Athens, in the middle of the sixth century before our era, was not yet the museum city of marble postcards. It was a place of dust, olives, arguments, and men who could recite laws in the morning and break them politely in the afternoon. The Athenians had recently received a precious gift: rules that were meant to be stronger than families. Solon, the lawgiver, had tried to take a city … Read the rest
Let me confess a small heresy: I do not think humans are special in the way humans think they are special. We are special in the way a child believes their drawing of a house—with the square body, the triangle roof, and the smoke like string beans—is special: charming, energetic, a little messy, and convinced that everyone else must put this masterpiece on the fridge. When the child becomes an … Read the rest
I have a simple, possibly impolite thesis: the “nation” is a beautiful story we tell to coordinate strangers, and loud nationalism is what people reach for when the story stops paying their bills. Nations are not ancient tribes waking from deep time; they are recent inventions—clever ones—that industrial print, schools, and armies stitched together so we would feel kinship with people we will never meet. That is not an insult; … Read the rest
It’s amusing, really, how people insist their religion is eternal while living on a planet that can’t even keep a hairstyle for more than a decade. Civilizations come and go, continents drift, and yet we imagine our particular faith—born on one patch of soil in one historical moment—to be the final revelation. But if the gods of Egypt could overhear us from their long sleep, they’d probably chuckle. They had … Read the rest
Why “Traditional Values” Never Existed
Let’s face it: every time someone says we must “return to traditional values,” I look around in confusion, wondering which exact century they are referring to. Is it the one with the public latrines and communal sponges, or the one with corsets so tight that women fainted during polite conversation? People love to imagine some golden age of virtue, but history—being its usual uncooperative self—refuses … Read the rest
