Ever since I really got into the deep dives in historical material, the writing got tougher. A lot tougher. Which in the scheme of things is a good thing. But trained in philosophy, the idea is to gaze into disparate phenomena and penetrate deeply into them, abstracting from them their common elements so as to make them more manageable in the analysis. The pristine, crystalline structures that arise from such analyses are nice to look at, but then apply those to a long historical stretch and see what happens: they get bent and twisted every which way, and soon enough a principle you thought you had down in the 20th century is inverted in the 10th, and then inverted yet again shifting the lens of analysis to a different geographic location in the same time period, and then repeat those inversions throughout the rest of history across the various regions, and then add to that relative analyses of the evolution of language and the effects of propaganda and intentions of power and the changing history of thought itself. Oof, I sit down with a little idea jotted down in a note and hours later here I am, still bewildered. But hey, good stuff.
