"The techniques of orientation become the techniques
for construction"                                       — Mircea Eliade

Today this planet is in the midst of a great transformation and
all of us are trying to understand what this means. We have
all become migrants — not only in terms of our national
origins but also intellectually... culturally... spiritually. Even if
we don't move, the world will come to us.

Once upon a time we could declare with some certainty:
we are German... we are French... we are American... we are
Yugoslavian, etc. In the old world we all had a special place —
a place we could call home. The borders were well-drawn and
our cultures seemed local and well-defined.

No longer.

The old world has collapsed in upon itself drawing all histories,
arts, cultures, nationalities, ethnicities and religions into a
compacting collective awareness. Once all-embracing ideas
now seem small and disingenuous and we have reached a
point where theory, confounded by the limitations of language
and a preponderance of data, seems incapable of moving us.
The result is disorientation... confusion... and we suddenly
find ourselves strangers in a strange new land where things
are ill-defined and nothing is as it was. And yet we continue
to make our way, aided by our evolving technologies and
taken by our need to understand... uncertain yet hopeful...
looking for new directions and definitions.