Fractals in African Architecture and Human Adaptation

Ron Eglash is an ethno-mathematician: he studies the way math and cultures intersect. He has shown that many aspects of African design -- in architecture, art, even hair braiding -- are based on perfect fractal patterns.

Eglash is the author of African Fractals, a book that examines the fractal patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa. By looking at aerial-view photos -- and then following up with detailed research on the ground -- Eglash discovered that many African villages are purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with self-similar shapes repeated in the rooms of the house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village, in mathematically predictable patterns.

As he puts it:

"When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn't even discovered yet."

His other areas of study are equally fascinating, including research into African and Native American cybernetics, teaching kids math through culturally specific design tools, and race and ethnicity issues in science and technology. Eglash teaches in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York.

Watch his fascinating and provocative TED lecture:

Nietzsche and Nihilism

Friedrich Nietzsche waged war against nihilism, that which is anti-life or otherworldly. He finds this first and foremost in the Judeo-Christian tradition but also in the philosophy of Plato. Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s greatest praise was reserved for the ancient Greeks, the Greeks described by Homer and the Athenians of the Golden Age.

In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche suggested, only as an aesthetic phenomenon can the world be justified. Later on, he tells us 'God is dead' and offers us an alternative to Jesus in the form of the Persian prophet Zarathustra, who preaches the this-worldly.

In this lecture, the late Professor Robert C. Solomon discusses Nietzsche's views on a wide range of topics, but specifically the subject of nihilism and the frequent misinterpretations by contemporary scholars.

Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

Nietzsche also defends perspectivism: the view that all our knowledge of the world (and of ourselves) is gleaned through one or another perspective, a particular point of view.

DeLanda on Deleuze

Deleuze and the Open-ended Becoming of the World

by Manuel DeLanda

With the final mathematization of classical physics in the nineteenth century, a certain picture of the world emerged dominant, one in which clockwork determinism reigned supreme and time played no creative role, so that the future was effectively closed, completely given in the past. Although the set of equations with which Hamilton was able to unify all the different fields of classical physics (mechanics, optics, and the elementary theory of electromagnetism) did contain a variable for time, this variable played only an extrinsic role: once the equations were defined for a specific instant, both the past and the future were completely determined, and could be obtained mechanically by simply integrating the equations.

To be sure, this static, timeless picture of reality did not go unchallenged within science, since thermodynamics had already introduced an arrow of time which conflicted with the symmetric conception of classical mechanics, where the past and the future were interchangeable. Nevertheless, as the history of statistical mechanics makes it clear, much scientific effort has been spent in our century to reconcile time asymmetry at the level of large aggregates with the still accepted time symmetry at the level of individual interactions.

Thus, it would become the task of philosophers and social scientists to attempt to reconceptualize the world in order to give time and history a creative role, with the vision of an open future that this implies. Although there have been a variety of strategies to achieve this open future, here I would like to concentrate on two contrasting approaches. The first is perhaps best illustrated by the intellectual movement that is today known as "social constructivism", but which roots lie in linguistic and anthropological theories which go back to the turn of the century.

At the risk of oversimplifying, we may say that the core of this approach is a neo-Kantian theory of perception, in which individual experience is completely structured by the interplay of concepts and representations, but one in which Kant's transcendental concepts (of space and time) have been replaced by the conventional concepts of a given culture. The guiding image of this strategy may be said to be "each culture lives in its own world", an image central to many theoretical approaches in this century, from the cultural relativism of Margaret Mead and Franz Boas, to the linguistic relativism of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Worf, to the epistemological relativism of Thomas Khun's theory of scientific paradigms. Again, oversimplifying somewhat, the key idea in all these theories is one of "incommensurability" across worlds, each conceptual scheme constructing its own reality so that bridges between worlds are hard, if not impossible, to build.

More @ Here

Tupac Shakur (1971-1996)

Tupac Amaru Shakur (June 16, 1971 — September 13, 1996), was an American rap music artist who was brutally murdered in 1996. Shakur was shot four times in the streets of Las Vegas on September 7, and died six days later of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest at the University Medical Center.

In addition to his status as a top-selling recording artist, Shakur was a successful film actor and a prominent social activist. Many of Shakur's songs are about growing up amid violence and hardship in ghettos, and about racism, problems in society and conflicts with other rappers.

Shakur's work is known for its dichotomous content - mixing political, economic, social and racial activism, with glorifying and raw descriptions of violence, drug use, alcohol abuse and conflicts with the law.

