Mapping the Bubble

Introducing the Glexicon

Any science worth its name starts with classification. If we can’t name the key features of the terrain you’re mapping then you’re bound to get irretrievably lost.

The first step in understanding the Globe is to name its parts. I am going to spend a few weeks months carving a dictionary of concepts designed to help us grasp the Globe: the global lexicon or glexicon for short.

Fair warning: the global lexicon could end up closer to the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge than Diderot’s Encyclopedia.

The glexicon will have respectable entries like: machine, but also disreputable ones like influencer marketing, and in recursive fashion, its first entry is itself.

The Globe is subject and object, dream and reality. It’s too big to be encircled by facts. We need to send a myth or two to its kingdom as our ambassadors, and if the myths are unconvincing, off with their heads! The taxonomy of the world is a risky business.

It is said that Prajapati, the creator of the world, was all alone before he created the gods. They were his children, but they flew away from his grasp the minute they were born. And one day, in a fit of revenge, they killed their father, dismembered him and scattered his remains across the world.

Why revenge?

Because. Which child isn’t angry at its parents for bringing them into the world? Anyone who loves freedom must rue this original act of bondage. Even a god. But my concern is not with the gods, but with Prajapati. He who was alone at the beginning and alone at the end. He whose bones are the book of the world.

The Globe, of course, is Prajapati, and as for the Globe’s children: take a look in the mirror.

Let’s go looking for his bones.