TrueLife - The Ideal of Beauty

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

The idea of beauty Vs The ideal of beauty. Is beauty consumptive or contemplative? Permanent or Fleeting?

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope your day is beautiful. Hope the sun is shining. The birds are singing. Hope you got to wake up next to the person you love.

And I hope someone throughout this day does something for you unexpected. I hope you get to see the beauty in life. And that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today is not so much the idea of beauty, which we will talk about. However, we will also talk about the ideal of beauty and imagination. And some of the issues I see with those three things in the world today. I got a lot of these ideas from a beautiful book called Saving Beauty by Young Chul Hahn, who was a really remarkable philosopher. I highly recommend people check it out.

Let's start with the aesthetic of beauty. I think it can be determined by a sort of auto-erotic subjectivity. I think that there is a pleasure felt in perceiving. beauty. But what is beauty? Is beauty the attractiveness of stimulation? When you see a beautiful woman or a beautiful man or a beautiful sunset, are you attracted to it? Is it the stimulus about it? Are you pulled in by its gravity? Are you drawn into it? What is that force? that pulls you towards it. Is it a force at all?

Is it contemplative? Or is it consumptive? I think there's a distinction there. When you see something beautiful, is it something that allows you to enter a state of contemplation? Are you thinking, wow, this person is so beautiful, or this moment is so beautiful?

Or are you consuming it? Is it something you're taking in and breaking down and it's giving you sustenance? I would argue that it's not consumptive. That the consumptive nature is apathetical to beauty. Consuming beauty is a destructive way of taking in beauty. I feel the contemplative way of taking in beauty. I feel the contemplative nature of beauty is much more rewarding, and I think that that is where the ideal of beauty comes into play. I think in today's world, when we are bombarded by stimuli, whether it is magazines or pornography or smooth, shiny sculptures, I think this idea of beauty is in contrast.

to the ideal of beauty. It's the, it's this onslaught of stimuli. It's the never-ending barrage of forms, regardless of how pretty they are that make beauty disappear. I think in a contemplative nature, it's imperative that you have time to connect what it is about that which you saw to contemplate, to understand, to draw upon other ideas of what make that thing you think is beautiful,

the ideal of beauty. It takes time to connect other ideas. It takes time to thoroughly understand why you think something is beautiful, whether it's a beautiful, woman whose face is nearly symmetrical or slightly, a slightly bent smile when she sees something she loves. Or maybe it's a tree that slightly blocks out the sunset on a warm summer's day. But there's so many things working together that make something beautiful. And that's why it's not consumptive.

consumptive or consumption of beauty is a degradation of beauty into a sex symbol or sexiness. I often use the idea of, in a recent podcast, I was speaking about Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. And while both, in my opinion, I think Kim Kardashian is an attractive woman. She's very pretty. But she's not the ideal of beauty. She's like the outer wrapper. She has a container in which she keeps herself as a sex symbol. And that's why she could never be in a relationship that works because she bases her life.

She is defined as a sex symbol. And it's in it interesting that she found a status symbol to come. connect with. In some ways, those are the mirror image of one another, and they're a perfect couple for the short time that they can be together. A sex symbol could never stay in a relationship because it takes away from the very foundation of what they are. A sex symbol getting married takes away from their sexiness and thus erodes the very nature of who they are. A status symbol could never stay married or stay in one relationship because it takes away from the foundation of who they are. In order for them to maintain the status that they have, they must continue to be ever reaching forward, conquering new heights.

And one can't be a family man or a family woman and still hold on to the title of sex symbol and status symbol. at least not at the rate they were before they found themselves in a relationship. When I think about beautiful forms, I think about the way nature speaks to us figuratively. I think about the language of nature and the gift of deciphering its secret writing corresponds directly to our moral feelings. Again, we're back to the contemplative nature. the language, the silent pause, or the moments it takes to thoroughly understand what it is about this object or person or thing that is so beautiful. And isn't it interesting the thoughts that come up when you begin thinking about the ideal of beauty?

