IN THE SHADOWS OF HIGH CULTURE
In dawn shadows of High Culture, along-side urban pigeons, a self-styled “home-free” person takes rest. He too is minimal equipped for such survival.
A majestic façade imposes the authority of ‘Civilisation’.
First such portal was ancient made. Designed as guarding the female force; putative inside a primal ‘Men’s House’ — securing the Neolithic-age transformation. http://www.dmd27.org/mcclellan.html
That single-generation change —then an economic, technological, and societal revolution — was Archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon 1950’s revelation, at archaic level Jericho. https://stories.durham.ac.uk/jericho/
An iconic premise was of ‘Civilisation’ promising an organised security and productive prosperity — made by all for all, in collective interests and demands.
10,000 years later, ‘Civilisation’ still same way presents that Social Contract; yet does not organise to so fulfil it.
1933 this was London’s then new ‘Geological Museum’ [now ‘Natural History Museum’]. As a repository of evidenced evolutionary creative-advance, an accommodating location. It was hosting History’s most portentous meeting.
Following from the 1929 Wall Street Crash, Statesmen from sixty-six nation’s came together here, in search for solutions to an unprecedented crisis: “How to re-energise the dire-depleted World economy”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Economic_Conference
Outside, crowds anxiously gathered — desperate for enlightened change.
The situation was dire, yet those statesmen and economists went away with matters unresolved. H.G. Wells foresaw in that “the Shape of Things to Come”.
Soon World War II would re-frame the issue; its bomb-scars visible on those portal supports.
So, consequences of ongoing economic crisis return to a yet silenced abode. ‘The House’ now made unaffordable for so many. Again, in a transfomative age, the question still — “How to release such primal force, too-long captive within”?
John McClellan — LONDON — 24/03/23