in 1960s life I tunneled through some standard texts such as Compte, Mill, Berman and Durkheim. later, in the 1990s I nuzzled nearer to cultural Anthropology and the humanities, for instance after reading Mead, it was Boaz and Geertz. But, around 2020 on, I picked up on one of David’s set of texts. It became a number of books by Koestler. (1905 -1983).

I became impressed by his peceptions of totalitarianism.

Koestler wrote most decoratively:

‘News travelled fast and far in the 16th century. The pulse

of all humanity was quickening as if our planet, after travelling on its journey through space, some somnolent and bemused zone of the Universe, were now emerging into a region bathed in vivifying rays or filled with cosmic Benzedrine in the Interstellar dust. It seemed to act simultaneously on all levels of the nervous system of mankind, on the higher as well as the lower centers, as a stimulant and aphrodisiac, manifesting itself as a thirst of the spirit, an itch of the brain, a hunger of the senses, a toxic release of passions. The human glands seemed to produce a new hormone which caused the sudden surge of a novel greed: curiosity - the innocent, lecherous, creative, destructive, cannibalistic, curiosity of the child.'

Reading starts as practice. It only then, with more dedication, becomes practic with filtering. To whom and for whom does the breath of all this filter? I askED

koestler cautioned as he considered

' Even three and four centuries later, the teachings of Marx and Darwin, the discoveries of Einstein and Freud, did not reach the vast majority of people in their original printed text, but through second - and third- hand sources, through hearsay and echo. The revolutions of thought which shape the basic outlook of an age are not disseminated through textbooks - they spread like epidemics, through contamination by invisible agents and innocent germ carriers, by the most varied form of contact, or simply by breathing the common air’

(The SLeepwalkers p 150 - 151 .1959)