I have read this essay before, but not this specific one. I am in agreement with the author. Except for the finality of it. Death is not the end. We have to kill this navel-gazing before something new can grow from it. There was good reason for the navel-gazing and the asshole-gazing of the last century. We never had the freedom for it, and we needed it. It helped us grow. But our planet is shaking, and it's going to shake us off, because that is the business that our planet is in, and we abide. Fragile will be what majestic was. We are going to look up. We are going to look forward. We are going to look out. Our crisis isn't going to be destruction. It's going to be transformation.We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of western European painting. Instead of making “cathedrals” out of Christ, man, or “life,” we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.