A virgin world dominates the first panel of Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Newly blossomed trees and plants spring forth, filled with fruits and flowers. Animals who have just been brought into existence explore their new natural paradise. Birds everywhere take flight to explore the great expanse of the new world. However, just below the golden tower where some of their kin circle up towards the heavens, a group of birds on the ground huddled together seem to be drawn back toward an egg while a larger bird stands watching. This behavior contrasts with almost the rest of the panel and potentially foreshadows what will come in the future.
   Humanity is widely perceived to be at a significant turning point with the emergence of the internet, the new digital age, and artificial intelligence. These new technologies have revolutionized our lives by taking hundreds of tasks and activities off our hands. With simply a tap, we can get food delivered to our home or endless entertainment, while digital security systems ensure our safety and automated thermostats ensure our comfort. Artificial intelligence is only perpetuating this pattern, perhaps best demonstrated by transhumanists who believe the natural evolution of the human race is to combine with A.I. In his book, The Disappearance of Rituals, Byung-Chul Han gives his thoughts on humanity's current moment. Han argues that we are losing the traditions and rituals that make us who we are and provide meaning. He also points out that rituals prevent narcissism, another culprit for our increased desire to consume. This commodification of emotion into a production and consumption cycle disrupts our society's interpersonal aspect. 
   However, the birds drawn toward the egg seem overcome by the same desires many humans do now. They wish to shed their obligations of choice and free will for protection and comfort. By returning to the egg from which they came, they abandon the paradise presented to them, instead choosing to surrender all of the privileges and obligations of life to the one place they are familiar with, their egg. This reflects Plato's Allegory of the Cave, where humans sit watching only the shadows of the real world but are content to remain there, not wanting to be blinded by the light of the truth.
   I transferred this narrative from the birds to humans using images demonstrating the parallels between the two paths. I used the wojak meme, which symbolizes a soul lost and purposeless in a world where he has everything at his fingertips and yet nothing that he wants. Next, I incorporated images from Bo Burnham's Inside of him enthralled by a screen producing content. After that, the wojak figure is in the January 6th riot, a perfect symbol of people starved of purpose trying to find one for themselves. And finally, he enters the cave where all he can consume is broadcast media instead of the real world. Shakespeare's Prospero takes the place of the larger bird watching over this process. He is a controller and an orchestrating representing the mysterious powers that the wojak is so desperate to fight and yet submits to. This journey shows how it is often easier to surrender anything outside that self while trying to escape oneself. Timothy Morton writes about this exact phenomenon, "the true escape from narcissism would be a dive further into it." Today, the crisis Han recognizes is this dive into narcissism which he believes to be destroying the fabric of our civilization. Bosch also seems to agree, for even their egg cannot save those birds from the impending doom in the coming panels. The only creatures who manage to escape are the birds who choose to fly and can be seen through the smoke of the burning world.