No complex machines, statues of David or unfinished symphonies emanated from our hallowed being.Īnd still, we can summon a private chauffeur with the click of a button, as easily as a king might command his cavalry. No Eureka! moments sprang from our cranium. No Ode to a Grecian Urn flowed from our pen. They are imagined by futurists, engineered by geniuses, and distributed to the far reaches of the known world on vessels and vehicles of unimaginable complexity.Īnd yet, what have we done to deserve such a bounty? What new land did we discover? What disease did we cure? What invention did we bestow upon mankind, that we are lavished with such luxury? These gadgets, in turn, are assembled, meticulously and expertly, by people we will never meet, in factories we will never visit. sewn by gentle hands, packed by calloused ones, then shipped and freighted across the wine dark seas to anonymous nobodies, hunched in front of laptop screens. Our clothes, too, are delivered from exotic lands. As for the bacon, it is as though Demeter herself husbanded the perfect breakfast drift, with our very taste buds in mind. Our eggs, likewise, arrive on our plate, hearty and nutritious, as if delivered by angels in aprons. Like many Dear Readers, we take our coffee (flat white, extra shot) as if it were a matter of course, scarcely appreciating the many hands that went into its careful production. We rise every Sunday, a small miracle in itself. Nary a day goes by that we are not invited to suspend disbelief, to take leave of our senses, and to accept on the one hand the utterly preposterous, and on the other the inexplicably divine. ~ The Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Please enjoy one of our very first Sunday Sessions, including an introduction from what now seems like a distant Age of Abundance. Putin’s eye, when power outages in highly industrialized nations were the stuff of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists and when persistent, generation-high inflation was still in its “transitory” infancy. It is not given to man to know his fate, as they say, but a working knowledge of our recent history, coupled with an unflinching assessment of our own flawed and predictable nature, can help us form a picture of what might lie in wait.Īnd so it is in that spirit we invite you back to a simpler time, when armed conflict on European soil was still a twinkle in Mr. And yet, reading over that issue with the benefit of hindsight, and listening to Byron’s characteristically sound and sage insights, we can’t help but wondering if there weren’t some clues along the way, some breadcrumbs that were pointing toward some version of what was to come. from the conflict itself to the consequent sanctions, including the weaponization of the US dollar, from supply chain disruptions to ongoing deglobalization, from energy shocks to forty-year high inflation ripping across the US and Europe, and plenty more besides. Of course, we could have had no idea of the events that would come to pass in the weeks and months ahead. a situation that was about to get a whole lot more precarious in the days following our conversation. #The way back machine archiveLooking back through our growing archive of Sunday Sessions, we came across the following issue, first published on February 13 of this year, barely one week before Russian tanks were to roll across the Ukrainian border.Īs it happened, we had just, that very week, recorded an episode of the Fatal Conceits podcast with resource investor and geopolitical expert, Byron King, during which we discussed the precarious situation in the global energy markets. and trying to get a feel for where we might be headed next. As you may have noticed, we’ve welcomed a whole new cohort of readers to our humble ranks over the past month or so (if that’s you, pull up a chair and get comfy).Īs such, we’ve been “circling back,” as the former White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, used to say, taking stock of where we’ve been. Something a little different for you today, dear reader a journey in the Wayback When Machine.
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