hot on the heels of the rat-race post, today morning's unplanned reading of derek sivers' book notes brings explosive flashes of epiphany(s)

* about Dubai   - not the oil-rich scions' decadent dance with wealth and opulence - there's more. lot of business savvy,  political manipulation, pirate attitude (ftw)  

aligns with the strong-leader hypothesis of Samo Burja

* Israel  while not a happy rags to riches story , exposes in stark relief  the dark side of religion and large groups of people. Ties in neatly with the next book

* religion - how religion evolves and furthers civilization. YN Harari said this ,  that modern cutting edge anything is because of religion, but I slowly stopped believing him over time, cos .... well I thought he was an apologist for the this-is-the-best-of-worlds theory, and that plays into the hands of the incumbents

however, my view of the incumbents as inhabiting a place of low-energy, forcing things to fall to them, like a strange attractor - is being challenged, contnuously

talking of 'civilization', there isn't one, but many groups which come and go, flourishing on one dimension, rotting on another, until their usefulness dries up and that which they didn't allow becomes the 'new solution' packaged in new semantique.

the british came and went and changed borders, rearranged wealth massively, armed groups disproportionately ... so did the spanish the portuguese, the americans the dutch the belgians, and before them the turks the umayyads the persians etc etc

each patch of land and its people, catch these socio-politico-cultural winds , and some of them build a sail and or surf their way out on the future, some remain in the doldrums

other source 

 * seaflooding  this old link on seaflooding that I have been keeping open on my tabs, also shows how much progress and modernization is being made in that area