Sea People

Lion Tail

   If you use Rome or the British Empire or the right footwear as your cuddle bunny, if you're tempted by Napoleon, as Hegel and many an idealist were tempted, then in your understanding of Central Authority, or Monotheism, the mistake you're about to make is what I will call the Late Bronze Age Error.

 "We got bronze belt buckles, we got bronze adzes, we got it all, look at us, nothing can stop us now!"

  In this era of today, how long have we known that Western Modernity depends upon diesel fuel. How long have we been searching the interstitial for new spaces. How often have those new spaces looked like hard work and too much change as we wait for the Sea People to reveal our tomorrow.

  We, as is our tradition, because we cannot conceive of a space without diesel, will cling to a policy of colonial extraction. These days, unless our capital city is Washington DC or London we prefer not to use soldiers to quell the resistance, it's too destructive, veteran laden and expensive. 

  The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age, which began around 1200 BC, not that long ago. Iron is stronger, lighter and cheaper than bronze, so yippee! In the Near East the Iron Age itself slowed into a greater complexity of thought, monotheistic impulses, massive building programs and other monopolistic touchy-feely-ness around 600 BC. 

  This cradle of the Near East, holds the memory of that part of humanity that describes itself as civilized, and to this day it retains a pre-nation understanding which sees itself as belonging to family. Oh sure they have the Wompom of Djacooti with his twenty three wives, fourteen yachts and a City Block in New York, while you still draw your water from the well, but if you can see your blood line running through the Wompom's veins then so what, it's like being related to Charlton Heston or Mary Pickford . 

  Be brave, read history and learn, which you can't do unless you avoid Hollywood, Madison Avenue, television  and all that which the mathematics of a beaky hat holds dear. Yes indeed! In Arabia, when petroleum was discovered in 1938, the Banu Hanifa and their Wahhabi Priests would still be floor cleaners if it wasn't for a British Colonial Officer and Cambridge man named Harry St John Bridger Philby.