Ecological Christmas Lantern Two Faces of our Planet Earth

                                                Ecological Christmas Lantern 

Two Faces of our Planet Earth 

Indigenous Hanging Chandelier by Dr Abe V Rotor 

The Pristine Face of our Planet Earth in acrylic

on wood scrap by the author 2020

 The Defiled Face of our Planet Earth in acrylic

on wood scrap by the author 2020

Light in the air, swaying with the wind;

     Heavy in the air dull, still;

Pristine, natural in the absence of man, 

     Defiled, dead, can't humans feel?

Indigenous art, ecological in message, this piece of art tells to viewers looking up to this hanging parol and chandelier.  No candles, no light, no chime, except the natural radiance and music of the pristine face of our Planet Earth.   

So rare today this happy face beams, so commonplace the sad face shrouds cities where more than half of the world's population of 8 billion souls are ensconced in the so-called Good Life, the "ultimate" aim of civilization.   

What is the Good Life in the current Corona Virus pandemic? Good life in global economic depression?  Good life in widespread poverty?  Good life in inequity and injustice?  Global breakdown of institutions, from marriage and family, threatening to destroy the pillars of human society?  

What is Good Life with the Israel war in Gaza?  Russian war in Ukraine? And in other critical spots, civil wars and drug wars, notwithstanding?  Cities burgeoning into metropolises and megapolises?  Growing widespread depression leading to suicide?  Hopelessness spreading among the young and old alike?   

What is the Good Life in a "floating continent of garbage" twice bigger Texas, thrice that of France? Unabated rise of sea level as a result of continuing global warming? Acid rain ruining productive farms? Radiation emanating from  transmission and communication towers, and from millions of computers and smartphones?  

What is the Good life in science and technology gone wild?  Good life in the explosion of knowledge, grain and chaff mixed up? Good life in erosion of values? Good Life in the failure of governance - local, regional, global?  

We have yet to learn from "the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome," and the Dark Age that enveloped the world thereafter. We have yet to learn from the Renaissance that followed a millennium after.  If only man's rationality can save him from his own destruction. ~