Surprisingly Geometric
October 7, 2018·0 comments·In Brief
Status symbols in 18th century England came in the form of livestock paintings showing animals that were startlingly rectangular, geometrically perfect, and almost certainly impossible. The question is simple: were these paintings documents of actual improvement, or carefully constructed fictions used to justify ever more extreme breeding practices? The answer reveals something troubling about how small truths become the foundation for much larger lies.
• Gentleman farmers commissioned paintings of their livestock that bore little resemblance to biological reality. These weren't casual decorations but status symbols meant to display agricultural improvement and mastery. The idealized geometry of the animals suggested control and progress.
• Selective breeding did produce real changes in livestock over time, but the paintings exaggerated them wildly. Artists weren't documenting what existed; they were visualizing what farmers hoped to achieve. This gap created permission to imagine even more extreme possibilities.
• The cycle fed itself in dangerous ways. Fantastical paintings became the models for the next generation of breeding choices. Reality and aspiration merged until no one could clearly distinguish between them anymore.
• What looks like documentation was actually persuasion designed to flatter the patron. The paintings didn't prove progress; they promised it. Each image was a small truth amplified into a much grander claim.
• This pattern raises an uncomfortable question about how we distinguish between incremental reality and constructed narrative in our own time. When small truths get weaponized to justify increasingly extreme positions, how do we recognize it while it's happening?
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