RSS SPIRIT

Beauty is an expression of health and order. Symmetry is beauty's primary manifestation. Intense organization displays well managed, abundant resources; employed to build and maintain. All sex-having life forms are attracted to beauty as it is probably the most basic display of reproductive fitness.

Because of the emptiness that overwhelms the times, beauty has become paramount. Its status has become unnaturally supreme. Why? Because in times where people existentially are empty, everybody reaches out for the one thing that is healthy and provides order just by existing.

By this reckoning, the more unhealthy and chaotic the society the more it will value beauty. For perhaps beauty stands alone as the one universal unifying element. Its value is self-evident and desired by all in equal measure.

The crisis of our last hundred years or so can be perceived in terms of beauty and horror. The horrors we have wreaked and demanded are perhaps equalled by the beauty created and demanded.

In this light the crisis of aesthetics in the fine arts becomes clear. Why beauty when it is mere impulse away from the horror? No better than a randomly created instinct?

Our culture's incessant instinct toward beauty is a symptom, not a sin in itself. We are but empty primates tearing ourselves to bits, so much about us is chaotic and random. We need a rhythm, a shape, an organization cut from the cold rock.

Healthy cultures can accept ugly, Aristotle's legendary ugliness did not stop the Greeks from absorbing his dialectics. Are ugly people allowed any rights in this culture? Whatever few are surely dwindling.

Beauty is mere manifestation of the universal intelligence, whatever that is. We should properly revere but not worship it, as it is a fickle and shallow energy. Has not every culture a myth that teaches of the perils of those who become entranced by beauty?

Narcissus in the era of mass destruction.