Each person is ‘many ages’. It is as if we have ‘developmental threads’ of self, that are selectively advanced and retarded by our circumstances, choices, and other factors. Thus it is that a genius is often completely blind in some ways, and an ‘idiot’ may be found to possess skills that are prodigious in limited contexts. There are endless forms and modes of intelligence (and reactivity) within our developmental range. I imagine something like a long bar graph (the reality is but a little like this), where each bar is advanced, ‘normal’, or unexpectedly short (where our development was impeded or redirected). I call the model timethreading.

The same idea applied to national cultures reveals a startling set of ‘streams’ of culture, some of which are absurdly advanced (technological ability) while others are absurdly retarded (social, ecological, relational intelligence). Each culture’s history and choices of where to invest their developmental momentum have profound repercussions that generate minds, peoples, and holocausts in their monolithic images. In some sense, what used to be gods are just masquerading as governments, but instead of being in heaven they are on earth and are like giant ships, peopled by those parasites and activists who desire to steer them.

It is startling to realize however, that we can use this model to selectively examine and amend a variety of otherwise intractable problems and sources of them. I can find aspects of my emotional, relational and intellectual self that either ceased developing or were accidentally or actively retarded by the circumstances. When I can see these as distinct, I can attend them carefully and begin the process of re-instituting stifled or co-opted developmental opportunities. And, again, something similar is true of cultures, and subcultures of every scale. Some aspects of any nation will be seen to be rather advanced, others may be unexpected draconian, and these will almost always be found ‘side-by-side’, existing almost inexplicably in (nearly) amicable relation.