History

Our story arcs are a legacy from the Greeks, who gave us tragedy, a genre built on rises and falls that peak with a climax. Aristotle called the moment of maximum intensity peripeteia — which translates to reversal — and named the aftermath catharsis, the release of emotional energy. That’s how we all know pride comes before fall and that the darke

Medieval people did not see themselves as living in the Middle Ages but, instead, saw themselves as mostly living in the Last Age, before the Apocalypse.

Ever since the rise of agrarian civilizations, cultures have justified their domination over those they conquered by claiming innate superiority. In recent centuries, as Europeans subjugated other regions, a discourse of white supremacy—one that retains its pernicious power even today—asserted superiority over other races. Among those who recognize

In fact, if you look at the entirety of the twentieth century, the most important developments in mass, one-to-many communications clock in at the same social innovation rate with an eerie regularity. Call it the 10/10 rule: a decade to build the new platform, and a decade for it to find a mass audience.

There is, I believe, a long period, measured not in centuries but in millennia—between the earliest appearance of states and lasting until perhaps only four centuries ago—that might be called a “golden age for barbarians” and for nonstate peoples in general. For much of this long epoch, the political enclosure movement represented by the modern nat

Zivilisation ist zum Synonym für Frieden und Fortschritt geworden, während die Wildnis für Krieg und Untergang steht. In Wirklichkeit war es für den größten Teil unserer Geschichte genau umgekehrt.

Es gibt eine Seite der Renaissance, die wenig mit neuem Humanismus, behutsamer Wiederentdeckung des antiken Erbes und früher Aufklärung zu tun hat und einen solchen feldzugartigen Protest geradezu herausforderte. Diese kalte, auf reine Logik und Erfolg fixierte, gleichsam wertneutrale Seite der Renaissance setzt bedingungslos auf das Individuum und