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The earliest examples of art turning outward to creatures and power objects, before, in western cultures, quickly, and possibly with the rise of self-awareness, turned to self-reflection, depicting ourselves, our scenes with greater amounts of care, to now a contemporary world flush with depictions of ourselves, painting giving into the modern flora of advertising, adorning everything. If you judge narcissism by the amount of self-depiction in a culture, western culture rules. Historical painters' technical inventions are feats driving for vain indulgence: to render itself better. The eternal drive of the painter as masturbation in a mirror. All this self-reflection should beget self-awareness, but it doesn't, as colonialism is but one example, instead spreading ourselves everywhere, put pictures of ourselves everywhere, giant images of ourselves adorn everything, we erect them in stores to sell ourselves things, we paint heavily modified babes on our cars.
