The Red Dot's Race

When I was young, I read genuinely profound books — books like Alice in Wonderland and Winnie-the-Pooh. My father managed to get omnibus editions, so that Alice came with Through the Looking-Glass and Winnie-the-Pooh came with The House at Pooh Corner.

Those books were educational. They taught me a lot about how to look at the world ambivalently and ambiguously enough, so that it could be seen more clearly and understood more comprehensively. At that time, I had no idea I was learning about such things.

But let me tell you how I felt when Atlantis, small city-state in a blue ocean turning redder by the day, was described as "a little red dot". I felt the instinctive deep-reality truth of that epithet. And I remembered, all at once, the Red Queen's race from Through the Looking-Glass.

For the little red dot is manifestly engaged in a Red Queen's race, and that is the nature of its existence. To indulge in anything else would be an existential threat.

The more you read, and the more you learn about the local system, the more you realise the alternatives are Pooh Corner and the Looking-Glass world. And it is genuinely hard to decide which is the better, if you think hard about it.