Platt
What absolute ( yes I do mean that )twaddle!!, unfortunately the link is a
dead end, so I can't read the original article but there is so much wrong
with the excerpts you have chosen, I am almost at a loss where to start...
first I would like to tell you a litlle of my credentials. I am a
photographer now, but trained as a scientist originally, so I guess you
could say beauty is a huge part of my day to day job, for over 12 years I
have been photographing beautiful things, flowers, landscapes, models and
yet more models....
so i agree that beauty is important, but it is mostly subjective, is
idiosyncratic to the individual...
"beauty is in the eye of the beholder"
...and certainly is not culturally universal, if it was then there would
only ever be one school of painting, one school of sculpture, one idea in
every form of creative expression, every beauty/fashion model would look the
same, and we would all want to marry the same person...
"the absence of beauty in my life" I doubt is a valid plea, in the eyes of
any jury in the world, and unlikely to be the cause of any social problems,
remember "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
Wherever you are, you can find beauty in something, we all do respond to
beauty, I suspect there would be some agreement as to what constitutes being
beautiful. But again we cannot over emphasise the power of our biological
imperative to reproduce in this aspect. " what about natural beauty ", I
hear you say, again totally subjective, if you were brought up in the middle
east, you would find the beauty of the desert, ranks far above the beauty of
fall in Maine.
This is true in every category of objects with beauty assigned to them, by a
beholder.
On a personal note, beauty is commonplace, there is far more beauty than
ugliness in the world, but what there is very little of is elegance.
I don't know if beauty comes from elegance or vice versa, but I think it is
this ( elegance) more than beauty, that I respond to.
I think i'll leave it there for now
Rod
on 2/25/02 2:51 PM, Platt Holden at pholden@sc.rr.com wrote:
> Hi All:
>
> Those of you who have been around for awhile on this site know my
> belief in the power of beauty and my advocacy of art as a possible 5th
> level in the MOQ. This morning I happened across a recent article in
> the Washington Post about the revival of beauty in American culture
> and learned to my surprise that there is a special show now at the Met
> Museum in NY entitled "Extreme Beauty" as well as a number of books
> on the subject of beauty recently or about to be published.
>
> A seminal manifesto that helped begin the renewed interest in beauty
> among the movers and shakers in academia was authored by
> Frederick Turner of the University of Texas entitled "Beauty: The Value
> of Values." Here is a brief excerpt:
>
> "Beauty is not marginal and unimportant, not merely subjective, not an
> effect of something else such as social power or libido, and not
> idiosyncratic to the individual. It is central to all meaningful human life
> and achievement, it gives access to the objective reality of the universe,
> it is an independent and powerful experience in its own right, and it is
> culturally universal. . . . Its absence in the family, in schools, and in
> public life is a direct cause of the worst of our social problems."
>
> The article sums up: "Beauty is now proclaimed as being at the heart
> of a universal human nature -- even at the core of the order of the
> universe, and the essence of life itself."
>
> Those interested can find the Post article at:
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30489-
> 2002Feb18.html
>
> I've long suspected that beauty was "the value of values." It's nice when
> you discover people agreeing with you, especially those with
> credentials in the field.
>
> If you watched the competition at the Olympics between the women
> figure skaters you just knew, even if you know nothing about the finer
> points of figure skating, that Sarah Hughes was the superior skater
> that evening. The beauty of her performance was palpable. It is that
> universal "knowing" of beauty that fascinates me. Like awareness, I
> think goes deep down in the evolutionary hierarchy and carries with it
> the power of creation itself.
>
> Platt
>
>
>
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