From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Wed Jun 16 2004 - 13:20:02 BST
Hi All,
More notes on Beauty, Art and DQ
--Schopenhauer is one of my favorite philosophers. I like him because, to
quote Will Durant , "He saw that the ultimate good is beauty, and that
ultimate joy lies in creating and cherishing the beautiful."
--Is there "progress" in art?. No. There has never been, nor possibly
ever be, a more profound depiction of animals than on the caves of
Lascaux. Beauty doesn't improve with time.
--Making music for cultural impact is simply money grubbing or political
propaganda. Making music to reflect the goodness of ultimate beauty has
always been every artist's challenge, today more than ever. What passes
for music in today's "culture" was best described by Al Capp: "A product
of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."
Case in point: the Superbowl half time show.
--There is a form of understanding beyond the scientifically intellectual,
the Mu understanding, thinking without thought, the aesthetic experience
of Dynamic Quality, beyond words but real.
--I have felt the "lightness" of DQ infrequently but certainly something I
don't quickly forget. One instance occurred to me while standing in front
of a small painting by Monet at the San Francisco museum. In fact, now
that I think about it, most of my "transformations" have been brought
about when experiencing art of one kind or another-- painting, sculpture,
music, literature. A recent example is now in the forum, a short story by
John Galsworthy simply entitled, "Quality." As I read the final lines, I
felt a sudden connection with the beauty of immediate reality so strong
that it brought tears to my eyes.
--There's an MOQ attitude that's different from SOM, an attitude of "Push
on until you capture the beauty of the thing, because if it isn't
beautiful, you really haven't got it yet." Great scientists, dedicated
SOMers all, have this attitude. They understand its importance. They may
even realize that without this element of quality, their endeavors within
the SOM structure and the structure itself may ultimately fail.
--Just when I think I have it all intellectually figured out, I'm realize
fooling myself. There will always be a gaping hole in our efforts to
explain reality if for no other reason than we cannot stand outside of it
to see all of it. Our models omit the mind that creates the model. If that
isn't enough to give pause to those who think they can explain what makes
the world go around, they should remember that at the bottom of physics
one disappears into the hole of the Uncertainty Principle, and at the
bottom of math and logic an even larger bottomless crevice called the
Incompleteness Theorem stands ready to swallow all who claim to have the
answers. Any philosophy or worldview can be shredded by both intellectual
and emotional attacks, usually combined for added force. Even "objective"
science is under fire by the guns of the postmodernists who claim as a
fact that there are no facts. The more I try to get it all down pat, the
more I realize the effort is a chimera. Except for one thing. Beauty. It
was beauty that began my quest for answers years ago, and it is still
beauty that sustains me through the swirling darkness of doubt. When words
fail, beauty begins. It renders explanation and understanding besides the
point. Beauty (and its companion, art) originally attracted me to Pirsig's
Metaphysic of Quality, for I associate quality with beauty. The error and
folly lies in the attempt to verbalize what can't be. Pirsig admits as
much. Writing philosophy-then arguing about it is degenerate. Ah, but
being human, we do it anyway. To borrow a phrase, the only person who
doesn't pollute the beauty of the world with intellect is a person who
hasn't yet been born. The rest of us have to settle for being something
less pure.
Best,
Platt
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