It's almost like there's a giant shift in your focus. For me, I feel like after thinking about the ideal of beauty, I find the colors are a little brighter. The bird's song is a little sweeter. My life is a little bit better. The normal idea of beauty is a species-specific norm. A shape appears beautiful if it conforms to this norm and ugly if it altogether deviates from it. Not only the human species, but any species, has its own normal idea of beauty. It is merely the correctness in the presentation of the species, an archetype,

according to which a species reproduces itself. A face which corresponds to the normal idea of beauty is a perfectly regular, smooth face which cannot contain anything specifically characteristic. It expresses more the idea of the species, than anything specific to a person. It expresses more the idea of the species than anything specific to a person. It expresses more the idea of the species

than anything specific to a person. As opposed to the normal idea of beauty, the ideal of beauty is unique to the human species. As opposed to the normal idea of beauty, the ideal of beauty is unique to the human species. It is the visible expression of moral ideas which inwardly govern human beings. It is due to this. It is the ideal of beauty, the uniqueness to the human species.

The visible expression of moral ideas which inwardly govern human beings. The ideal of beauty, this ideal of beauty, evades any form of being consumed. The idea of beauty is something that can't be consumed. The ideal of beauty is something that evades consumption. If you just take a moment to think about that, how does your idea of beauty match up with your ideal of beauty? of beauty. What are you surrounded by? Do you have ideas of beauty in your life? Or are you operating and in union with the ideal of beauty? The ideal of beauty does not allow for any sensory

charm to be mixed into the satisfaction in its object, while it nevertheless allows a great interest to be taken in it. Maybe a good way to think about the ideal. of beauty is to think about it as the intellectualized judgment of taste which rests on the unification of taste with reason, the beautiful with the good. It takes me back to the ideas of that which we are bombarded by, the beautiful ugliness that surrounds us. It's the shell of beauty. It's a beautiful wrapper, but underneath the wrapper is a...

maggot infested old wiped out carcass it is the illusion of beauty it is the promise or the illusion I think the illusion is better than the promise the illusion of beauty is a far cry from the ideal of beauty sometimes I think

the power of imagination imagination, the power of visualizing, the ability to thoroughly understand the morality of the best life you can live are factors that allow you to see the ideal of beauty. The imagination is important for you to begin thinking about what you're capable of. Only when you begin to understand what you're capable of, can you begin to invite the true beauty into your life? Because how else would you, if you don't know what you're capable of, you're not aware of the beauty,

the ideal of beauty that someone else or something else may be capable of providing to you. It seems to me with my limited lifetime on this planet of 47 years that the idea of beauty has changed throughout time. Maybe there is a morality of the beautiful. Today it seems maybe there's a lack of morality of the beautiful. It seems to me, at least historically, for a long time, beauty was only relevant to the extent that it expressed morality and character.

Don't get me wrong. There's always been a sort of sexiness out there, but it seems to me that today the beautiful character gives way entirely to sexiness. Nineteenth-century middle class women were viewed as attractive because of their beauty, less because of what we would call today their sexual appeal. beauty was viewed as a physical and spiritual attribute and when I think as spiritual I think of almost the indescribable

but not so much in a sexiness way as in a wholesome profound way I think in that same time sexual appeal did not represent a legitimate criterion for mate selection, and in that respect represents a new criterion of evaluation detached both from beauty and from moral character, or rather in which character and psychological makeup are ultimately subsumed under sexiness. Maybe that is due to the

times and the harshness of life, or maybe that's because there was no social media or for whatever reason it seems that criterion has changed and been cheapened and has eroded the foundation of relationships you know it seems that the idea of sexiness is fleeting it's there from time to time and at different stages can be rekindled or even reimagined, but it's not permanent. There's no solid, no solidity there. And if something isn't permanent or solid, then it's not conducive to consumption.

In the world in which we live, consumption has seemed to take over so much of that which we cherish. Everything has become consumable, and in doing so has become impermanent and fleeting. These are the ways that you can accelerate consumption. So it seems the culture of consumption removes duration. Character and consumption are opposites. The ideal consumer is a person without character.

The ideal consumer is a person without character. The ideal consumer is a person without character. Lack of character enables indiscriminate consumption. Lack of character enables indiscriminate consumption.