What is the influence that is being translated into today that comes from the planet on which we live, from which a person drives a car, say, into what we conditionally call the Anthropocene? Let me explain, besides global warming, climate change, pandemics and so on, is there an impact on daily life that we might not even notice?
Okay, I won’t go any further, this is the beginning of my dissertation, I’m asking rhetorical questions for the sole purpose of bringing you to where I arranged a buffet table in order to easily convince myself of my arguments. In short, I meant that it is inconceivable that all this delusion into which we have plunged the Earth, call it Gaia, Gaia or whatever you like, does not cause consequences for us humans, consequences that are more specific than being under water under a water bomb, even if we don’t live in the Caribbean, or, less harmful but no less disturbing, from mosquito bites during the Christmas holidays. I believe here I wanted to support that all this abuse of being the self-proclaimed masters of planet Earth has led us to, and also to staying at home for two years due to the pandemic that has come out of the whole plant due to- beyond laboratories and having to arm ourselves with rows of our SUVs, to some collective delusion that we externalize every day on social networks, where we polarize any topic, turning every little piece of news into an agonized polemic, white or black, and where our patience in terms of patience now more scarce than the ice sheet found on Marmolada. We break out all the time, even on topics that should not cause even a slight smile. We say things that in the past we would not have thought without feeling immediately embarrassed, and we do it openly, leaving traces of our words and actions for future memory.
In all of this, what seems even more frightening, we allow our words and actions to influence the new generations, who in the meantime began to call boomers anyone who tries to pass on a minimum of information or experience to them, sending centuries of sociology to the backwoods. cows. and pedagogy and elimination from scratch of the very idea of generation.
For this or even this reason, when I read the news about those two morons who went to London’s National Gallery and threw soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, put their hands to the walls, asking for a lot. a rumor that some new oil or gas project was going to stop… I did not even have time to be particularly surprised, more than anything else, I experienced a feeling of restrained anxiety. Why, I asked myself at first, should two very young idiots think that vilifying a work of art by shouting “Do you care more about art or life? Are you more interested in protecting the painting or the planet?” is this a gesture referring to a form of protest against rage towards the aforementioned planet? Why, I asked myself then, given that two more than activists should be called balls, the idea of spoiling something beautiful did not lead them to understand that their move was not only stupid, but also harmful to themselves, which of them could what beauty no longer useful? Then I told myself that the reason, in addition to growing, overwhelming ignorance, and the feeling of an imminent apocalypse that does not make us think about the consequences of our actions, that soon we will all die, was ours, I Speaking of all of us boomers, I continue to return any discourse to value, and by value I now mean only economic value, as the transmission of news data demonstrates. No one talked about beauty, about a masterpiece, about a crazy act just because it is capable of mutilating the artistic heritage. Everyone focused on the economic value of a work held in a London museum, one that often makes us sigh for free admission, a common fate with all British public museums, at £80 million. As if it’s a sum, certainly prohibitive, to make a Van Gogh work a masterpiece, and not vice versa, being a masterpiece also implies economic value. The two idiots clinging to the walls of the National Gallery must have thought the anti-public heritage gesture would attract attention, and turned their backs on what they could easily get to, a work on display in a museum that doesn’t even require a ticket. ‘input. Eighty million pounds, not an absolute masterpiece of painting, is at stake for yet another work by an artist who, it’s history, died in hardship, not to mention that Van Gogh himself could ever imagine that one day one of his paintings will only scars because of its economic value. It is clear that me, a boomer, is melting reading these things, and the first reaction that I would have if I were not lazy is from modern life, maybe even from the pollution that I spoke about at the beginning, that that clouds the clarity of thinking of young people like two idiots, and that in my case it makes me sit here, lounging on the couch, longing, of course, the first reaction that I would have, however, would be to go outside, pour rapeseed oil into the tank of my minivan and walk around the city, polluting as much as possible, I am also deployed on duty between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, but this is a momentary thought, just enough to realize that beauty can survive everything, even our imminent disappearance from planet Earth, which we contributed to the death, or rather, from which we prepared our imminent spill, the planet will continue to exist and how, only without us. Ever since, in the near future, like in scenes from I Am Legend or Planet of the Apes, there won’t be anyone, a survivor, an alien worth knowing, someone wandering around a deserted post-apocalyptic London. and… went to the Nationa gallery, maybe in search of food or something, he will see this picture restored, because I really hope that it will be restored before the end of the world, and looking closely he will ask himself, “but who are your hands glued to the wall right next to with a painting?”, then adding “strange people who were human until the end of the world.”
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