Mickey Mouse vs. the Persian Lion. This is the best graphic I’ve yet encountered, lampooning the US presumption to scold Iran.
Brilliant! Iran as an ancient engraving affronted by a corny shadow.
How fortuitous the two figures are Aesop’s mouse and lion. Americans see themselves hoping to help Iran rid itself of thorny Ahmadinejad, but whose thorn is he?
I’m reading about the Sumarians (5,300 – 2,000 B.C.) FROM THE TABLETS OF SUMER: 39 Firsts in Man’s Recorded History. The Sumarians originated civilization as we know it, and their demise may look a lot like ours too. In case you missed the memo, Sumer was earliest Mesopotamia in southern Iraq.
Until the mid 19th Century, we didn’t know Sumerians from Adam. Their history is traced by now deciphered cuneiform writings on clay vessels. Now thanks to Bush’s Folly, we may learn very little more.
Until I have more to relate, I’ll treat you to the table of contents, where Princeton Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer lays out his thesis. You might be surprised at which cultural themes are apparently elemental.
From the Tablets of Sumer was published in 1956. The latest edition, History Begins at Sumer can be read online. Kramer also compiled an 18-volume Sumerian dictionary.
Thirty-Nine Firsts in Man’s Recorded History
1. EDUCATION: The First School
2. SCHOOLDAYS: The First Case of “Apple-Polishing”
3. FATHER AND SON: The First Case of Juvenile Delinquency
4. INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: The First “War of Nerves”
5. GOVERNMENT: The First Bicameral Congress
6. CIVIL WAR IN SUMER: The First Historian
7. SOCIAL REFORM: The First Case of Tax Reduction
8. LAW CODES: The First “Moses”
9. JUSTICE: The First Legal Precedent
10. MEDICINE: The First Pharmacopoeia
11. AGRICULTURE: The First “Farmer’s Almanac”
12. HORTICULTURE: The First Experiment in Shade-Tree Gardening
13. PHILOSOPHY: Man’s First Cosmogony and Cosmology
14. ETHICS: The First Moral Ideals
15. SUFFERING AND SUBMISSION: The First “Job”
16. WISDOM: The First Proverbs and Sayings
17. “AESOPICA”: The First Animal Fables
18. LOGOMACHY: The First Literary Debates
19. PARADISE: The First Biblical Parallels
20. A FLOOD: The First “Noah”
21. HADES: The First Tale of Resurrection
22. SLAYING OF THE DRAGON: The First “St. George”
23. TALES OF GILGAMESH: The First Case of Literary Borrowing
24. EPIC LITERATURE: Man’s First Heroic Age
25. TO THE ROYAL BRIDEGROOM: The First Love Song
26. BOOK LISTS: The First Library Catalogue
27. WORLD PEACE AND HARMONY: Man’s First Golden Age
28. ANCIENT COUNTERPARTS OF MODERN WOES:
The First “Sick” Society
29. DESTRUCTION AND DELIVERANCE: The First Liturgic Laments
30. THE IDEAL KING: The First Messiahs
31. SHULGI OF UR: The First Long-Distance Champion
32. POETRY: The First Literary Imagery
33. THE SACRED MARRIAGE RITE: The First Sex Symbolism
34. WEEPING GODDESSES: The First Mater Dolorosa
35. AU-A A-U-A: The First Lullaby
36. THE IDEAL MOTHER: Her First Literary Portrait
37. THREE FUNERAL CHANTS: The First Elegies
38. THE PICKAXE AND THE PLOW: Labor’s First Victory
39. HOME OF THE FISH: The First Aquarium
There’s an interesting trait of human nature I see playing out on the ever opening expanses of the Internet. It’s evident in dramatic relief too in Second Life. I suppose it’s the combination of man’s entrepreneurial spirit and the Protestant industrial ethic that promotes work as fun.
While the Internet and virtual worlds offer play of unlimited horizon, I find I am less likely to encounter a playful cricket than I am Aesop’s ant. And here’s where I see this dynamic playing out.
In Second Life we’re all building. Building, building. Mortgaging to buy more land, to terraform, to implement designs, the quicker to await the vast unwashed. Everybody’s doing it, but that’s the game, to build. Buy and build, actually.
On the web everyone’s building blogs, pages, platforms, venues, waiting for the bon-vivants and their big-spending ways. Build it and they shall come seems to be the prevailing assumption.
Build it and they shall come only applied to the ghost of Shoeless Joe. In Second Life and on the Internet, we all want to be builders.
There’s something too I think of the Gold Rush spirit, this time wise to the adage that the real fortunes were made not panning for gold, but in selling the picks and shovels. So we lay siege online, squirreling away what we can, situating ourselves to better sell the tools as the public rushes in. But the incoming masses need not follow a trail west, nor flee lands of less opportunity. The virtual world expands for all. We can all homestead, we need neither rail nor city centers. Room for all. How do you make a buck, where’s there’s no need for a middle man?
In Second Life what I see are new worlds unfolding, neighborhoods, theme parks, entire high concept environments, growing in all directions except more populous. I’ve even seen tract housing, like urban sprawl, except there’s no burgeoning migration. The Second Life universe is a boom town on its outer reaches, without the resources which will eventually be needed to support it. In this case, even just others to show interest.
Here’s a survey for the Blog Reader Project survey. If you want to invest the interest.