13 Change everything but change itself

In this episode of the Burning Archive, Jeff Rich completes his 12 part thematic history of our times. Historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto writes about the impact of accelerating change on society over the last 50 years: “Under the surface of political and economic change lurks fear of instability in the most precious sources of identity.” He puts his finger on the change the Burning Archive has been describing as social fragmentation: Social Change + Identity Impacts + Technological Amplification + Cultural Viruses = profound uncertainty about who we are. In this episode, the Burning Archive asks: What happens to a society when we change everything, even change itself? Can we cope with the accelerating pace of change?

Credits:

* Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, A Foot in the River: Why our Lives Change and the Limits of Evolution (2015) 

* Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, 2017 Bryn Lecture "Change How History Happens,”

* Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, "Human Beings: Dedicated to Interrupting Evolution", Oxford Illustrated History of the World

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* Ezra Pound reading from Canto 81.

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel