If the Center Holds: Exploring an Enduring Metaphor
David Boles: Human Meme
The phrase “if the center holds” has its conceptual roots in the broader cultural and literary assertion that social, political, or ideological cohesion can be sustained only so long as the core remains intact. This phrase is often considered a response to William Butler Yeats’s famous lines from his poem “The Second Coming,” in which he prophesies that “the centre cannot hold,” implying an irreversible spiritual or cultural unraveling. The contradictory statement “if the center holds” presupposes that even in moments of uncertainty or crisis, there remains a stable pivot, a...
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Deus Ex Machina: Complete 3000-Year History from Ancient Greece to Future Philosophy
David Boles: Human Meme
The legal systems of this era struggled to adapt to these new realities. The Restored Justice Protocols of 2900 allowed victims of crimes to be restored from backup, effectively undoing the crime itself. But this raised questions: if the harm could be undone, had a crime occurred? The infamous Paradox Trials of 2923-2947 attempted to prosecute crimes that had been "uncommitted" through temporal manipulation. The final verdict, delivered by the Quantum Supreme Court, declared that justice itself had become a form of deus ex machina; an external imposition of order on a reality that no longer...
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Why Everything We Know About Time, Memory & Aging Is Wrong: 6 Paradigm-Shifting Insights
David Boles: Human Meme
The first forgotten truth emerges from the medieval understanding of time as a living, breathing entity rather than a mere mechanical measurement. Before the proliferation of mechanical clocks in the fourteenth century, communities understood time through the rhythms of nature, prayer bells, and seasonal cycles. This organic temporal awareness created a psychological resilience that we've lost in our nanosecond-obsessed age. Medieval chroniclers spoke of "thick time" – moments that expanded during contemplation, compressed during joy, and flowed like water through daily life. Recovering this...
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From Ancient Golems to the Synthetic Sacred: How AI Evolved from Mystical Automata to Tomorrow's Consciousness Infrastructure
David Boles: Human Meme
The human yearning to create intelligence beyond our own biological constraints stretches back to antiquity, manifesting not as "artificial intelligence" but through divine automata, mystical golems, and mechanical servants. The ancient Greeks spoke of Talos, the bronze giant who protected Crete, while Jewish mysticism produced the golem of Prague, animated by sacred words. Medieval Islamic scholars designed intricate water clocks and mechanical musicians, calling them "al-jazari" - the skillful ones. These weren't mere toys but embodiments of humanity's deepest aspiration: to breathe life...
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We Are Each Other's Possibilities
David Boles: Human Meme
Yes, we are each other: The Us of Us. To deny this truth is to court disaster. When we forget that we are each other’s possibilities, we begin to retreat. Into silos. Into tribes. Into fear. We stop looking for kinship and start demanding conformity. We begin to believe the lie of the self-made person; the myth that what we’ve done, we did alone. That we owe nothing to no one. That is not independence. That is isolation. That is a world without bridges. And a world without bridges will only ever be full of walls. When you deny someone else their possibility, you shrink your own. When you...
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Escaping the Misogyny Silo
David Boles: Human Meme
We begin with a silence, the kind that rings heavy in the ears of the alone. This is the quiet place many young men now occupy—a self-imposed solitude, carved out not of preference, but of defeat. The dating app didn’t swipe back. The college classroom became a battleground of ideas they couldn’t win. The workplace offered no solace. And so they withdraw—not only from dating, but from the belief that women are allies in life. They begin to bond instead with other wounded men in digital caves, places where contempt is currency and mockery of women is misidentified as empowerment. What...
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Voting in Fascism: Why Democracy Dies and Guns Decide
David Boles: Human Meme
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Lost Dimensions of Roman Civilization After the Fall
David Boles: Human Meme
The fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century was not merely the collapse of a political order or the ruin of marble monuments. It was the slow eclipse of an entire world – a complex tapestry of cultural practices, technical know-how, intellectual traditions, and spiritual paradigms – many of which vanished forever. Historians often highlight the sack of cities and the demise of imperial authority, yet beyond the smoking ruins lies an even greater tragedy: the loss of ways of life and thought that had no true successor. Reconstructing these forgotten dimensions of Roman...
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The Consequences of Devaluing Education: How Ignorance Undermines Society, Democracy, and National Health
David Boles: Human Meme
When a society starts to devalue education, the consequences quickly ripple through every aspect of civic, cultural, and economic life. Education is much more than a process of transferring facts; it is the crucible in which critical thinking, moral reasoning, civic responsibility, and creative innovation are forged. The deliberate or inadvertent devaluation of education leads to a dramatic diminishment in collective wisdom, eroding the very foundation upon which a healthy society stands.
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Beyond Precious: How Value, Emotion, and Culture Define What Matters Most
David Boles: Human Meme
First, let’s be honest: calling something “precious” can sometimes act as a velvet rope, a cordon sanitaire that says, “This is off-limits. This is untouchable and apart.” Think of the grandmother’s china locked in a cabinet—too precious to use, too dear to risk. It preserves a memory, but it can also freeze it, holding it out of the flow of everyday living. You can’t dish up takeout pizza on those plates; you just stare at them gathering dust. That’s the peril of the precious: sometimes, it sterilizes, it sanctifies—and inadvertently, it excludes.
info_outlineCan Judaism save abortion rights? In this Boles.tv live stream, David Boles takes on the idea that Jews can save a woman's right to choose. Can the Supreme Court of the United States remove centuries of Talmudic law to try and reverse Roe v. Wade? Plus, balloons.