I’ve found this ceiling in a modern church in Vienna. I suppose I pushed the colors a little more than necessary, but actually I like the plasticity of the result. Ymmv.
Btw, today is the 15th anniversary of the event that formally turned western democracies into fundamentally authoritarian systems.
Not that secret services world-wide wouldn’t have interpreted the laws in “creative” ways before, but this was the point when we handed the world officially over to unelected, unaccountable, secret organizations with secret plans and methods. And when we did find out about them, well, it was all lies, propaganda, power games, torture and war crimes.
1984 I was convinced that the book was outdated and essentially only valid in dictatorships and in the Soviet Empire. When I first saw Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”, I recognized many things, but although I adore the film, I found it factually exaggerated. “Minority Report” was fascinating, but built around such a fundamentally stupid idea, that I didn’t see anything like that coming.
I was wrong in all accounts. We’re well past 1984 when it comes to surveillance, the idea in “Minority Report” is pursued by police forces world-wide, and as far as “Brazil” goes, more and more I feel like being right in the middle of it.
Wouldn’t it be a cool idea to stand up, step back and recognize again that we are “The People”? All that has happened has happened because of choices. Choices have been made by people who were not entitled to make choices that could (and did) destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. But leaving those choices to those people, that’s also a choice.
You can always choose Norbert Hofer in Austria, Marine Le Pen in France or Donald Trump in the US. They won’t disappoint you in one respect: choosing them will change a lot. Only not for the better.
Choosing the authoritarians means choosing choices to be taken away from you. That’s the very nature of authoritarianism: Someone decides all the things and it’s not you!