It is precisely because conflict is a kind of communication that it persists so far beyond the infancy of our species. Artefacts and entities of communication remain in this world for as long as they do through the many ways they endlessly reproduce themselves both through and as us. War, fear and hatred perennially percolate […]
There is, perhaps, as much to be said for an acquired art and experience of “self-surveillance” as there is of the orchestrated ubiquity of surveillance in information and (communications) technology that Orwell predicted. The longer arc and trajectory of human history has been one in which the inflating internal, interior spaces of memory and perception […]
Context: Geopolitics is for losers It is always worth considering the extent to which the longer frequency waves as oscillating ebb and tide of history are also those of the communications systems, of the languages and self-validating dialects of ideologically-inflected political narrative. The kinds of ideological and political system that tend to emerge as convergent […]
It is horrifying to think that the Russian regime has painted itself into such a bloody corner that all they can now do is wreak a kind of medieval siege warfare upon the people of Ukraine. Beyond the crude absurdities of narrative symbolism and caricatured historical necessity with which they justify this growing litany of […]
There is a monumental level of incompetence and corruption in the Russian systems of command. I have no political interest and no partisan alignment. This is about humanity. It is an unjust war that is being fought for little more reason than that the insidiously oppressive totalitarian regime is entirely unable to comprehend that if […]
Context: World Politics at the Edge of Chaos: Reflections on Complexity and Global Life I have been deep down a rabbit hole of seeking to apply these complexity thinking insights more broadly for the last few years. One key, kernel and core takeaway is that (we) human beings seem on the whole quite poorly equipped […]
The horror of war is only ever equivocable to its absurdity. As much as we must negotiate and navigate such catastrophes where and when they occur, I am uncertain that our collaborative historical analyses provide much more than a resonant disincentive to engage with and enter into the wars that appear to be as inevitable […]
To repeat: The only reason we need smart weapons is because we are too stupid to stop fighting wars.
Human history primarily self-propagates as a function of its errors. The turbulent dissonance and dissembling confusion of our shared experience and memory generates the optimal transmission medium for change, innovation, evolution and – inevitably – also catastrophe. I was watching a French TV series, Ganglands, just now. It is a fictional portrayal of the essential […]
Putin’s relationship with NATO possesses the essential characteristics of a pathological psychosis. He is so profoundly shaped by a narrative of fear and insecurity that he can not imagine (or influence) a world without it. He has in effect done everything in his power to ensure the continuity of the “threat” as reflexive self-validation for […]
I remember a phrase from Marcus Aurelius in which he asserted that the worst thing a person could do is to make themselves and their lives a kind of blemish upon the world. I have been thinking about this in terms of Vladimir Putin. He is certainly inflicting great savagery and brutal abhorrence upon the […]
The curious thing about those who seek to leverage political capital from conflict is that this represents an atavistic ideological “business model” that in such a deeply interdependent world, all actions and aggressions return – amplified – to the actor. Even more so, in such an intricately entangled social, economic and technological context in which […]
Daedelus Kite 