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YOU ARE HERE: HOME / TEXT&CONTEXT / ESSAYS / TEEN AGE LUST AND FAR-FROM-EQUILIBRIUM DYNAMICS

Teen Age Lust and Far-from-Equilibrium Dynamics

July 31, 2017 I by Guy =immerman I Filed Under: Essays, Text&Context 13 Comments The History of =imelessness —

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The first time = heard about Jeffrey =pstein it had to do with reading glasses. There was this rich =uy, I heard, who had built a huge house not far from Santa Fe, I was =old, and the staff had been instructed to stock each of the thirty plus =ooms with two pairs of reading glasses, one for Epstein and one for his =omestic partner. Epstein chose the location for its proximity =o Santa Fe =nstitute (SFI), the influential think tank that had been =ounded in the 1980s by the physicist Murray =ell-Mann, a Nobel laureate. Epstein, you see, has a mad love for =utting-edge science, and, in fact, considers himself in many ways a =ontributor to the field. I heard about the house with the reading =lasses years before Epstein got himself jailed in Florida for having =ex with underage girls (this happened in 2005), and over a decade =efore his name would pop up in court documents also naming our current =resident for this same offence. But then I realized I probably =xperienced a much more direct and intimate connection with Epstein =yself when I was a teenager. Well, I can't swear to it, but as =he wretchedness of the current regime engulfs the entire nation the =ossibility haunts me more and more.

I love this notion that concepts are born, =ive for a while, and then pass away, like everything else, into the =ong night of what has past. The concept of timeless truths itself, for =xample—by which I mean the idea that truths exist in an =ternal, immaterial or ideal realm above the world and are immune to =hange—arguably arrived some 5000 years ago, spread quickly like = virus of thought. Due to its outsized dynamism, this idea began to =teadily transform a collection of locally situated agrarian cultures =nto the hyper-dynamic global monoculture of today...and to =roduce, as a by-product, the collapse of living systems worldwide, =long with a round of species extinction unlike anything the planet has =ver seen. Today this problematic idea of timeless truths may well be =eading for the ditch, dragging in tow, one can only hope, all the =onsters it gave birth too.