Mass

Progress wasn’t made by individuals, groups, races or nations, but by matter, enslaved by man. The hero and villain are innovation and artifact — in the hands of humans, but outlasting us. It’s the ink, cloth, dye, blade, alloy, fire, mine, glaze and structure who willed their objects into our vaults — and they survive to write the world. Every engineer dies; their expired patents tilting as epitaphs. Designers are dozed into earth before their patterns. The one-of-a-kind has a half life that is exponentially longer than its artists, buried dozens a dime. “All men would be tyrants if they could”¹ so we are kept, elementally, from extending our despotism into eternities by mass in quivering revolt.