Immanentizing the Eschaton

 

 

Some fifty years ago Eric Voegelin enjoyed a certain caché on college campuses.  There were bumper stickers that read: "Don't Immanentize Our Eschaton! " And someone built a machine to accomplish immanentization. Or a least the control panel for one.  And this picture was taken. We wish we could thank those persons unknown who showed such a sense of humor! –ed

 

 

 

WHAT PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ARCHAEOLOGY

1. Archaeology is about pyramids.  When the last Egyptian pyramid was finished, that completed archaeology.

2. The Chinese couldn't figure out solid geometry, so they built a wall instead of a pyramid.

3. There were more archaeologists than pyramids so they pretended that there were important things on Easter Island and at Stonehenge, but no one but them gives a hoot because they are not pyramids.

4. In the Western hemisphere, some pyramids appeared in the Yucatan peninsula, but they weren't very big, or very well built, and may have been put there by visitors from space. Ditto Peru.

5. In France, they built a pyramid in the Louvre just so they would have something to brag about in  3000 years.

6. There has never been any archaeology in the United States.  That is because by custom and tradition everything is torn down when it is 74 years' old. Americans like things new, smaller and more convenient. What they can't tear down or replace they put in museums.

7. American Archaeologists like to collect dollar bills because they feature pyramids.

8.  Americans like to study archaeology. They watch archaeology films like "The Mummy's Curse" and "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark." "The Planet of the Apes" features a ruined Statue of Liberty but that was war damage so that is considered military history; in any event it isn't a pyramid so it's not archaeology.      
 

September 2011

—Lorry Ibsen