Beginnings...

The Greeks had a word for it: eudaimonia — the good life. Not good in the sense of indulgent, luxurious, happy or pleasurable but rather, in conjunction with arete, in the senses of desirably virtuous, of fulfilment and satisfaction. They were not alone. On every continent the rightness of living has been an abiding issue for all humanity throughout recorded history. Many, with varying degrees of success and acceptance, have spoken or written about how life should be lived. Many more still wonder.

Now, as powers once the sole preserve of mighty nation states are wielded by progressively smaller and smaller entities, as each and every human being perceives how he or she affects the world at large, the question becomes yet more pressing. And so it is asked again: How should we live?

This book does not contain the answer — the question has no ultimate end — but it does offer an answer as the basis for a new beginning. The book is itself a journey — of beginnings and endings and beginning again. Read it and travel — along the way you may remember your own dreams and discover more.

Read it and you will never be the same again. Let it pass unread and still you will be changed. How will you change? The choice is yours.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Quipu

In the Betelgeuse star-myth an aged storyteller reads from a quipu. Quipu were Inca record keeping devices consisting of knotted, coloured strings; they were known to be used for recording numerical information but, since they were also used in communicating histories, may also have contained text. Unfortunately, we no longer know how to read them, and the few quipu that survived deliberate suppression and destruction by the Spanish remain largely undeciphered — though scholars such as Gary Urton have made some progress in recent years. (Click Read more for a larger image)



A Quipu [August, 2007 Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, taken during the Incas exhibition]
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