Hope amid decay …

… Down in the Depths - by Mark Anthony Signorelli. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… all the great movements in the history of the human spirit began like this: by rejecting the limits imposed by the decadent culture of the age, and returning to the accomplishments of the great souls that went before us, in order to learn a better way of being in the world.  It is not lost on me either that many of those accomplishments were achieved in times of confusion and violence, and stand as a kind of everlasting indictment of the human crudity that repeatedly leads to confusion and violence.  So I have much hope.