I always like Bruegel's Tower of Babel. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Brueghel-tower-of-babel.jpg
Reflecting presently, it seems to me that it does rather reflect a sort of hubris that I associate with (speaking loosely) the right wing: a great monument to ourselves; will work because we believe it will and niggling engineers be damned; all those proles hard at work for our glory. (Look closely: those cranes lifting blocks of stone from the quay are treadmill-operated. Guys inside a water wheel-like device climb the side and the wheel turns.) Equally intriguing is Bruegel's Land of Cockaigne: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Bruegel_d._%C3%84._037.jpg Is Cockaigne where we're all presumably going to end up if we spend enough time in the treadmill? Or is it the notion of a despicable and degenerate land of socialists and slackers held by hard-nosed puritans who would rather rejoice in overlooking all those ants striving on the Babel Project? As an interesting aside, I have a book of black & white copies of many of Bruegel's works. The Land of Cockaigne is show there in mirror image of the way the Wikipedia site shows it; clearly not just a pencil sketch or study but the same painting in detail, only reversed. _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
