Nice indeed. I think there is a historical narrative to it. It's all about ordering the world (what we perceive as the world) and what we loose by ordering it. The medieval pieces help to provide temporal order, fixing the past and even predicting the future, thereby annihalating the present and all the dangers and uncertainties it brings. Absolutely necessary for survival in medieval times. The arrival tells you that you are missing something when ordering everything. The multiple presents, the uncertain past, and daunting, but exciting future, once you arrived. But might well lead you into madness... and that indeed came shortly after 1913.
Yes! That's a really good point - also, of course, the medieval serf lived within an ordained and holy order: God, the Pope, the Emperor, the Prince, the Bishop, the Count, the Vicar, all the way down. Whereas the post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment individual watching a boat come in is in charge of their own reality and has to maintain it. Potentially maddening, as you say, which is no doubt why a sizeable chunk of people want a God-Emperor back to tell them what to do.
Yes, so true that. And yet so strange. "The arrival" gives us a glimpse of reality beyond the mere linear and simplistic ordering ordained by all the God-emperors, complexity being their main enemy (cf current populists with simple solutions). How can one refuse such a fascinating glimpse? And instead opt for the boring "safety" of the simplistic rules of fools.
I love this sort of thing—it has a "spreadsheets of the past" kind of vibe to it that pleases both my left and right brains.
This also reminds me that I have a small collection of optical toys (including stereoscopes, thaumatropes, and a zoetrope) that I don't get out often enough.
Well, that's an enviable collection - you absolutely should get them out. And I'm obsessed with 'spreadsheets of the past' too - or more, visualisations of the past. After all written language starts with data visualisation: Mesopotamian civilisations trying to keep track of their economies and drawing little pictures of wheat and ox to track the data that become cuneiform. There are cave paintings that are almost certainly a diagram of the changing phases of the moon: human beings tracking their world and so understanding it and starting to manipulate it... and now I'm rambling
Nice indeed. I think there is a historical narrative to it. It's all about ordering the world (what we perceive as the world) and what we loose by ordering it. The medieval pieces help to provide temporal order, fixing the past and even predicting the future, thereby annihalating the present and all the dangers and uncertainties it brings. Absolutely necessary for survival in medieval times. The arrival tells you that you are missing something when ordering everything. The multiple presents, the uncertain past, and daunting, but exciting future, once you arrived. But might well lead you into madness... and that indeed came shortly after 1913.
Yes! That's a really good point - also, of course, the medieval serf lived within an ordained and holy order: God, the Pope, the Emperor, the Prince, the Bishop, the Count, the Vicar, all the way down. Whereas the post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment individual watching a boat come in is in charge of their own reality and has to maintain it. Potentially maddening, as you say, which is no doubt why a sizeable chunk of people want a God-Emperor back to tell them what to do.
Yes, so true that. And yet so strange. "The arrival" gives us a glimpse of reality beyond the mere linear and simplistic ordering ordained by all the God-emperors, complexity being their main enemy (cf current populists with simple solutions). How can one refuse such a fascinating glimpse? And instead opt for the boring "safety" of the simplistic rules of fools.
I love this sort of thing—it has a "spreadsheets of the past" kind of vibe to it that pleases both my left and right brains.
This also reminds me that I have a small collection of optical toys (including stereoscopes, thaumatropes, and a zoetrope) that I don't get out often enough.
Well, that's an enviable collection - you absolutely should get them out. And I'm obsessed with 'spreadsheets of the past' too - or more, visualisations of the past. After all written language starts with data visualisation: Mesopotamian civilisations trying to keep track of their economies and drawing little pictures of wheat and ox to track the data that become cuneiform. There are cave paintings that are almost certainly a diagram of the changing phases of the moon: human beings tracking their world and so understanding it and starting to manipulate it... and now I'm rambling