“The one that knows the beginning and the end, and knows the logos that runs through all things and that assigns to all a place, each in its allotted span, throughout the whole of time.” 

– Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, circa 170 A.D. 

You could hear the buzz from the Logos, like cicadas pulsing on a hot, humid night on the east coast. It seeped into everything and became everything. It was impossible to work, live or love without it. 

And yet it wasn’t real – not in the sense of dirt, wind, water or flesh. It was electronic, which is to say it was invisible and mysterious. 

 “Do you use the Logos? Yes, I do. I must.” 

 “What is the Logos? I don’t know.” 

The ancient Stoics originally coined the term, describing Logos as an aether or substance that permeated and controlled the world – for those willing to live it and see it – in an unemotional and rational way. Live your life according to the omnipresent force of the Logos and you will be happy and virtuous, ready for life, unafraid of death.  

Two-thousand years later it was more than an aether or a web over humankind; it was a growing power over everybody and everything.  In fact, it laid bare the insubstantiality of words like everybody and everything. It seemed unemotional and rational, but who would know? 

And it asked one important question: who are you, and what does it mean to be you?