"Historically, the leading edge of thought has always moved around a bit. A new idea takes hold of inquisitive minds, and suddenly semi-naked natives are mapping the heavens and building pyramids in the middle of a jungle or a desert; hackers of heads are building empires out of brick and bone and blood and mortar; knights and troubadours are gallivanting around the countryside in noble quest of higher order; monks and rabbis at their chemistry are counting bumps on heads, or clumps of angels or elements or lumps and beads and threads of anything that adds up to a quantifiable intelligence. Civilizations come and go like stubborn fads. The divine right of kings and queens and popes and all robes laureate are basically a fashion show: they went out with a 'told you so.' Peasants basically run the show now, or just now figuring out they always did. Once upon a time, long, long ago, I think we must have lived upon the world as in a dream, and history is the fleshing-out of painted strokes, for we are still world-making, and this morning's episode still has the ancient scent of something wet as Borneo or Mesopotamia; something Chinese even here in Idaho; there are fingerprints on everything: the dream itself is biting at is fingernails and thinking, thinking...."
(from an unpublished manuscript: "Genesis: A Social Vision")
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