YOU CAN'T EAT THE MONA LISA

And other things that I find crazy

Last week I had a day off in Paris, and met up with my father. As the rain threw down, we decided that the best place to enjoy each other’s company, by walking and talking about life, death and everything in between, would be in a museum surrounded by beautiful art.

We queued for the Musée d’Orsay, and meandered past works by a slew of celebrated artists, like Van Gogh, Monet, Gauguin, and many others.

In a moment of clarity, or possibly loss of sanity, I looked at all these priceless pieces of art, and I found myself asking my father,

Why do you they matter so much? Is it because they are an important record of some part of our existence, or is it some vain attempt to prove that we were in fact here, for future generations?

This, of course, led me and my father down a rabbit hole for the next two hours.

Speaking as an artist of sorts, I feel like I’m betraying my creative brethren, by questioning the validity or necessity of an artist’s work. But maybe it wasn’t the validity or the necessity that I was questioning, but instead the sky-high pedestal, upon which we place these creations; the price tags and the mystique around them. It is a strange, strange world in which we live, where regularly, we place a far greater value on objects, than we do on people.

This thought reminded me that more and more, I feel like we as human beings exist happily, and blindly, in a cobweb of convoluted ideas and ethics, that have been formed, bent and twisted, over centuries, to the point where we live in a sort of madhouse, without even realizing it.

A few extremely random examples of our insanity:

We live in a world where a building, (the famed Notre Dame in Paris) catches fire, and over two days, $970 Million is raised for its reconstruction, and yet we raise mere pennies for the Amazon rainforest, which is being destroyed and burnt, even though we know that it is our very life force.

We live in a world where many women are still vilified for breast-feeding in public. Breast-feeding in public! A human being, feeding another human being in the oldest way possible. And we force them to hide in small containers in airports, or public restrooms.

On the subject of breasts, we live in a world where we are not allowed to show a female nipple on social media, but we are allowed to show a male nipple! What is a nipple anyway? Simply one of many appendages on our body. Is the female nipple considered evil because it can secrete milk, whereas the male nipple is innocent because of its impotence?

We live in a world where we accept drinking the milk from another species of animal; the cow, but if someone offered us whale milk, dog milk, or hippopotamus milk, we would be disgusted. Even more disgusting would be if you were offered breastmilk from another woman. Imagine that, drinking milk from your own species, how abhorrent.

We live in a world where we would rather spend more money on medication and cures, rather than eating well and living a healthy life. Where pharmaceutical companies have convinced us to take more and more drugs, that have more and more side effects, that need more and more drugs, to cure those very side effects, and at the same time, these pharmaceutical companies and the FDA have criminalized many holistic or alternative methods, that could cure the main diseases of our age. And what do we do? We pop those Pharma pills gladly, looking for that quick fix.

We live in a world where we will not teach our children about sex until their teens, despite it being a simple human function for the continuation of our species, yet we will allow our children to watch violent movies of people killing each other, and play video games where they can experience the first person viewpoint of blowing people’s heads off, stealing cars and beating people up.

-Personally, I talked to my two sons about sex when they were four years old. The reason being, that when you are four, there is no sexual connection to it. A penis going into a vagina held the same fascination for them as a finger going into the nose. Each action served a purpose. One to create life, the other to excavate a booger. When my oldest son finally had sex education at school, I asked him how it went. He told me that the boys laughed and snickered, and the girls thought it was disgusting. I asked him how he felt about it. It was kind of boring. He said. I already knew it all.

We live in a world, where as parents, we will not allow our children to go out alone on the street, or in front of our houses without us hovering over them, but we will allow them to go on the World Wide Web without any guidance or protection whatsoever, where any content can dangle in front of them, no matter how many parental controls you use.

We live in a world where screens have become such a new and formidable disease, that according to Dino Ambrosi and his TED TALK, The Battle for Your Time: Exposing the Costs of Social Media, an eighteen year old who lives to ninety will spend 312 months of free time, out of their 334 that are left, (after we account for work, travel, sleep etc,) ON A SCREEN. I thank God every day that I wasn’t born into an age of screens, but am petrified for my children.

Slide from Dino Ambrosi’s TED TALK, The Battle for Your Time: Exposing the Costs of Social Media,

We live in a world, where the idea of slaughterhouses disgusts us, and we choose to turn a blind eye to how meat is produced, but we will happily walk down the meat aisle in a supermarket, which is essentially plastic wrapped sinews from dead animals. Somehow we have completely detached ourselves from the process. And we are OK with that.

We live in a world where somewhere along the way, we decided that the last name of the male, should count as the recognized lineage. I myself can look back at the Lubomirski family, and trace it back to the earliest date somewhere between the 11^th to the 14^th century, depending on which relative you ask. But that is just one male blood line that is a small fraction of me. When you look at who we are all descended from, you only have to go back ten generations to realize that you are descended from 1024 different people, Male and Female!

We live in a world where we fight over invisible lines in the sand against other beings that have the same color blood as us, the same amount of fingers and toes, the same features on their face.

When it comes to religions, physical human beings are arguing with each other over an idea of a non-physical entity that has been passed down from generation to generation. An idea that no one can prove or disprove, and yet we fight and fight and fight.

We live in a world, where value is based on perception rather than actual need. Take the Mona Lisa, with a price tag of $860 Million, yet it is simply paint on canvas.

Perception of value, compared to the actual physical value. $860 Million could feed a lot of people, but if the world goes to shit, I don’t think we can eat the Mona Lisa….. at least not without a serious amount of ketchup.

We live in a world, where we define who we are, by our belongings, more than our actions. We arrive on this planet, naked and owning nothing; simple souls in meat suits, and no matter how many flashy cars we buy, shoes or watches we own, or pieces of art we acquire, we will leave this life in the same way as we arrived; a soul, owning nothing, and unable to take any of our hard earned acquisitions with us; yet we place SO much importance on these objects.

We live in a world where we document everything, ranging from our early ancestor’s cave paintings, to medieval art by the masters, depicting world events, to my next-door neighbor instagramming her hemp milk smoothie that she made for breakfast this morning. What is this insatiable need to document everything? Is it a desperate search for immortality or meaning, with the idea if we don’t document it, then who can prove that we ever existed?

So how the hell do I wrap this up this crazed rant?

I guess we just need to question everything. We have to stop walking blindly through this life, accepting everything as it is. There is a voice deep within us that tells us when things are wrong, crazy, or downright idiotic. We have to listen to that voice, and use it as a catalyst to ask questions, change direction, and pull our brains out of the sludge.

What a waste it would be if on our dying day, we looked back and realized that we had been lemmings throughout our whole life, just obediently following whatever the person in front of us was doing.

Let us wake up dear friends, open our eyes and live a life of our choosing, not a life that is on the set menu. 

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