> Beauty has been stolen from the people and is being sold back to them as luxury
Beauty in common life is always beautiful, however this is not clear enough. It is time for beauty or the capacity for enjoying life outside of labor, that has been stolen from the people, and only after then are people being sold a counterfeit called "content" and "product", sometimes a luxury good and other times an equivalent to pornography. Contentment leads to content. Productivity leads to product.
The question becomes, HOW do they "steal time for beauty" then? Inability to exercise freedom within the liminal space of work (Arendt's craft vs labor)? The economy and work manifesting as a dystopic force rather than a neutral one (labor theory in economics)? Lack of access of skills or tools for creating beauty (totalitarianism)? Or just that a new generation of men that does not even be able to fathom beauty to begin with ("hylics", midwits, and idiocracy)?
Wow, thanks for sharing! As someone who is deeply moved by beauty, I really resonated with this piece. Aesthetic deprivation is definitely a thing - I feel drained and lifeless when I take in too much ugliness. My coping mechanism basically involves picking up some Nabokov or Mishima, or taking a walk around an area with lovely architecture or lots of nature. Love your point about slowing down and finding beauty in the mundane though :)
"To change things you have to first accept them as they are. You have to see the territory for what it is, with clear eyes. You have to quell the impotent wishing that says if only things were different- if only circumstances had not led to things being how they are now- if only. But things are how they are. "
I was cleaning out my email inbox before getting up to make dinner. I had an email saved to refer back to. That email linked to your substack. As a substack writer myself I clicked.
The first paragraph grabbed me immediately. I went from laying down to sitting up. Yes, I believe I will subscribe.
Haha. Pleasure to have you on board, I’m The Canary. And thank you for your kind comment. But now you have jumped into this rabbit hole, I wonder how far down it you will go…
Really enjoyable read! Loved the use of the image that looked like a vessel repaired in the kinstukuroi tradition as that speaks to the beauty of brokenness. And like you, I too get unnerved and bleak in a room that is untidy or devoid of "character," yet is that true of all, or just a subset of us? Because I think back to all the homes I was in as a child that brought me anxiety, yet the families within seemed to live just fine. . . there is likely no definitive answer, just something that struck me as reading. But here's to slowing down, seeing the beautiful, and using beauty as revolution.
Thank you very much and thanks for taking the time to leave this very insightful comment. I’ve been thinking about beauty a lot recently as myself and the STSC are all collaborating to post a collecting on different essays on that topic.
The most satisfying thing of all is seeing people join my group with vague ambitions to write and then seeing them very quickly put together a website or Substack and start putting out great work that ends up being featured in theseOmnibuses and Symposiums.
Feels good to be able to give people a little nudge in the right direction.
Beauty is a gift from God--a gift from him that allows humans to observe the material world and find the immaterial or spiritual realm exists through the observations of beauty. It is no coincidence the further out society falls from God beauty also dissipates. Wonderful observations, thank you for sharing.
Thank you for reading. And I agree that beauty has a spiritual component which can never be reached by the kind of Utilitarian calculations that are supposedly behind most modern projects, architecture especially. I would have balked at such conclusions in the past, but now I see them as being pretty self-evident.
> Beauty has been stolen from the people and is being sold back to them as luxury
Beauty in common life is always beautiful, however this is not clear enough. It is time for beauty or the capacity for enjoying life outside of labor, that has been stolen from the people, and only after then are people being sold a counterfeit called "content" and "product", sometimes a luxury good and other times an equivalent to pornography. Contentment leads to content. Productivity leads to product.
The question becomes, HOW do they "steal time for beauty" then? Inability to exercise freedom within the liminal space of work (Arendt's craft vs labor)? The economy and work manifesting as a dystopic force rather than a neutral one (labor theory in economics)? Lack of access of skills or tools for creating beauty (totalitarianism)? Or just that a new generation of men that does not even be able to fathom beauty to begin with ("hylics", midwits, and idiocracy)?
Wow, thanks for sharing! As someone who is deeply moved by beauty, I really resonated with this piece. Aesthetic deprivation is definitely a thing - I feel drained and lifeless when I take in too much ugliness. My coping mechanism basically involves picking up some Nabokov or Mishima, or taking a walk around an area with lovely architecture or lots of nature. Love your point about slowing down and finding beauty in the mundane though :)
Because of this paragraph, I sat up.
"To change things you have to first accept them as they are. You have to see the territory for what it is, with clear eyes. You have to quell the impotent wishing that says if only things were different- if only circumstances had not led to things being how they are now- if only. But things are how they are. "
I was cleaning out my email inbox before getting up to make dinner. I had an email saved to refer back to. That email linked to your substack. As a substack writer myself I clicked.
The first paragraph grabbed me immediately. I went from laying down to sitting up. Yes, I believe I will subscribe.
Haha. Pleasure to have you on board, I’m The Canary. And thank you for your kind comment. But now you have jumped into this rabbit hole, I wonder how far down it you will go…
We shall see!
This reminds me that I need to make my paywalled stuff free. New approach. Maximise the width of said rabbit hole.
Really enjoyable read! Loved the use of the image that looked like a vessel repaired in the kinstukuroi tradition as that speaks to the beauty of brokenness. And like you, I too get unnerved and bleak in a room that is untidy or devoid of "character," yet is that true of all, or just a subset of us? Because I think back to all the homes I was in as a child that brought me anxiety, yet the families within seemed to live just fine. . . there is likely no definitive answer, just something that struck me as reading. But here's to slowing down, seeing the beautiful, and using beauty as revolution.
Thank you very much and thanks for taking the time to leave this very insightful comment. I’ve been thinking about beauty a lot recently as myself and the STSC are all collaborating to post a collecting on different essays on that topic.
It’ll be out on June 1st 2022 via soaringtwenties.substack.com. Free as always. I reckon you’ll enjoy it.
And yes, the vessel broken and then repaired with gold has always been something that has spoken to me.
Cheers!
Yes! I'm slowly making my way through the Beauty Symposium and enjoying each piece immensely. Thank you!
We worked out that it came to 27k words or something like that. Not bad for our first monthly collaboration..,
While that is not surprising, it must be so satisfying! Really enjoying all those several thousand words as well
The most satisfying thing of all is seeing people join my group with vague ambitions to write and then seeing them very quickly put together a website or Substack and start putting out great work that ends up being featured in theseOmnibuses and Symposiums.
Feels good to be able to give people a little nudge in the right direction.
Beauty is a gift from God--a gift from him that allows humans to observe the material world and find the immaterial or spiritual realm exists through the observations of beauty. It is no coincidence the further out society falls from God beauty also dissipates. Wonderful observations, thank you for sharing.
Thank you for reading. And I agree that beauty has a spiritual component which can never be reached by the kind of Utilitarian calculations that are supposedly behind most modern projects, architecture especially. I would have balked at such conclusions in the past, but now I see them as being pretty self-evident.
Absolutely gripping essay, thanks a lot for putting into words an unspoken, omnipresent truth of modern society.
Thanks for reading it Christophe, glad you enjoyed it. Thanks also for taking the time to leave me this comment too. Cheers.