Shakur was born in the East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York City.He was named after Túpac Amaru II, an Incan revolutionary who led an indigenous uprising against Spain and subsequently received capital punishment.

Tupac's music is charged with anger and passion. The early artistic expression of a young man gunned down before he had a chance to become the real poet and leader he was evolving into.

Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, was an active member of the Black Panther Party in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s; Shakur was born just one month after her acquittal on more than 150 charges of "Conspiracy against the United States government and New York landmarks" in the New York Panther 21 court case.

Although officially unconfirmed by the Shakur family, several sources list his birth name as either "Parish Lesane Crooks" or "Lesane Parish Crooks". Afeni feared her enemies would attack her son, and disguised their relation using a different last name, only to change it three months or a year later, following her marriage to Mutulu Shakur.

Struggle and incarceration surrounded Shakur from an early age. Several of his closest relatives and role-models were incarcerated on charges ranging from armed robbery to first degree murder.

At the age of twelve, Shakur enrolled in Harlem's famous "127th Street Ensemble." His first major role with this acting troupe was as Travis in A Raisin in the Sun. In 1984, his family relocated to Baltimore, Maryland. After completing his second year at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School he transferred to the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he studied acting, poetry, jazz, and ballet.

While in Critical Care Unit on the afternoon of September 13, 1996, Shakur died of internal bleeding; doctors attempted to revive him but could not impede his hemorrhaging. His mother, Afeni, made the decision to tell the doctors to stop.He was pronounced dead at 4:03 p.m. (PDT) The official cause of death was noted as respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest in connection with multiple gunshot wounds. Shakur's body was cremated. Some of his ashes were later mixed with marijuana and smoked by members of Outlawz.

R.I.R (rest in resistance)

John Searle on Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austria-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

His writing inspired two of the twentieth century's principal philosophical movements - the Vienna Circle and Oxford ordinary language philosophy. According to an end of the century poll, professional philosophers in Canada and the U.S. rank both Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations among the top five most important books in twentieth-century philosophy, the latter standing out as "...the one crossover masterpiece in twentieth-century philosophy, appealing across diverse specializations and philosophical orientations".

Wittgenstein's influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences, yet there are widely diverging interpretations of his thought.

In part 1 of this conversation, John McGee and renown philosopher John R. Searle discuss Wittgenstein’s philosophy and legacy:

Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

John Searle (born 1932) is an American philosopher and the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. Widely noted for his contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and social philosophy, he was the first tenured professor to join the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley.

Capra and Prigogine on a Systems View of Life

Fritjof Capra (1939) is a theoretical physicist best known for his bestselling book The Tao of Physics. Capra has done extensive research on particle physics, human ecology and systems theory.

In this lecture, Capra outlines the new understanding of life that is now emerging at the forefront of science. This ‘web of life’ conception is based on systemic thinking and the innovative concepts and mathematical techniques of complexity theory. Capra argues that a systems perspective of evolution allows us to integrate our understanding of the biological, cognitive, and social dimensions of life.

Yet, some have argued that his theoretical view is inherently reductionist and does not take into account the intangible and qualitative nature of consciousness-as-such. Of course, you can judge for yourself.

Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003) was a renowned Belgian chemist noted for his work on dissipative structures, complex systems, and irreversibility. Prigogine is known best for his theories of thermodynamic systems far from equilibrium, which won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977.

Prigogine’s work on 'dissipative structures’ led to pioneering research in self-organizing systems, as well as philosophic inquiries into the formation of complexity of biological entities, and the quest for a creative and irreversible role of time in the natural sciences. His work is seen by many as a bridge between natural sciences and social sciences.

Below is an interview with Ilya Prigogine where he describes his understanding of the kosmos as a emergent, living, fluctuating, mysterious reality.

OG3 - Oscar Grant Tribute

Today former Oakland transit officer Johannes Mehserle was arrested on murder charges in the killing of Oscar Grant, an unarmed African American man who was shot dead on a train platform, on New Year's Eve, while he was lying face down on the ground. The shooting gained international attention after cell phone videos of the killing were posted on YouTube by train passengers.

Although the tragedy was a blatant violation of law and human rights, i do not think that this is indicative of EVERY SINGLE cop in Oakland. But lets hope that particular moronic fuktard cop will get what he deserves...

Lethargic Devils - U.S Soldiers on Parade

These are videos direct from Iraq - made by U.S soldiers on mission.

