Welcome to Trogholm, a planet all its own, a little bit homey, a little bit alien. Anything that catches my interest might appear here, but most of it will have to do with history and with the ways in which our shared social reality changes through time.
Something Vaguely Like a Blog I've never really wanted a blog. There's something far too totalitarian about them. They not only demand that you do certain things, they also tell you how to do them -- and I have problems with that. On the other hand, there are things I want to say that don't fit well into the formality of a traditional webpage, either. So I'm going to try an experiment ... something that looks a little bit like a blog, and quacks a little bit like a blog, but isn't a blog. Anything new on the site that seems able to stand on its own will appear here first, with links to other sections as needed.
The Cycles: Recurrent Patterns in Cultural Evolution For many years, I have been working on a theory of history as a pattern of cyclical recurrences, in which the same cultural phases repeat over and over. This theory is not an elegant one. It is vast and sprawling and simultaneously explains too much and too little. But since family and friends assure me that they have found it useful even in its present state, I can only hope that others will find it intriguing and enlightening as well.
Worlds of Wonder The more I learn about the past, the more convinced I become that our own world and its history are as strange and magical as anything to be found in fantasy or science fiction. It is only the stubborn insistence of us moderns on being rational and skeptical that blinds us to the marvels around us. Here are explorations of a variety of historical topics which offer an opportunity to peel back the facade of hip skepticism and reveal the wonders that lies beneath.
The Convolutions of Philosophy (forthcoming) Philosophers ask a lot of questions, but there are two that keep coming up over and over: "What is real?" and "How do we know what we know?" As a fan of science fiction, fantasy, and mythology, however, I find myself most often addressing a third question that seems to operate at right angles to the Big Two: "What is the value of "knowing" things that clearly aren't so?" For example, what does it mean to say we "know" the history of Middle-Earth or the geography of Oz? Is knowledge of imaginary things different in kind from knowledge of real things? And if it is, what is its special value?
The Secret History of the Twentieth Century When viewed from the proper angle, even very recent history can appear just as full of dark corners and unplumbed mysteries as the remote past. Some of these mysteries may reflect the difficulty we have in acknowledging how downright alien our own parents and grandparents once were in their ways of thinking and acting. Others can arise because it is hard to take the true measure of events that we were involved in personally. And there are also matters that certain individuals may deliberately aim to keep hidden. But we are living in the Twenty-first Century now, and it is more than time for the secrets of the Twentieth Century to be revealed.
The Geek History of the Universe Long before there was civilization, there were already geeks, laying the groundwork for the world we know today. Paleolithic proto-geeks began making tools and using fire. Neolithic geeks domesticated plants and animals, invented pottery and metallurgy, and learned how to set a course by the stars. Geeks designed the pyramids and the great cathedrals. Their engineering made possible the Roman Empire and the repeated discoveries of America. Geeks have revolutionized the world over and over again, and the Internet is only the latest of their many gifts to the human enterprise.
Genealogy As we make our way into the Information Age, the flood of raw data is already threatening to drown us. The only way we can hope to deal with it is by transforming our entire culture into a distributed network, with everyone processing whatever falls into their areas of interest and freely exchanging the results with others.
The practice of genealogy online is an excellent example of just this sort of collective endeavor, much of it carried on by people who are not particularly net-savvy but are passionate in discovering more about their own personal history.
Here is my particular genealogical pea patch: ancestors and cousins from many colonial New England families, as well as several lines in New York and Pennsylvania.
The Abyss of Wonder The website of my husband, Alexei Panshin. Reflections on story, personal narratives, songs and artwork.
View from the Gutter Comic book reviews by my son, Toby Panshin. Only the good stuff.
Please send any comments to Cory Panshin
Photograph by Thomas Edge
Background courtesy of FreeLance
