If you’re a realist, then you may understand where it is I am coming from – isn’t TV and online just wildin’ out these days? A recent survey showed kids in the U.S. unanimously want to groom for the occupation: famous. Yes, “famous.” It’s not even an occupation but, kids think it is. And it’s not their faults, I mean, look at the extreme imagery that is flooding our TV and internet lines – if it’s not poverty, it’s the rich. You can basically drop the Jones and replace it with the Kardashians, so now it’s ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ literally.
Having a good time these days means getting inebriated beyond belief while you’re willingly being pick-pocketed by the mega brands. Again, it’s not your fault because, life has been made so unhopeful, you’d rather get blazed than to be reminded how hard times are. I’ve been guilty of it. But at some point, wake up from the stupor stupid.
These sign of the times in 2011 started bringing back a nostalgic moment when I was studying a triptych painting by Dutch master, Hieronymus Bosch, which was later acquired by Spaniard King Phillip II and now hangs in the Prado Museo. I’m talking about the Flemish-style painting, which was later titled – since it never really had a title – “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” It had always had a fixture in my mind. It’s a deep and didactic painting to me because it shows the world if you were to de-cloth every human being. The painting is becoming much more present in my thoughts everyday because of how destructive and hard our world has become.
When the triptych panels are closed, you see the world from a bird’s view. Once the doors panels open up, you see the garden where humans frolic and play without consequence. On the left panel is when the garden was innocent – Adam and Eve. On the right panel is the garden turned to Hell. Art historians and critics frequently interpret the painting as an instructional warning of life’s temptations having a perilous end.
I’m not here writing a soliloquy, rather I am asking if Bosch painted this c. 1504, then has the world always been destructive?
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