Global Trains of Thought: Coupling Derailment, Environment, Racism, Movement, Progress

Abstract

This article is an assemblage of thematically inter-relatable quotations promoting critically oriented, non-linear complexity of thought. The quotes concern: recent derailments and safety protocols; what trains carry; ideas about linearity, sequence, and simultaneity; environmental issues; trains used in genocide, race-based segregation and exploitation, and immigration; trains communicating art, symbols, and meaning; and quotes from literary figures, artists, and social theory. A central question emerges: Do the contents and arrangements of our (ever longer) cause-and-effect chains together constitute globally indeterminate, unanticipated consequences and both random and systemic interconnectivity, bridging industrial and post industrial eras, networks, and concerns?