Friends, this image is one that will generate different emotions, different reactions.
What do you see?
What do you think the image symbolizes?
Does it make you feel uncomfortable?
What does it say about the human condition, if anything?
Has the artist captured something valuable?
P.S. This image was found under ‘Laughing’ in Google Images. Is it incorrectly classified?
Yes, I’d not put this under laughing, I’d put it under screaming as the world shatters around the portrayed person + there seems to be a shadow of a tormenter holding a piece of the broken glass in a threatening way.
When I look at it I feel horror and see a person threatened & in agony.
Maybe like a Rohrsasch test, more revealing of my state of mind but it still looks to me like if any laughter is involved it’s hysterical.
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Yet another window crushed/smashed !. Why do humans have to be so destructive ? – is he a popsinger or something ?
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Kate and John, congratulations on being the first to venture an opinion. It’s frequently difficult for folk in a new post to go first because often there is a tendency to wait to see what others will say especially in a post like this one.
When I first saw this image I felt it clearly represented what happens when war frees men from the veneer of civilization which thinly encapsulates them. I saw the breaking of the veneer and the savagery that is released when a man suddenly is given a gun and a license to kill and rape and destroy.
But the more I look at it, the more possible meanings I see!
Is it a mirror?
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looks like someone who tore his hair out with frustration………………
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The man looks the way I feel a lot of time, especially after reading about the latest crimes committed against innocent people and the earth.
So much of the time I simply have no words for the anger, frustration and sorrow I feel.
If that is laughter it is the laughter of someone driven insane by our modern world.
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The human soul is not harmonious with the “modern” world. But this has been greatly exacerbated by the greed/based waste version. People are conditioned to believe they want things which are not only undesirable but often a detriment. But this has kept the economy alive, artificially, thus doomed to what we have.
The demand for commodities is so ever increasing that it serves as a purpose for staying in a war mode.
A complete reversal to clean, including a pedestrian society, would be a considerable improvement.
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It’s easy to be driven insane by the inanity of the ‘modern’ world, Jeannie. Staying sane is the challenge.
Ken, we need to turn back the clock in some areas but the only way we can do that is to free people from the destructive, selfish greed doctrine and its reliance on war.
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To me this shows the utter preoccupation and total identification with the material objective world–the Western viewpoint..he is ready to see things differently..it takes a shattering to blow off all the indoctrination etc…from his misery will come a new way of “seeing”.. integrating the subjective,the intuitive, the feminine…then will come compassion and wisdom and insight…so whether we are a scientist, an educator, a politician, whatever life role we choose, we must become dissatisfied with the system and break it up…Kate
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Kate, that is a very interesting perspective. A new way of seeing. I like it!
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At the least David it presupposes a future and a reason for the chaos///and out of the breakdown and chaos comes the future we all decide to create..so Jeannie..do not project the despair and sadness… what will come from a collective conscious web of humanity only seeing the world from from an objective view.?.under the madness we must see the beauty of the subjective,, of the inner reality…this is practical and a truth for me…I am too old to accept anything I have not experienced as true. Because I have been in literally thousands of crisis situations with people in all kind of settings..I have been truly touched to see the great courage humans have shown me they are capable of..so not to evangelize but we must motivate and inspire…Emerson said in the “two voices” -we are surrounded by unbelievable beauty and yet the strength of the negative thought can yank our consciousness to bear quickly and unbalance us. ( paraphrased) Kate
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Humans may have courage, Kate, but, unfortunately, the world they have lived in for the last half a century has deprived them of the skills of self-sufficiency, of being self-reliant.
If they can’t afford to go to the supermarket or a shopping mall or such places suddenly become empty of goods many of them will be totally lost and bewildered. It’s not a happy thought.
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Breaking out of castles we build, screaming. If it is a laugh, it ‘s a screamer. The cost of freedom is sometimes a shard of glass in your forehead. Not a mortal wound, but a scar to remember for sure!
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