, good morning, and good Sunday. 💛)

@MLClark
We'll live to see some of what comes after it. I also feel like... whatever that is? The power structure and the governments; they're changing or ending somehow, literally right now as we speak. I have no idea what they're going to look like, but it really feels like we're on a brink.

@MLClark
I also feel like it's going to bring out some more nutcases/groups with bad ideas, unfortunately.

@MLClark
But people have lived through lots of changes before, you know! I expect this is not that much different than some of our ancestors experienced, collectively speaking. It's slower than I would have thought. You don't just wake up one day and say "Yep. That era ended." it takes frigging forever and you probably don't realize it until you're dead.

@janallmac

Well said. The Roman empire took centuries to decline, and pagan mythologies took centuries in regions to give way to something new.

We are sentient enough to see that we're part of a larger tapestry - and to anticipate some changes in the weave - but not powerful enough to hasten along whatever comes next.

We'll spend the rest our lives in the dregs of old myths - religious, cultural, political - with only a few guesses as to which fragments will craft the stories that lie ahead.

@MLClark
Right! Like... when does the past really go away? It lingers. Even those romans and pagans have lingered.

@MLClark But the fun, and really revolutionary and exciting thing about *this* era, is we get to talk to people literally all around the whole world during this whatever it is process. That is truly brand-new in history. I feel very lucky about that part -- as our world changes, we get to be a little more connected.

@janallmac

That's a beautiful reframe, Jan. Thank you for that wisdom.

I wonder if it will give us any more agency, too, to shape what comes next. The original promise of the internet says "yes", but our highly controlled and corporate forms of the internet in recent years have muddled matters a bit.

We *do* have access to so much more. We also have profound incuriosity reinforced by a desire for safety and security in the face of the unknown.

We shall see which drive wins out, I suppose!