Companion art for the essay, “The Western Mappa Mundi: Toward a Subject-oriented Concept of Reality.”

Read the essay on Tezos at the link.

EXCERPT:

This “standard of goodness” (i.e. value) is a byproduct of the fundamental frame of seeing the world as “objectively true.” Objectivism, or the concept that there is an external, absolute, objective truth which is attainable (through great effort or by being born within its definition), measurable, and demonstrable. This is a complete fiction, however useful it may be (and it is not without merit, but this author would argue that it is very much beyond time to balance it, or upgrade it, with a concept that serves our current reality that requires cooperation, rather than competition).

This foundation concept of “objective truth,” which stems from the traditional religious proposition of “Divine Authority,” creates the condition in the mind of a hierarchy of truth, purity, and goodness. In other words, that which is closer to the center is true, valuable, and good, and that which is further from it is, in short, monstrous. The people and ideas that fall in the outer circles are, at best, disposable, and at worst, a threat that must be met with violence to eradicate. More generally, though, their lives are conceived of by the center as little more than a resource to serve their own needs and desires. Peripheral people are who we grind in the mill of the global market to create the goods we consume, which we use to construct the edifice of our identity we use to associate with the center (why else would someone long to buy a Louis Vuitton bag? Let’s be honest, they’re ugly).

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Art made in collaboration with DreamStudio.AI.