Will industrial civilisation end in a nuclear exchange? Keep your smelling salts on hand, because we’re diving into Paul Virilio, nuclear grand strategy & why decadent elites lose mastery over the machines they inherit.
A thread (to end all threads): 1/
It hardly bears mentioning that the concept of nuclear armageddon loomed terrible over how the Cold War generation saw the world & themselves. What receives less attention is how professional elites saw this technology in light of their 'expert knowledge'. 2/
Throughout the Cold War it became a great canard of the counter-culture to point out the cold monstrosity of military planners & political elites, who (it seemed to the public) appeared rather calm & calculating about the always imminent threat of atomic war. 3/
The Maya differ(ed) greatly from most Eurasian cultures in their physical standards of beauty, part of what the Spanish found so unsettling about them. This one is light on philosophy.
A (normie) thread : 1/
Like ancient Egyptians, they saw elongated heads as a mark of divinity. For the Maya, it also carried the aesthetic association of an ear of corn, around which much cultural & religious symbolism revolved. 2/
Unlike the pharaohs, some of whom might have simply inherited macrocephaly through familial incest, 90% of Maya remains bear evidence of artificial cranial deformation, which the Maya had pretty much perfected by the Classic period. 3/
I don't know how to put this without adding to the current alarm about shuddering interruptions to food supplies across much of the world—but I just recently started studying horticulture & peeps in that industry have been talking about this for a while...
A (worrying) thread: 1/
(This is purely based on keeping my ear to the ground during my first week at vocational college, which wrapped up today, so don’t ask me for literary sources. This is what I have picked up from muttered comments & black humour shared between teachers, senior students etc.)
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So, a little about horticulture: it’s the general art of cultivating plants in gardens, for any purpose. It has some of the characteristics of an applied science. There’s significant overlap with hard disciplines like soil science, plant biochemistry, industrial chemistry etc. 3/
In times of crisis, we look to our rulers for grace, competence & responsibility. Unfortunately, these qualities are in short supply as Faustian civilisation closes upon its nadir. What can we learn about leadership by looking at the pagan past?
A 🧵: 1/
First, a brief primer on the Christian subtext of good leadership & a little bit about post-liberal theories of power. If this bores you, I get into Mayan sacral kingship at #32. If you know nothing of the Maya, you can start with this thread: 2/
What does it really take to rule? Without bastardising ancient paganism too much, there is a direct continuity between the ancient Greco-Roman idea of power & modern realpolitik. Here, Machiavelli served as an important conceptual bridge. 3/
I got my bachelors in liberal arts from a prestigious uni right out of high school. Today, I had my first day at vocational college, studying horticulture. I'm genuinely not sure at this point whether university education has declined or was always totally pointless...
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All of the vocational teachers were in full control of a functional body of knowledge & expressed it with maximal clarity & irl examples—all while bicep-deep in soil & rock.
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The course load is approximately 3x as large. Even when adjusting for the fact that it's semi-technical stuff about plant & soil science, chemistry, geology, it makes my entire theoretical university degree look, in retrospect, like a cakewalk intended for toddlers.
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Sing in me, O’ Ah-Xoc-Xin, of the death gods’ court, abode of demons & were-jaguars, into which the Hero Twins descended & revived the First Father, putting death to death by trickery & harrowing the Underworld for evermore.
A thread on Maya mythology, demons & Xibalbá 1/
Once again, a theological prelude is necessary if you want the full benefit of this thread, but if you just want Maya trivia, skip ahead to #18. Those not familiar with the Maya can learn more here: 2/
When Christians think of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, we see it—not without justification—as a frightening instance of how low a civilisation can be brought by idolatry & demon-worship. 3/