Beneath it All

What does it mean to be human? My panel to its simplicity is seeing beyond certain things in life. Each of the items on my panel were used as basic symbols to represent things in life that I believe the majority of humanity does not see beyond that almost makes them seem un-human. There is a cut out of pills in the corner that has the text, “Another day, don’t forget to take the soma”. This represented the use of drugs in today’s society and how people are addictive to things like anti-depressants giving them a false perception on reality. Although there are people that are biologically needy of certain drugs, I am specifically talking about people that abuse drugs. People who abuse drugs make the people who need them seem like abusers as well. I’m sure that there are a large amount of people that do not need prescription drugs but use them anyway to get that false insight on life that make things easier to get through. Another symbol used in my panel was Christ imagery with the stem of a flower going over the skulls head like thorns. I think that religion is a very important motivator in human behavior but sometimes I think that it may be the only motivator in people’s lives that causes them to lose a sense of self. Sometimes people use religion to justify actions, just like history shows us. Next is the symbol of the dollar bill, which I used to represent America in particular, this I connected with religion and another symbol in the panel which is the lips pasted onto the skull. There's a lot of different elements of underlying fascism in America, and one of them is always in organized religion. Also the idea that people are always trying to convince you that you have to be beautiful in order to fit in, you have to use a certain type of toothpaste, you have to use a certain type of shampoo or drive a certain car for people to accept you. I think that being human has to do with seeing being these few examples and finding one’s own status quo. The skull in the panel is just me exaggerating on the emphasis of seeing underneath the things that I have explained. The final symbol in the panel is the evolution of human kind. How the pattern I see is the monkey, the man and then the gun. I think mankind flatters itself by thinking it's the final evolution. Because I think we'll see in the next few years that man will create an intelligence that could replace him. Technology is taking over humanity; the gun is the representation of a new being because people are driven by power just like in “Crime and Punishment”. In conclusion, I f do not feel that to be human one has to eliminate these things in life but one has to know how to use these things in life as long as one keeps a sense of self. You can either be used by things in life or you can use them. Whichever way you want to look at it.