This blog is a collection of writings inspired by my interest in the how we humans live together. As I studied literature of the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic Age, etc., I became fascinated by the importance of understanding the world views of peoples from each era and what their default thoughts and mindsets were when making cultural choices.  This interest led me to writings on philosophy, politics, religion, art, and science, where issues of gender, family, wealth, power, violence, class, property, etc., were challenged as one age gave way to the next. However, in spite of differences in custom and culture with each age, the same underlying human angst seemed to be at work fueling new changes. Human passions have inevitably clashed as communities sought to balance freedom and security while minimizing injustice and inequality.

As a metaphor for exploring these cultural tensions, I envision a chain of islands, like the Hawaiian Islands, created over time by the molten magma ejected through a hotspot in the surface of the ever moving Earth’s crust. Why this metaphor? I liked the idea that discrete islands (cf epochs?) were created from the same hot Earthly magma (cf men’s passions?). The intermittent explosions of heated magma seem to nicely express the idea of intermittent explosions of culture, as new philosophies, religious interpretations, governments, etc. clash with the old.

Because the epochs are artificial constructs, which don’t start and end at precise dates/times, they seem even more perfectly supported by my Hawaiin metaphor where discrete islands only appear discrete above the ocean’s surface, while actually dropping off gradually to merge/connect with other seamounts subsurface, as magma flow ebbed between eruptions (see image above). My blogs on different epochal cultural contributions also inevitably blend at some level, so that the natural organizations of my blog topics will be messier than my choice of organization will makes it seem.

My favorite lens for examining these cultural shifts over time has been the medium of utopian/dystopian literature and other experimental writings. They seem to be, by their nature, focused on the most sensitive and worrisome tensions of each age, which they address in highly imaginative ways. However, to fully appreciate these fictions, a solid grasp of the academic writings of each age is also important—philosophy, government, history, etc. Therefore, my blog will include both (1) research into these academic areas as background, as well as (2) speculative, creative works.

See my Site Map for an evergreen outline of blog content, where items in blue indicate content that I have posted and consider ready for sharing and items in black are targeted for future content. This helps me—and hopefully you—-to see the overarching pattern of my plan. Another reason the Hawaiian Island metaphor works for me is that the current growing subsurface seamount being formed by the hot spot is called Loihi, and this emerging—but still subsurface mount—gives me some metaphorical purchase on which to hang some of the most futuristic speculative work of today.