If you’ve just arrived here, this page is meant to help you find your way around — and to explain how the material is structured, in case you’d like to read with more intention than just scrolling through the latest post.
In my page A beginning I explain my reason for the creation of Dye-a-Logue, but for reasons that may surface in my subsequent posts, this blog is organised into – Themes, Series, Chapters, Posts and Asides.
The Main Themes
The core of this project is organised into five themes which are almost synonymous with the Series, but not entirely:
- Problems —the greatest challenges we face,
- Who Are We?
- How the World Works
- Where Are We Headed?
- Solutions
These themes are in the main menu across the top of the site. Each one leads to a page that lists its posts in the order they’re meant to be read — not necessarily the order they were published, but the order that will make the most sense if you’re following the argument from the start, as if you were reading a book.
Series
Series are the highest structural unit and unsurprisingly they are almost identical to the main themes, except there are two series, not one, to the Problems theme. The first is the first part in this blog, titled What are the Main Problems? The other is titled A revision of the main problems and is the fourth series in the blog. As a result the series are as follows –
- Problems
- Who Are We
- How the World Works
- Problems revised
- Where Are We Headed?
- Solutions
- Asides
Where are we headed? is the forth theme, but is not the forth, but the fifth series.
Chapters and Posts
Within each part, the material is divided into chapters. Some chapters are short enough to be contained in a single post. Others cover more ground than a single post comfortably holds, so I’ve split them into several posts — each one focused on a specific point, with its own title, and each linked to the one before and after it, so you can move through the chapter in sequence if you’d like.
You don’t need to read every post in a chapter to get something out of it; each one is written to stand on its own. But if you’re working through a part from the beginning, the posts are ordered to build on each other, often following a train of thought.
Asides
From time to time, I step outside the main sequence to write something adjacent to it: perhaps a comment on how something that is happening currently is linked to the material, or a tangent that doesn’t fit neatly into the main thread but seems relevant anyway. These are kept separate from the core chapters so the main argument stays easy to follow, but each one links back to the post it relates to, in case you want the more complete context.
Glossary
Some of the language I use carries a specific meaning in this project, so I’ve written longer explanations of key terms and concepts as their own posts. You can find the full list on the Glossary page, with a short description of each term and a link to the complete entry. If you come across an unfamiliar term while reading, it’s worth checking there. You can also check the tag definitions.
A Note on How to Read This
You’re welcome to read however suits you — start with whichever theme interests you most, follow a single chapter through to its end, or wander through the asides and glossary on their own. The structure exists to make that kind of nonlinear reading possible, not to insist on a single correct path through the material. Alternatively, you can read this like a book, starting with the introduction and moving on to the first series – Problems – the greatest challenges that we face.