My five-year-old son held his first puppy in his outstretched arms.
Their eyes met.
He brought his puppy closer.
The puppy licked his face.
He squealed and teetered, face scrunched, but still he held on tight.
His neck stretched and turned aside, the puppy persisted, licking his ear.
He twisted around and around, unable to escape, until he gave up and laughed.
The puppy then sniffed and snorted, content on his shoulder.
He then looked at me, his gaze wiser than his years, as if to say "I understand parenting now."
About the Creator
Ulysses Tuggy
Educator, gardener, Dungeon Master, and novelist. Author of the near-future mecha science fiction novels Tulpa Uprising, Tulpa War, and Tulpa Rebirth. Candidly carries Cassandra's curse.
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Identity and the Exhaustion of Grand Ideas
Over the past few decades, intellectual life has been shaped by a growing distrust of ambitious theories that once claimed to explain history and society as a whole. The fading influence of the radical projects associated with the 1968 generation produced a more careful and restrained scholarly atmosphere. Many historians and social theorists became skeptical of large narratives and universal categories, preferring limited scope and methodological caution. In Germany, this shift took a distinctive form through the rise of microhistory, an approach that emphasizes close attention to sources, local contexts, and everyday life. Microhistorians sought to revive the craft of traditional historiography while distancing themselves from older positivist assumptions. Their work often challenges broad concepts such as capitalism, industrialization, and the state, treating them as abstractions that obscure rather than clarify lived experience.
By Gopal Balakrishnana day ago in Fiction
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