In the first video you will see and hear a U.S soldier talk about his frustration over being prevented from killing Iraqi children. Obviously the children throwing rocks are annoying the soldiers, and wrecking property, but WTF? kill children? He actually admits he would use deadly force on these children if his commanders would allow it. What a fucking coward. I understand rocks are heavy, and annoying, but they are being thrown by little children! More proof that U.S troops don't care about "liberating" Iraqis and are only 'doing their job' - which in this case is war-mongering.

Children Throwing Rocks:

This second video shows soldiers in Iraq beating children with batons. *NOTE the British soldier's nearly orgasmic enjoyment while watching children scream in horror. It's enough to make any ethical person physically sick. Shouldn't they be out 'liberating' Iraqis from the evils of... who knows what? This is what U.S tax dollars buy: beaten children, corporate plunder of Iraqi resources and an international community who is becoming increasingly militant about ending U.S domination.

LIBERATORS or COLONIZERS?

They create more "terrorists" every day they are there.

Whatever your thoughts are on the so-called reasons for invading other countries, the fact remains we need to evaluate the actions of those we send in to do the dirty work. Even the most ignorant patriot couldn't justify using deadly force on children. Or could they? Does nationalistic pathology have any boundaries?

The Audacity of Skepticism - Part 1

.Now that my Obama fever has broken it's time to unsuspend my disbelief. It's time to pack away my longings for an effectual politic of convention, and allow the harsh reality of mainstream managerial-state governance to creep back into my waking life.

What will an Obama presidency actually entail anyway?

Can a Harvard guy like Obama actually bring the kind of radical change required to slow down our collision course with the consequences of thousands of years on unconscious choices and civilizational hubris? I sincerely doubt it; and even our greatest projections of hope cannot erase the facts that now bear down upon us.

An Obama/Biden administration will undoubtedly be about administrating the same species of convention and growth-oriented destruction that has brought to the brink of our global environmental, social and economic calamity. The 'managers' will still manage, the elites will still pool their powers and resources against the numbed and distracted masses.

The policies may change - but the systems and values and illusions of our enduring conventional madness will still guide and over-determine how the grid of controls and institutions will be deployed in the Western world's obsession with engineering the future.

AND IF Obama (huge IF!) does decide to do the right thing and attempt to take on all the crazies and elite parasites who thrive on deprivation and differential power - aka, the children of greed and ignorance - then he will most likely be assassinated anyway. Conspirators got JFK, they took out Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and so many other good people - people in the limelight and many of those behind the scenes. And if Obama isn't careful they will get him too!

[please note: i do not advocate for such a terrible and sick thing to happen - and I wish the Obamas all the peace and happiness they can get]

So as I remain skeptical about how much Obama can actually accomplish in a system set up to exploit and passify whole populations - only time will tell if he is the man of conviction and courage so many of us hope he is. Will he keep his promises?

Thus, in the interest accountability, here are some of the key campaign promises Barack Obama made while seeking the presidency:

• Reduce the US's carbon emissions 80% by 2050 and play a strong positive role in negotiating a binding global treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol
• Withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months and keep no permanent bases in the country
• Establish a clear goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons across the globe
• Close the Guantanamo Bay detention center
• Double US aid to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015 and accelerate the fight against HIV/AIDS, tuberculoses and Malaria
• Open diplomatic talks with countries like Iran and Syria, to pursue peaceful resolution of tensions
• Launch a major diplomatic effort to stop the killings in Darfur
• Invest $150 billion over ten years to support renewable energy and get 1 million plug-in electric cars on the road by 2015

And here is what Barak proposes re: the U.S economy:

• Provide a tax cut for working families: restore fairness to the tax code and provide 95 percent of working Americans the tax relief they need. They will create a new "Making Work Pay" tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family.
• Provide tax relief for small businesses and startups: eliminate all capital gains taxes on startup and small businesses to encourage innovation and job creation.
• Fight for fair trade: trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. He promises to use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world.

On Labor:

• Strengthen the ability of workers to organize unions.
• Fight for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.
• Eensure that his labor appointees support workers' rights and will work to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers.
• Increase the minimum wage and index it to inflation to ensure it rises every year.
• Fight Attacks on Workers' Right to Organize
• Raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make sure that full-time workers earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs.
• Create Millions of New Green Jobs

On infrastructure:

• Create New Jobs Through National Infrastructure Investment: to rebuild its national transportation infrastructure – its highways, bridges, roads, ports, air, and train systems – to strengthen user safety, bolster our long-term competitiveness and ensure our economy continues to grow.
• Create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank: to expand and enhance, not supplant, existing federal transportation investments. This independent entity will be directed to invest in our nation’s most challenging transportation infrastructure needs. The Bank will receive an infusion of federal money, $60 billion over 10 years, to provide financing to transportation infrastructure projects across the nation. These projects will create up to two million new direct and indirect jobs and stimulate approximately $35 billion per year in new economic activity.

