Apotheosis

Apotheosis 2026

There is a Spanish convention, a superstition, if you will, detailing the country's past divisions, "Las Dos Españas," relegating the intense cognitive divide which once ripped through the relatively peaceful nation of today. "Riña a Garrotazos," or "Duel with Cudgels" as it's known in English, is Goya's masterpiece of metaphor on the subject, with two seemingly identical boys raining merciless damage upon one another, while both fall victim to the quicksand beneath their feet. Obliviously disregarding the fact that their violent struggle is causing the unstable ground to swallow them even faster, they ferociously persist in their conflict while we, as mere onlookers, are left to wonder how a rivalry can grow to such an anaesthetized state.

Today, however, this type of mutual hate, rage, fear, and desire for destruction is notably easier to imagine. As we move forward with the exceptional level of pernicious disdain, contemptuous neocolonialism, and the increasingly unchecked despotic megalomaniacal tyranny, it’s becoming progressively more evident that civil unrest is not just a precursor of events to come, but a blueprint from which we have less and less choice from which to deviate.