The day Daddy came home with the mirror, we knew it was The Thing. He placed it on the table in the parlour. Carefully, as if it could lose its meaning if dropped otherwise.  “I can’t let this break. This! Boys! This. This is the Miracle,” Daddy said, a bright smile on his plump face.  ...

The process of “civilization” is a continuous negotiation of what it means to impose order on a world given to entropic tendencies. The traffic warden, the queue, the systematization of knowledge, and institutions built to administer justice are all cogs in humanity’s “anti-chaos” machine. Greek and Hebrew cosmogonies equally hold this perspective – the creation ...