On the Environment and Energy:

• Ensure 10 percent of Our Electricity Comes from Renewable Sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025.
• Deploy the Cheapest, Cleanest, Fastest Energy Source – Energy Efficiency.
• Weatherize One Million Homes Annually.
• Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology. [WTF is that? no such thing exists just so you know...]
• Prioritize the Construction of the Alaska Natural Gas Pipeline: work with stakeholders to facilitate construction of the pipeline. Not only is this pipeline critical to our energy security, it will create thousands of new jobs.
• Make the U.S. a Leader on Climate Change.
• Reduce electricity demand 15 percent from projected levels by 2020.

Now putting the side the fact that many of these "projects" are stupendously misguided, and come from thinking that is outdated and pathologically ignorant about the scale of our current ecological crisis, it remains to be seen if Obama will follow through with what is on this list...

All of this information was taken from his website,
and you can see his full platform there:

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

I will check back in four years to see just how much effort and success Obama had with all these proposals. It's time for a politician to put into action the ideas he sells to the public... Here's, well... hoping.

-- This is part 1 of a 3 part series that examines the impact, potential and actions of an Obama presidency. --

universal communion

Our dharma flows
From using our traumas,
Deficiencies and challenges
To become more than
We were yesterday,
And ultimately
In doing so
For all sentient beings.

check out STUART DAVIS here: Homepage

The Intractable Conflict - Part 1

Here it is in no uncertain terms: a democratic polity must be allowed to defend itself against attack.

In 2005, amid much internal controversy, Israel withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip, dismantling its military bases, pulling out its soldiers and evicting Israeli settlers after 38 years of occupation. It was a huge gesture towards peace and possible reconciliation.

Israeli leaders were surrendering land it had captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, and it was doing so of its own volition. No-one, let alone the Palestinians, could have forced such a decision. The pullout signaled a willingness to allow the Palestinians to begin setting up their own nation-state.

Even hard-liners, like Ariel Sharon, began to rethink their occupation of key territories. Israelis were content to pull back to defensible borders and leave the Palestinians to fend for themselves.

The opportunity for the Palestinians couldn’t have been clearer. If their leaders could maintain a minimum of order in Gaza and prevent it from becoming a base for attacks on the Jewish state, Israel would gain the confidence to take the next step: withdrawal from the West Bank, home to the majority of Palestinians, and negotiate the creation of a true Palestinian state.

Israel took the first step towards peace by withdrawing troops and dismantling settlements, despite widespread opinion that, left to their own circumstances, the Palestinians would choose to support continued conflict. And how did Palestinians respond? In 2006, the Palestinian people elected the militant, guerrilla organization of Hamas as their elected representatives.

After the many years of Fatah negotiations, and the subsequent Israeli withdrawal of occupied territories, the Palestinians chose to be led by a militant Islamic organization whose desired goal is to expel Israelis from the middle-east.

Instead of continuing to move towards practical solutions, Palestinian leaders chose conflict. This was what Israeli traditionalists and fearful settlers had warned would happen: Handed over to the Palestinians, Gaza would become a breeding ground for militant attacks and organized guerrilla operations. And Hamas did exactly that. From the beginning of the withdrawal to today Hamas has continued its rocket attacks and bombing of Israeli civilians. Thus, opportunity lost.

If Palestinian leaders would have behaved with more wisdom and more pragmatism they could have had their state by now, in both the West Bank and Gaza. When Israel pulled out three years ago, international donors and Palestinian exiles were queuing up to finance new roads, ports and factories. There was talk of railway lines, a rebuilt international airport and a thriving agriculture industry. Instead, Palestinian chose to spend their energies on rearming and organizing for militant operations. Thus Gaza remains what it's been for years: a miserable ghetto, producing extremism and hopelessness.

Let me be quite frank here. i accept the fact that Israel was founded by a group of rogue Zionists who took control of occupied lands by military force. That is obvious. And I have great empathy for Palestinians, and fully condemn the injustices caused Israeli actions and manipulations. The situation was, and is one of ethically indefensible imperial domination by a largely ‘western’ cultural group - a general social formation that i am very critical of and believe to be pathological in its effects.

