Everyone’s fave rock’n’roll philosopher Henk-Jan is back with another piece that can crush brain cells faster than you being able to crunch enough candy to reach level 2 of your lousy Candy Crush Saga game.

Here’s to a world of flair and rock’n’roll of course!

Iconoclasts of the world unite!

These are iconoclast times. The overriding importance of images in our 21st century Western culture has prompted a reaction from people that due to the globalizing import of the internet have become part of our imagined community, without the ability to have any input in the way our global ‘good society’ is to be furnished. A particularly violent reaction, indeed a sinister ‘no taxation without representation’, has been forced upon us. We have all seen the images.

Latest in a series of propagandistic iconoclast atrocities is the destruction by IS of a collection of ancient statues from the Assyric period. 

Terrible and disgusting as these images may be, they are all but exclusively islamistic (as some seem to think). In the low countries, the protestant movement has a particular troublesome history when it comes down to iconoclasm. In 1566 raging protestants demolished a huge number of catholic churches – which indirectly led to the clash between the Spanish ruler Philips II and the Dutch provinces headed by William of Orange, eventually leading up to the independence of the Republic of the United Netherlands.

Us cheese heads are the children of iconoclasts.

To be sure, the protestant iconoclasm was not exclusively Dutch: a furious troupe of bewildered devotees also ransacked churches in Wittenberg (1522), Zürich (1523), Copenhagen (1530), Münster (1534), Genève (1535) and Augsburg (1537). So indeed, the German poet Heinrich Heine only slightly miscalculated when he argued that in The Netherlands all things happen 50 years later than elsewhere (on the other hand, in the case of modernist iconoclasm – that is: strict functionalism in art and architecture – the Netherlands was an early adaptor).

Iconoclasm is closely related to the war on the senses that was declared by Plato (see my previous blog). Indeed: when our everyday world must be considered to be an illusion, why on earth would one see any worth in pieces of art that merely copy these illusions? Moreover, when non-believers have the guts to make artistic representations of our most sacred ideas, aren’t we obliged to destroy these blasphemous copies of copies as fast ‘n furious as we possibly can? (And since we’re busy being angry, shouldn’t we also cover our women in dirty cloth so as to hide these sacrilegious natural works of art from our humble male eyes permanently?)

As already noted, the iconoclast problem has become pretty nasty recently. So it is good to know that the solution to the problem actually is rather easy.

Iconoclasts of the world unite! 

Image-hostile islamists, protestants, modernists, and whatever-ists, declare war on the senses altogether and start with yourself!

Don’t let women lure you in their caves ever again!

These sensuous bitches are up for only one thing: sex!

They want you to temporarily forget about your God and have a delight in illusive bodily pleasures!

They want to make you believe that sex is the real thing!

But you know better, don’t you?

Sex is a sensuous business!

Sex is dirty and rotten!

So praise your God!

Don’t ever have sex again!

Stop the procreation of the righteous! (and leave the illusive and sensuous world to the ignorant)

Henk-Jan Hoekjen