The earth was something like a billion years old, stardust from the big bang blending together in of the right elements that give us life. Mohammed was long gone, the Buddha too, and Jesus at least 2000 years, conquests and empires, people fanning over the earth as the continents shifted from Pangea into hemispheres – east west north south. Millions of Indigenous people and later colonizers and then immigrants and then homesteaders and then illegals and then undocumented. No one more or less human than the next. Cruising the trade winds and avoiding the horse latitudes, scaling the walls and clawing their way, only to cross an artificial line on an artificial map drawn up by the victors, the authors of our supposedly shared history.

Revolutions – of science, enlightenment, art, religion and piety, industry, energy, technology, an invisible hand of economics. All roads leading to capitalism.

A thirst, a drive, a quest. Wanting more more more.

What, though, is happening in the here and now. The great unraveling. What if the more more more is not possible. The earth, squeezed, scraped, and slammed until she could give no more.

There’s an image of a snake that eats its own tail – the ouroboros.

Is that what we see today? Is capitalism finally, in a gorging, choking whimper, eating its own tail?