But (and this is a very tentative ‘but’) Israel does exist, it is a fully functional and democratic nation-state, it has the military power to ensure its continuance, its people live within a well-established sociocultural milieu, and it has been recognized by the international community as such. In other words, Israel is here to stay. This is a raw fact. (no matter how much you and i want it to be otherwise)

So, then, now what? How do we proceed from these facts? For starters, from a strictly pragmatic position, the problem becomes less about how or why Israel came to be, and more about finding a way of creating a peaceful co-existence between two relatively different peoples.

Israeli leaders need to be more compassionate in their land use and tactics towards the Palestinians, and Palestinians need to accept the presence and existence of the Israeli state. And both need to compromise in the best interests of their respective peoples. The details, or course, are complicated indeed and need to be dealt with at the level of specifics, with great care and openness.

Much as Israelis (still) want the conflict to be over, they have lost whatever small confidence they had that the Palestinians might be tolerable neighbors. The idea of pulling out of the West Bank, only to see it become another, bigger base for militancy, now seems almost unthinkable. Mr. Netanyahu, head of the Likud party, could return to office in next month's election on a tough program of zero tolerance for Palestinian hostility.

It can be argued that Israel began its current operation against militants in Gaza out of despair at Palestinian failure to develop internally. It knew full well that such an assault would cause angry protests in the Arab world, condemnation from the United Nations security council and civilian casualties that would make it look brutish in the eyes of the world. But what choice do they have? Does a democratic polity have any other choice than to defend itself from attacks???

What's worse, Israeli leaders know, and i fully believe, that it carries out these operations at the expense of perhaps never truly achieving its main goal of stopping rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. Israelis know that the current bloodshed will only increase Palestinian hatred and opposition. But what choice do they have? Letting their own civilians be attacked by rockets is no choice at all.

Ask yourself: would you let your neighbor throw rocks through your windows day after day without any reaction to prevent him from doing otherwise? I think not. If there were no governing body (e.g., the police) to prevent my neighbor from doing this i would walk next door and force my neighbor to stop. i would not allow it to continue to happen. What would you do? Would you keep negotiating with your neighbor by phone in the hopes that someday he would stop his rock-throwing ways?

The transformation of Gaza into a militant launching pad by Hamas left Israel no choice but to react firmly, or risk losing power to deter further, more devastating attacks against the Israeli homeland.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza in desperate, and after the fighting subsides there should be an international effort to help the people in Gaza. I truly feel for the families and civilians who are being harmed every day. And state war is an atrocity in general. But a war is obviously what Hamas wanted, and now they have it – only now they hide among civilian populations using their own people as shields.

Whatever comes of this latest fighting, the Palestinians will have to decide what their own future will be. The only way for Palestinians to get their state will be to choose a new leadership strategy and build it themselves.

Sign a global petition to demand international collaboration for the peaceful resolution of the Gaza crisis here: AVAAZ.ORG

-- this is part one of an ongoing series dedicated to understanding the crisis in the middle east --

In Search of Human Natures

The fun part about being an anthropologist is that i get to pretend to know things about the nature of humanity. But the humbling part of being what i am is the knowledge that, despite whatever we as a species ‘really’are, we always manifest as individuals - sentient beings endowed with an inherent curiosity and idiosyncrasy which cannot be formalized – and which will continue to confound and invalidate any supposedly definitive narratives or labels we might create.

And that’s just how it is.

Cognitive Evolution and the Definition of Human Nature

By Merlin Donald, PhD.

Our society's collective definition of human nature provides a conceptual foundation for our ideas of human rights, individual responsibility, and personal freedom. Western society has traditionally derived its ideas in this regard from the liberal Humanities, which are the secular modern descendants of our earlier religious and philosophical traditions. They are the conceptual foundation of most of our laws and constitutional protections.

However, since Darwin, there have been many attempts to develop a scientific approach to defining human nature, and to deriving a new natural law based largely on the theory of evolution.

Read More (PDF): Here

Materialism, Experience and Philosophy

The following video presents philosopher Manuel DeLanda as he speaks about materialism and experience, Gilles Deleuze, materialist philosophy, Marx, a philosophy of nature, Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. This lecture was delivered as a public lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School, in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, in 2008.

