velcro city tourist board
a blog by Paul Graham Raven
science fiction / social theory / climate futures / infrastructure / utopian narratology / sometimes cats
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Self-fulfilling mythology
It is not chaos, but our fear and visceral disgust toward the idea of chaos undermining civilization—often stemming from a lack of familiarity with what we fear—that drives us to build prisons, wage wars, and develop weapons that are the embodiment of all-consuming fire. Because we do not conceptualize the earth and its natural cycles…
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Beyond the Narrative Arc
Patterns other than the wave, though, are everywhere. Here are the ones Stevens calls “nature’s darlings.” Spiral: think of a fiddlehead fern, whirlpool, hurricane, horns twisting from a ram’s head, or a chambered nautilus. Meander: picture a river curving and kinking, a snake in motion, a snail’s silver trail, or the path left by a…
Who is Paul Graham Raven?
“… who, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with [his] voice, thanks to the god in [him].”