This is one of the most challenging and confusing essays I have ever written. It has two subplots: Arnold Toynbee, the British philosopher of history, and the Toynbee Tiles. Therein lies the troubling issues. I read Toynbee’s thoughts as a philosophy major in college. To be honest, I don’t recall reading anything about resurrecting dead human molecules back to life either here or on Jupiter.

The Toynbee Tiles is the other subplot. I know slightly more about the tiles. This is where Toynbee and the tiles link up.

Toynbee, Kubrick, 2001, resurrected dead, and Jupiter

This is where I become lost. While I don’t recall Toynbee writing about dead molecules six decades ago while in college, the Tilers have linked Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to Toynbee and the resurrected deal molecules. Again, I also don’t see that relationship.

Aside from Toynbee and 2001, The Tilers started in America during the 80s. The first city was Philadelphia, but it soon spread to a couple dozen cities. However, this type of guerrilla art has spread like wildfire over the decades.

It is quite simple to make a Toynbee Tile. Tilers take a piece of linoleum, often about the size of a license plate or larger, which contains a message on the tile. Next, the Tiler attaches the tile to a road with an asphalt-type adhesive.

These are a couple of examples that are still in good condition.

One tile

Another tile

The problem is that the tiles don’t weather the weather well or the traffic.

A weathered and traveled tile

As time passes, all the Toynbee Tiles will die due to weather and traffic. What will remain is the issue of resurrecting dead human molecules back to life. I took a biology class in high school. What I can recall is that scientists can destroy a molecule, but all that does is to rearrange the atoms of the molecule. I don’t recall reading about scientists resurrecting human molecules. Nevertheless, if humans can resurrect them, it seems like the Earth would be a better place than Jupiter.