I’ve been thinking about something. In my lifetime, growing up Christian fundamentalist, I’ve seen two of the three Transcendentals twisted and wrested into what they were not. I’ve seen the word “Truth” used to describe the rankest heresy. I’ve seen the word “Goodness” used to hide the grossest doctrinal and moral evil. But Beauty isn’t corruptible as the other two. And so Beauty has always been a Jacob’s Ladder for me, the way I understood God through the beauty of Nature and poetry and Bach and great art. And as I have come to know God through Beauty, I have learned to wield the spear of Ithuriel and separate the precious from the vile in the Truth and Goodness transcendentals of my acquaintance.
I agree beauty is magnificent and the first among the transcendentals but I do not believe it’s immune as you say. Wagner is glorious music, some of my favorite and the nazis used it to their advantage for an historical example.
I think it’s just a sign of the times that most of us “think” beauty and aesthetics is purely related to visual and auditory. When I read older writers it seems like there was a general understanding that aesthetics applies to all our choices. What is true is also good and is also beautiful. We still use beautiful to describe something like a story of charitable action… but it’s our thinking that seems to have hardened the boundaries around these concepts instead of that they are just different linguistic perspectives on the same unity we are aiming at. The risk is that we can hyper focus on one thing like functionality or efficiency… which have aesthetic value but misses the mark when there is a disregard for visual beauty. Similarly prioritizing visual aesthetics in a building with too much disregard to functionality or efficiency will also miss the mark of beautiful. Beauty requires attention to all aesthetic choices in the specific context.
Beauty, Grace, Wisdom are relational as opposed to relative. Jonathon, please talk to Forrest Landry about Love, Trinity, Free Will, Choice! And perhaps include Vervaeke/Hall/Schindler?
The faculty of thinking is NOT in the brain, thinking is spiritual faculty not a material sensitive one. Or brain is a seat for our internal material senses, the intelect abstracts from the sensitive compilation of all the internal senses and thinks in the spirit and then after that it comes back to our body, so when you have that experience of sensing a bad situation you are in fact thinking, and it happens very fast because it is a spiritual faculty.
“And for Aaron's sons thou shalt make coats, and thou shalt make for them girdles, and bonnets shalt thou make for them, for glory and for beauty.” -Ex. 28:49
Yes... you can't divorce the good and the true from the beautiful. If the general can't recognize the moral ugliness of certain decisions how could he be trusted to make the right decisions in a difficult situation of war?
One person's poverty is a moral failure on the part of many, including but not limited to the person themselves, family, friends, the Government, other Governments, the worldly systems in place, Satan, "decent" people who will do nothing about it, etc.
Monoculture and excess…kinda like nepotism sometimes..huh? (The neighbor was a stripper..her apartment was a pigsty…where she got pretty?! I don’t care if her daddy was a cop or a pimp, something was ugly about the situation..pretty girl/ugly situation.) We’re gonna take drugs to overcome hangovers?!..really? “Sensationalists”💋
not true on the level of the individual --- good leaders are often insensitive to things like beauty/feelings/negative emotion. This enables them to be good leaders (extreme example: house is burning down, make a split second decision to leave a man behind and save the rest). Artists and those sensitive to/able to create beauty are often _bad_ leaders of men when you zoom out past the level of the individual this is true though --- for example, the mayor might not have artistic sense, but the architect who builds town hall does
I’ve been thinking about something. In my lifetime, growing up Christian fundamentalist, I’ve seen two of the three Transcendentals twisted and wrested into what they were not. I’ve seen the word “Truth” used to describe the rankest heresy. I’ve seen the word “Goodness” used to hide the grossest doctrinal and moral evil. But Beauty isn’t corruptible as the other two. And so Beauty has always been a Jacob’s Ladder for me, the way I understood God through the beauty of Nature and poetry and Bach and great art. And as I have come to know God through Beauty, I have learned to wield the spear of Ithuriel and separate the precious from the vile in the Truth and Goodness transcendentals of my acquaintance.
This was so eloquently explained. Very poetic....
@@theauntofdragonsI’m a poet and a novelist! Not published yet but working on it!
I agree beauty is magnificent and the first among the transcendentals but I do not believe it’s immune as you say. Wagner is glorious music, some of my favorite and the nazis used it to their advantage for an historical example.
Feel free to disagree with me, it reminds me of how hip hop influences individuals to behave poorly now....
Beauty is unity
I think it’s just a sign of the times that most of us “think” beauty and aesthetics is purely related to visual and auditory. When I read older writers it seems like there was a general understanding that aesthetics applies to all our choices. What is true is also good and is also beautiful. We still use beautiful to describe something like a story of charitable action… but it’s our thinking that seems to have hardened the boundaries around these concepts instead of that they are just different linguistic perspectives on the same unity we are aiming at. The risk is that we can hyper focus on one thing like functionality or efficiency… which have aesthetic value but misses the mark when there is a disregard for visual beauty. Similarly prioritizing visual aesthetics in a building with too much disregard to functionality or efficiency will also miss the mark of beautiful. Beauty requires attention to all aesthetic choices in the specific context.
Beauty, Truth, Love, Justice, and Being...
Beauty, Grace, Wisdom are relational as opposed to relative. Jonathon, please talk to Forrest Landry about Love, Trinity, Free Will, Choice! And perhaps include Vervaeke/Hall/Schindler?
Beauty is imbued, even laced, with gods love/essence
I believe that as a Christian we need to pursue True Beauty, True Strength, True Love
Now what the world says as beauty, strength, & love
Embedded in beauty is meaning, order, & purpose
The faculty of thinking is NOT in the brain, thinking is spiritual faculty not a material sensitive one. Or brain is a seat for our internal material senses, the intelect abstracts from the sensitive compilation of all the internal senses and thinks in the spirit and then after that it comes back to our body, so when you have that experience of sensing a bad situation you are in fact thinking, and it happens very fast because it is a spiritual faculty.
“And for Aaron's sons thou shalt make coats, and thou shalt make for them girdles, and bonnets shalt thou make for them, for glory and for beauty.” -Ex. 28:49
The purpose of beauty, from the perspective of evolution, would be signifying that something has a survival benefit beyond the immediate or obvious.
depends on the task. do you want your generals to have "aesthetic sensibility" in a war?
Yes... you can't divorce the good and the true from the beautiful. If the general can't recognize the moral ugliness of certain decisions how could he be trusted to make the right decisions in a difficult situation of war?
@@AbdullahMikalRodriguez beauty in war? Well that is certainly hard topic...
Yeah. But is like poverty a moral failure? Is it indicative of a failure to apprehend the beautiful or a dissonance between you and god?
One person's poverty is a moral failure on the part of many, including but not limited to the person themselves, family, friends, the Government, other Governments, the worldly systems in place, Satan, "decent" people who will do nothing about it, etc.
Monoculture and excess…kinda like nepotism sometimes..huh?
(The neighbor was a stripper..her apartment was a pigsty…where she got pretty?! I don’t care if her daddy was a cop or a pimp, something was ugly about the situation..pretty girl/ugly situation.)
We’re gonna take drugs to overcome hangovers?!..really?
“Sensationalists”💋
not true on the level of the individual --- good leaders are often insensitive to things like beauty/feelings/negative emotion. This enables them to be good leaders (extreme example: house is burning down, make a split second decision to leave a man behind and save the rest).
Artists and those sensitive to/able to create beauty are often _bad_ leaders of men
when you zoom out past the level of the individual this is true though --- for example, the mayor might not have artistic sense, but the architect who builds town hall does
Guess I'm going for a liberal arts degree 😅