Lee Malick

“how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror

“George continued without skipping a beat, “Modern civilisation can be traced to the Middle East and particularly the area now known as Iraq and the ongoing discoveries in and around Türkiye near Gobekli Tempe takes the possible origins of civilisations much further back to around 12000 BCE and probably even further back.

When you look at ancient and modern maps, it dawns on you that the region, with what is now called Syria and Lebanon right in the centre, shaped our modern world in fundamental ways, from the food we eat to how we mastered words and numbers. Like it or not, civilisation as we know and practise today arose squarely in the Middle East. It resonates with life, learning, culture, science, war, death, and conflict. Not boring.
In fact, the rest of the world cannot seem to get enough of this region, or more precisely, its black gold riches. It has dominated world affairs since possibly around 12000BCE and today still captures news media every single day.
It is here where we humans learned to farm and domesticate animals. Where we learnt to count and work with metals, build houses and create staggering architectural marvel.

It is at once an exotic and alluring destination with aromatic and delicious foods, but also bristling with tensions, conspiracies, and centuries old feuds that don’t end. It is inescapably a fascinating region and rightly has a claim to be the centre of the world.”
― Lee Malick, Chastised: The United States of Israel