In the great wasteland of daytime weekend TV, I was looking for the Packer-Seattle pregame when I stumbled on an infomercial -style house remodeling show. In the past, I spent quite a few years using my college degrees fixing up houses (they make great patches in drywall) and I quickly became hooked on the show - on the professional way to put in new windows, to rewire and to insulate. What strikes the viewer most in these shows, I think, are the before and after pictures: here's a kitchen space with unfinished drywall with holes in the side for blowing in insulation, there's a window without the final sashes on the frame, here's the coil of wires sticking out from the holes around a socket, and so on; changed to this beautiful remodeled kitchen by some plaster patches, sand paper, paint, and a few thin boards. That's it - that's it that changes an unwelcome but functional mess to a home beautiful.
This has occurred to me before, and people who work on houses must be somewhat like doctors who see guts and bones and blood where we see skin and lustrous hair and luscious feminine (or rock-solid masculine) forms. Yes, the beautiful, what attracts us most, are the most superficial and least functional aspects. It seems as if that which really counts is seldom as beautiful as that which entrances - even as the flower petals are more beautiful than its functional aspects, the stamen and pistol - which is itself curious, for even the insects are lured by superficial beauty. And so, if beauty is truth, then "truth" seems to be held in the most superficial aspects of a living thing; even the earth is more beautiful on its thin surface than its molten interior, this interior that is the creator of our electromagnetic field, which allows for life. Yet, no one has written an "Ode on a Deep Hole," or "Pile of Guts."
If we look at this deductively, this is indeed what we see - that beauty is superficial and unimportant. But if we look at it with a more poetic or holistic eye, we have to wonder why the sense of beauty exists at all. For flowers, as for women, beauty attracts pollinators of one sort or another - it is superficial but ultimately functional. But why do we have beauty of other kinds? Beauty of sunsets, beauty of natural and artistic or architectural or musical works? These we do not pollinate - these, in fact, seem to serve no purpose at all. And yet it is in these kinds of beauty that we find meaning in life, without which the whole thing becomes a Darwinian grind of reproducing and eating or being eaten.
From this consideration, we see that the deductive method has it all wrong - that is, that its very premise is wrong. It holds that it is functionality that counts most in this world - but that only holds for the functional, material world. What beauty tells us is that the human consciousness has turned things inside out - has focused on the functional aspects of a lower dimension. Yes, it is essential to do this or that to stay alive, but staying alive is not worth it without beauty - or the deep meaning it conveys beyond the functional. This is what beauty shows - that there is a greater, more profound aspect to existence that ultimately has little to do with (functional) life on this earth. Rather, beauty points the way, is the signpost, to an eternal world, to the source of life itself (for it is this that we live for), that is not involved directly with the machinery of material existence.
Yes, inside out - the guts are more important to us than beauty to stay alive - and yet, it is beauty that we live for. It is also a functional mindset that keeps us, well, functional, but it is the non-functional, more holistic abstract thoughts that give us intellectual meaning. And yes, it is unfair - that that which nature teaches us so that we might stay alive leads us away from the source of life itself - away from beauty, which stretches towards truth, which stretches towards cosmic unity and eternal life. It is unfair, but the way it is, and the reason the spiritual masters seem so ridiculously twisted in their words - the meek shall inherit the earth? The rich are the poorer ones in heaven - or karmic cycles? The proud and the powerful and the successful are the least likely to pass through that eye of the needle? So it seems, that the whole mess of life is a twisted roller coaster - the superficial is worthless show, and yet points towards that which is greater than functionality. That's why life has been called a trap. But we might rather see it as a puzzle - a beautiful, sometimes painful, always unique, puzzle. FK
This has occurred to me before, and people who work on houses must be somewhat like doctors who see guts and bones and blood where we see skin and lustrous hair and luscious feminine (or rock-solid masculine) forms. Yes, the beautiful, what attracts us most, are the most superficial and least functional aspects. It seems as if that which really counts is seldom as beautiful as that which entrances - even as the flower petals are more beautiful than its functional aspects, the stamen and pistol - which is itself curious, for even the insects are lured by superficial beauty. And so, if beauty is truth, then "truth" seems to be held in the most superficial aspects of a living thing; even the earth is more beautiful on its thin surface than its molten interior, this interior that is the creator of our electromagnetic field, which allows for life. Yet, no one has written an "Ode on a Deep Hole," or "Pile of Guts."
If we look at this deductively, this is indeed what we see - that beauty is superficial and unimportant. But if we look at it with a more poetic or holistic eye, we have to wonder why the sense of beauty exists at all. For flowers, as for women, beauty attracts pollinators of one sort or another - it is superficial but ultimately functional. But why do we have beauty of other kinds? Beauty of sunsets, beauty of natural and artistic or architectural or musical works? These we do not pollinate - these, in fact, seem to serve no purpose at all. And yet it is in these kinds of beauty that we find meaning in life, without which the whole thing becomes a Darwinian grind of reproducing and eating or being eaten.
From this consideration, we see that the deductive method has it all wrong - that is, that its very premise is wrong. It holds that it is functionality that counts most in this world - but that only holds for the functional, material world. What beauty tells us is that the human consciousness has turned things inside out - has focused on the functional aspects of a lower dimension. Yes, it is essential to do this or that to stay alive, but staying alive is not worth it without beauty - or the deep meaning it conveys beyond the functional. This is what beauty shows - that there is a greater, more profound aspect to existence that ultimately has little to do with (functional) life on this earth. Rather, beauty points the way, is the signpost, to an eternal world, to the source of life itself (for it is this that we live for), that is not involved directly with the machinery of material existence.
Yes, inside out - the guts are more important to us than beauty to stay alive - and yet, it is beauty that we live for. It is also a functional mindset that keeps us, well, functional, but it is the non-functional, more holistic abstract thoughts that give us intellectual meaning. And yes, it is unfair - that that which nature teaches us so that we might stay alive leads us away from the source of life itself - away from beauty, which stretches towards truth, which stretches towards cosmic unity and eternal life. It is unfair, but the way it is, and the reason the spiritual masters seem so ridiculously twisted in their words - the meek shall inherit the earth? The rich are the poorer ones in heaven - or karmic cycles? The proud and the powerful and the successful are the least likely to pass through that eye of the needle? So it seems, that the whole mess of life is a twisted roller coaster - the superficial is worthless show, and yet points towards that which is greater than functionality. That's why life has been called a trap. But we might rather see it as a puzzle - a beautiful, sometimes painful, always unique, puzzle. FK
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