Jealous Gods And The Soul’s Revolution

Shen Ning aka 沈宁 (Chinese, b. 1976, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, China) Brush work on silk.

In ancient times, people knew and understood why one should not uncontrollably show one’s luck and happiness: this may provoke the gods’ envy and anger. Since the latter believed that happiness is theirs… the insolent people who wanted the same must be punished.

— Эразм Рождественский

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The horror of toil, the horror of competition, the horror of merit, the horror of precariousness, the horror of unemployment, the horror of employment, the horror of profit. There was a world in which there were political organizations that wanted to destroy work, in which intellectuals sang idleness and laziness as unique conditions of freedom, in which minds believed that technology had only one direction: to free humanity from toil and salaried work. Now all this seems to have never existed and the only fate is to be overwhelmed by an ever greater and more fatal toil. More work, less resources, less time, less life.

— Roberto Saviano

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… It is through depression that we enter the depths, and in the depths we find the soul.

Depression is essential to the tragic meaning of life. It moistens the dry soul and dries the damp soul. It gives shelter, boundaries, center, gravity, weight and humble powerlessness. It keeps the memory of death alive…