A turning of the tide.

I think we like to live in a linear world. It has the neat advantage of allowing us to believe that, as the latest in line of our species, we are the most advanced version. That's a fragile comfort as we head toward the sixth mass extinction, and our part in it. Travelling from one place to another, or one time to another, or one idea to another is only really useful if we remain in touch with where we started - otherwise we're just in a temporary, directionless, cult.

Most of us live our lives in the comfortable mediocrity that sits between our available extremes, and dimiss the extremes as "outliers" of only academic interest. Here in the UK, we don't really do extremes. Politically, our right-wing isn't really right-wing, just a version of the liberal democrats with a superiority complex warmed by the dying embers of empire and privilege. Our left-wing isn't really left-wing, just an angry version of the liberal democrats without any embers to stay warm by. The journey from one end …