A few excerpts from “Wooden Ships” by Malcolm Mc Neill that struck my indefatiguable staff of thousands, courtesy of IT: International Times, the Newspaper of Resistance:
Peter Martyr d’Anghiera
“The disclosure has begun of what was hidden from the first creation of the world,” wrote Peter Martyr when Columbus got back from his voyages. The creation of the modern world that is — the “civilized” world that would become his Renaissance Europe. There would indeed be disclosure, but there would also be obfuscation and concealment, a whole new order of hidden.
+ + + We are adrift on an ocean seemingly without rudder or direction. There is no land, no solid ground on which to embark, only unpredictable, contradictory expanse. This is the nakedness we now have to contend with: there are no maps, no indication of outcome or whether or not there even is one. Our innate curiosity has lured us into this world and there is no turning back. In that, there will be tragedy and suffering as there has always been and its ubiquity and relentlessness is becoming more and more apparent the further we go. For the first time we are all coming to know that. [ . . . ]
Image by Malcolm Mc Neill
The Internet is an ideological battleground, a desperate war between those who would allow truth to speak for itself and those who would have it speak only in their interests. A war between those who insist information must be interpreted and those who would interpret it themselves. It took a mere twenty-five years for words to escalate into force after Columbus’s voyage; it is approximately that long since the first voyages into the Internet began. [ . . . ]
The voyage into truth is a trick, an illusion; like an Escheresque staircase, up and down, forward and back that goes nowhere. It is an expression of the far larger endeavor for which no charts, no manual, no directions have ever been given, for which no guide to truth exists at all. It is an insidious trick because we are nevertheless compelled to look for it even at the expense of one another. If such a thing were to be found, it would still be insidious; it would do nothing to compensate the suffering of millions upon millions throughout history who had strived to make its discovery possible, yet received none of its benefit. No matter what its effect, the end does not justify the meanness. [ . . . ]
Read the entire essay.
