The Modern-Day Baroque - The Nicest Window-Dressing Ever
Do you remember in your college humanities class learning about the Baroque period, that time around the 1600s when everything belonging to the rich and powerful became garishly ornate? All the art, design, architecture, and music just got so much more decoratively entrancing. If you remember the details about why that all happened at that time, it was really all just part of the Counter Reformation, a way for the Roman Catholic Church to augment its performance art duties in the most attractive way it could. For if you remember the Reformation Reformation, Rome noticed a lot of people reading the Bible and seeing God's Kingdom was nothing like what Rome told them it was. So, to rein them back in, Rome had to do something to make things more appealing, more dazzling, more compelling to keep them in the club and paying good money to keep the religious racket thriving. All the spectacle of all that Rome has promoted through the centuries is no different than what happens in th...