History
Rome, the US, and Perú
I like reading about “politics” and Joe Costello, in his most recent piece, made some interesting connections between the three different imperia in the subtitle of this post. The reason I’m sharing it here is because of his last paragraph, copied below.
“A short note — I’m headed down to Peru for awhile. I have half an idea of writing something on the five thousand years of stone civilizations that sprouted along the 2,000 mile Peruvian coast. How could that not be a best seller! Roughly, these civilizations are global contemporaries of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, China, the Indus, and Mexico. Climbing across such ruins always gives me a certain aesthetic sense, an inkling of a greater grasp of time. A fleeting sense of time greater than the shortness of one human life. It also provides a truly enlightened understanding that whatever is happening in our present civilization, none of it had to be — a freedom of thought most recoil from.”