It seems to me that, in 2012, to create a work of art that portrays the same kind of depravity and suffering captured by Bosch in his Garden of Earthly Delights would inspire no small furor. Indignant people from all over the world would scream "anathema!" (or the atheist equivalent of such) and its general reception would probably be one of disgust and utter contempt. The artist would be dismissed as simply attention-seeking, willing to go to any lengths to become notorious. Such a "sick" imagination would likely not be perceived as something marvelous, something ingeniously obscene. The scenes depicted would likely not be seen as valuable, as capturing something difficult to confront but ultimately fundamental to the way human beings negotiate their existence in the world.
In a sense, such violent imagery of human suffering was a way to re-enchant ourselves with life: it was a way of being brutally faced with what was at stake if one did not live correctly, and to see that the heavens and earth were indeed governed by an omnipotent divinity that left no mortal unrewarded or unpunished. No-one feels exempt, detached, when confronted by the Garden of Earthly Delights.
By falling in love with the idea of human rights--the inalienable right of every human being to live a self-determined life--we have deprived ourselves of this kind of beautiful terror. The terror of being unable to escape the terrifying judgment of a greater authority is no longer something that preoccupies us; therefore, when we are faced with images of human suffering, more often than not the feeling that sweeps over us is not fear--instead, we are indignant. We are indignant, because our Human Rights have been violated. But all the same, is there not a certain assurance that this suffering will not befall us (being, as we are, autonomous and subject to nobody's will except our own)? Is there not a kind of complacence, a kind of detachedness in the way we approach atrocities? For all our foot-stamping and lamentations ("how could such a thing possibly have happened?) what we tend to feel is an objective fury, an anger based on the violation of an abstract principle. It is not our own lives that are in danger, for the very same abstract principle makes us unable to believe anything other than that we alone can determine the course of our lives. The powerful people who are perpetrating such horrors cannot really have any influence over us, because any notion of natural laws (of authority and power structures) has been banished from our world view. They just happen to be powerful, and so they will soon drift out of the picture and all will be right again.
The idea that each and every person ought to be a free individual with unlimited volition has reduced humans to equal ground, but it is a soil on which we care less about what happens to other people. The theoretical right to walk about freely, unhindered, has been construed as the necessity of walking single-mindedly in the direction that we alone have forged, without concern for what other people on the street are up to. Power and authority are no longer relegated to deities (so passé) and so become somewhat incidental. Even the president of the united states is just another guy, right? He drinks beer like the rest of us and walks his dogs like everybody, so he just so happened to get elected. He is only in power because you want him to be in power.
Power has been radically democratized: everyone is supposed to have the power to change the world (by buying a certain product or attending a certain school). And of course we know that we all can save the planet, just by recycling our glass bottles and driving Priuses.
...All this may not be directly related to the class discussion, but it spiralled off a thought along the following lines: how is it that we are so callous and how is it that there is so much inertia, given that we know more than ever about what horrible things are being perpetrated by who, which horrific wars are unfolding in which regions, etc.?
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