DeLanda’s work focuses on the theories of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze on one hand, and modern science, self-organizing matter, artificial life and intelligence, economics, architecture, chaos theory, history of science, nonlinear science, cellular automata on the other. De Landa became a principal figure in the "new materialism" based on his application of Deleuze's realist ontology. His universal research into "morphogenesis" - the production of the semi-stable structures out of material flows that are constitutive of the natural and social world - has been of interest to theorists across many academic and professional disciplines.

Watch More: Here

DeLanda was born in 1952 in Mexico City, and is a distinguished philosopher who has lived in New York since 1975. He is the author of War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991), A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997), Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (2002) and A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (2006).

Alongside his intellectual work, DeLanda made several short Super 8 and 16mm films in the 1970s and early 1980s, all of which are now out of circulation. Cited by filmmaker Nick Zedd in his Cinema of Transgression Manifesto, DeLanda associated with many of the experimental and art filmmakers of this New York based movement. Much of DeLanda's film work is inspired by his interest in philosophy and critical theory; one of his best known films, Raw Nerves, has been described as a 'Lacanian thriller' by at least one critic.

Guns, Germs & Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997) is the Pulitzer prize winning book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at UCLA.

Below is Part One of the documentary based on the book, broadcast on PBS in July 2005, and produced by the National Geographic Society.

Also Watch: Part 2 / Part 3

In the book, Diamond attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations have come to offer the most dominant cultural forms on the planet. Diamond also refutes the suggestion that Eurasian hegemony is due to some kind of intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority.

Instead, Diamond exlains how gaps in power and technology between all human societies originate from environmental differences - amplified by various positive feedback loops; and that, if cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example Chinese improved disease resistance among Eurasians), it is only so because of the influence of geography.

Diamond points out that most civilizational achievements (scientific, artistic, architectural, political, etc.) have occurred on the Eurasian continent, while the peoples of other continents (Sub-Saharan Africans, Native Americans, and Aboriginal Australians/New Guineans) have been largely conquered, displaced, and in some extreme cases - referring to Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, and South Africa's indigenous Khoisan peoples - were exterminated by Eurasian military and political advantages stemming from the early rise of agriculture after the last Ice Age.

The book's title is a reference to the means by which European nations conquered populations of other areas and maintained their dominance, often despite being vastly out-numbered: superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns), European diseases weakened the local populations and thus made it easier to maintain control over them (germs), and centralized governmental systems promoted nationalism and powerful military organizations (steel).

Some critics of the book argue that it is derivative of the work of such cultural evolutionists as Leslie White, Julian Steward, and Ester Boserup, who analyzed the relationship between agriculture and economic and political growth; and such historians as William McNeill and Alfred Crosby, who analyzed the relationship between agriculture, European expansion, and disease.

Psyche, Flesh & The Ambient Order

“What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space?” (Nietzsche, 'The Parable of the Madman').

-prelude-

1. Soothsayer's Bravado
2. The Tangible and the Intangible

3. Carnivals in the Machine

4. Sentient Insurrections
-coda- 

rabbit

warning | abberant discourse

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved… the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...”

- Jack Kerouac, On the Road

 BIO:

*** 

This blog has been a lot of things for me. It has always been an extension of my personality and interests, but more concretely it is a tool for inquiry and expression. here i have explored a wide range of issues: from politics, critical theory, human evolution, fringe cultures, and ecological science, to depth psychology, architecture, art and popular culture – with all sorts of confessions, carnival events and mutant encounters in between.

recently my more "intellectual" interests having migrated over to a new group site/blog/project called Synthetic_Zero, where you will find me collaborating on the possibilities inherent in post-nihilist praxis. even so, Archive Fire will continue to function as a space for collecting, exploration, rough drafting, and personal reflection rather than as an outlet or platform for my research and para-academic ventures. i believe the divergence in focus between the two sites affords more opportunity for expression, collaboration and experimentation.

as for who i am, well, i'm no one special. i don't hold a nifty job in a discourse factory, and don't get paid to pontificate the wonders of the cosmos and write books about it. i am an anthropologist by disposition and training, but earn money working for people who wear expensive suits and get to make big decisions about other people's access to health resources and education. the pay is good and i get to contribute to projects focused squarely on cultivating healthy communities and human flourishing - so not a bad gig overall. when i'm not making money to feed the capitalist machine you'll find me involved in some sort of political agitation or existential experiment.

You can also contact me and/or check out what I'm up to on the twitter: @BrightAbyss

comments & questions are always welcome