Thomas Cole: The Course of Empire

video source: Thomas Cole’s Journey – Atlantic Crossings / exhibition at The Met Fifth Avenue, January 30–May 13, 2018*


the savage state >> the arcadian or pastoral state >> the consummation of empire >> destruction >> desolation

from Letter from the Collapse, a post by Ed Simon:
… the truth can be bluntly stated as follows: our current problems aren’t like the fall of Rome because they’re far, far worse. Would it only be that we faced the collapse of the U.S. government, or authoritarianism, or even civil war, because the rising average temperature per year, the pH of the oceans, and the biodome’s decreasing diversity are things unheard of on the Earth since the Permian-Triassic extinction of more than 250 million years ago, when 70 percent of life on land perished and almost 95 percent in the seas did.*


2022-01-14T06:55−08* / January 14, 2022

*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archive of miscellany or notrehta posts

bolding added to emphasis in block quote above
image source: What are mass extinctions?*
views