In my anthropology of religion course, one of the main themes is that all religions have histories and nothing is ever really new. There is in other words a phylogeny of religions and all share a common ancestor. To elucidate this idea, we read Robert Bellah’s “Religious Evolution” (1964) and “What is Axial about the Axial Age” (2005), in which Bellah notes “a central principle that has governed all my work on religious evolution: Nothing is ever lost.”
I was reminded of this principle this morning while watching a brilliant series of video shorts titled “Everything is a Remix.” The series creator or remixer is Kirby Ferguson, who rightly contends there is nothing new under the sun, only an endless stream of copying, transforming and combining. Simply delightful (if a bit depressing for those who aspire to originality):
These kinds of projects deserve our support.
