When tyranny becomes pathos
We can see the world as a perennial garden constantly renewing itself or the illicit acquisition of gold filigree, when gold becomes fool’s gold, and tyranny turns to pathos.
“In hindsight, my personal, lifelong fascination with the idea of temporality might well be the reason why I chose photography as my favored tool for personal expression as an artist. Indeed, photography is transience, and its ontological nature makes it particularly effective to explore what we have come to call ‘time’.”— Rafael Rojas
Anyone who is so daring can follow this link to a portfolio of photographs by Rafael Rojas. A hundred or so years ago black and white photography was the standard. Now it is the optional choice of the artist/photographer to make their statement. Black and white photography has a commanding presence in the capable hands of an artist like Rojas. His work has a stark haunting presence demanding our full attention and contemplation. They are precious moments frozen in time where he sees the world with his own unique vision.
When he summarizes his work as a “lifelong fascination with the idea of temporality” It is a worthy contemplation as it goes to the very heart and nature of our existence. Where we are granted life we must also face inevitable death.
I have no protest against mortality as everything in life is as temporal, mortal, and cyclical as the seasons that rule us. In the winter our perennial garden is dark and desolate, but in the spring it emerges at the behest of the warming sun. This past winter was very wet so the flowers are a foot taller, and foliage that much more abundant.
Mortality sets limits making each living moment precious knowing full well our time will come. Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning; "remember that we must die". It can be seen as a morbid thought but also a challenge to live and achieve the best we can in the time we have. When it comes to issues of life, fate, and allotted times, our birth certificates are an open-ended limited time contract, only somewhat under our control. Anything else would be a zombie existence.
Recognizing the world as temporal, and time its drumbeat, is very likely what drove Rojas to excel in his photography. This applies to every other human activity, farmers planting their crops, writers finishing their novels, or scientists doing their essential research. To see the world as temporal is to realize it is constant action and reaction, creation and destruction, and constant adaptation. We must collectively and individually live by the consequences of our actions and take responsibility for them.
In the picture above the animal skull is about both death and life simultaneously. The skull has an inherent beauty of its own. It also exemplifies memento mori.
The picture below is taken in Venice Italy very early on a foggy morning. There is the absolute calming stillness of the early morning. At the same time the promise that in a few hours time it will be occupied by humans going about their daily activities. Yet we might ask will it be a promise kept? How many people will hang such pictures above their couches in all their ambiguity? Rojas’ timeless pictures invite profound contemplation asking us who we are, leading us to the soul of our being.
The Pyrrhicity of endless war stalks our times as the ancient Greeks forewarned.
For Rojas his fascination with the temporality of life becomes his religion and his art, the vehicle for coping with it and expressing it. Just as others adopt formal religions to understand and come to grips with the temporal world and its absolute state of being.
For others who cannot accept the temporality of life their religion is war and they become the tyrants and barbarians. They are the false prophets and idolaters of war plunder ruled by their delusional behaviors. Gold filigree is the measure of their success, megalomania, their stock and trade.
It is a world of wretched grief and delusional denialism. Tyranny turns to pathos when the world is not seen and lived in as temporal. We seed our existences, and accordingly harvest bounty or destitution. Where we murder temporality, failing to acknowledge the cycles of life and history, there is no salvation — only grimy Philistinism— where beauty, harmony, and humanist values are negated in favor of endless acquisition, systemic corruption, and compulsive immoralities.
Tyrants challenge the temporality of the world as an act of defiance to justify their delusional behaviors. They are at war with the world and selectively blind to the temporality defining our existence.
We can see the world as a perennial garden constantly renewing itself or the illicit acquisition of gold filigree, when gold becomes fool’s gold, and tyranny turns to pathos.
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My reading skills are rusty (i'm a young uni kid), while I understand that our ideals have been skewed to please those in power, can I ask what "tyranny becomes pathos" means? I see the words and the meanings but they do not resonate :P.
The deemed but rootless exceptionalism of the human species is revealed in its grandiose urban architecture built in total defiance of Nature. The "economy" is an externality to the environment and must be brought to be contained therein. If it remains outside of Life, certain death is awaiting.