Dovetails
A Sea Changed, Dovetail. Theme song: a symphonic poem by Alexander Borodin.
This is the Dovetail part of A Sea Changed, a series that bears witness to one of the worst ecological disasters in human-recorded history. See here for the rest of the series about salt storms, fisherman in the desert, candy and vodka, etc..
Next week, the Prelude part of the new series on AI and its deeper consequences will be released.
Today’s theme song is a short symphonic poem composed by Alexander Borodin, performed by St. Petersburg Kirov Orchestra. You might have heard a more famous tune by the same composer, from his opera Prince Igor.
Dovetail, noun
A joint formed by interlocking one or more such tenons and mortises.
(American Heritage Dictionary)
It might seem odd: when winter’s mist and rain slurry shrouded my apartment, I was writing about a godforsaken desert 8,000 miles away. But I have reasons for such oddity.
Stories of the Aral Sea — and many other stories — are what I call “The Unseen”. Unremarkable on physical maps and in our surroundings, our mental maps don’t register them, either. Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, or CNBC give them no front row coverage. Viral tweets and TikToks never feature them. In our day-to-day hustles and bustles, we forget that these stories exist.
These stories may seem far-off, but they are intimately joined to our lives and our corners of the world – like dovetails in woodwork pieces. Western US is 8,000 miles away from central Asia, but Great Salt Lake’s fate is a near-replica of Aral sea’s tragedy, and carries similar consequences for the people around the lake.
Or you might feel that life is all grey and bitter, and forget that there is always a trace of sweetness – even for people living in that desolate place where air is sand and water is salt.
Or you might make micro decisions that solve immediate problems, without realizing that small decisions could snowball into much bigger consequences — a lesson we learned from Aral Sea’s tragedy.
And if we want to understand how our modern world is shaped, the Unseen stories offer juicier insights. Still take the region around the Aral sea for example. For 2,500 years, it has held Asia and Europe together. When I drove along dirt roads or crossed rivers in the region, I was following the trails of empire-builders like Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Timur the Lame, and Genghis Khan. In town squares and marketplaces, I was walking among living relics of historical Chinese, Indian, Iranian, Greek, Roman, Mongol, Turkic, and Arab civilizations. This region is a floor-to-ceiling window into the rich histories that crafted our present: from foods, drinks, and clothes, to languages, arts, and religions.
Even today, this region still has the potential to shape our future. If you heard about kerfuffles between the US, China, and Europe about the OBR trade initiative, it is because today’s great powers know: getting hold of this dovetail piece, they can lift all of Europe and Asia, and refashion the world as they wish.
We are not the great powers, but we should learn from them: seeing the Unseen, and recognizing dovetails. In the worst case, our minds are sharpened, and our daily lives get more fun. Best case: we use these Unseen dovetails to our advantage, to reshape our lives and the world around us.
From my vantage point, I see many Unseen dovetails. And I’ll put them on our mental maps.
So, what’s next?
First, a new series. Quid Ex Machina (Latin for “what out of a machine”1). This upcoming series looks into the deep, under-explored, and Unseen impact of AI on humans and our societies.
It will not be yet-another-hottake-on-chatGPT. We are diving much deeper. The Prelude chapter comes out next week.
Another future series in the planning, is tentatively named Artificial Longevity. It is about how we can build things that last, about thoughtful ways of creating the world that God never made. It will recount my trips into cities, towns, mountains, rivers, history, engineering, agriculture, and an enchanting variety of local lives, people, and cultures. This series will become part of an interconnected mega-series that explores various Unseen dovetails in our lives and the broader world.
Between cooking those formal meals, I will also bake some snacks. Maybe a new chapter in the series “My Medieval Farming Life”. Maybe interviews with personalities doing fascinating things. Maybe recounts of trips into territories that technically don’t exist. Maybe something else entirely.
Thank you, my readers, for joining me on this journey. I’m honored to be your travel guide into the Unseen and the interconnected. There, we will see our world’s past, present, future, and ourselves anew.
Thank you for reading Earthly Fortunes. If you like it, please share it. Subscribe for free to hear more about the Unseen and the interconnected dovetails.
What are the Unseen dovetails that you’ve discovered in your life? Let me know in the comments, DM me on Twitter or Instagram, or just reply to the email!
My gratitude to
, , and 's Sandra for their valuable feedback!Let’s be honest: no deus ever came out of a machine!
Helen, your pieces are so interesting and beautiful I can’t even begin to describe them. If someone were to ask me “what does Helen write about?”, I would be at failure of words and I would simply say “You have to read it yourself, there’s no way I can properly characterize her writing. No words, even the most complex and sophisticated, would do justice to what her writing is”. You have a unique voice and I really look forward to the next series. The world that God never made is such an intriguing concept, and such a smart way to put it. Thank you for all your writing. :)
Well done, Helen! Thank you for this fantastic series. I'm excited for Quid Ex Machina and Artificial Longevity :-)