On Becoming a Practical Dreamer
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
A dreamer is a person with a fruitful imagination; a dreamer is practical when imagination is combined with action to produce useful products or services, yielding profits. America has been home to many practical dreamers: Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Graham Bell, Walt Disney--the list is endless. Most started life in the United States as poor immigrants or humble locals, seeking to improve their condition, surpassed their dearest dreams. A dreamer enjoys indulging his fantasies without doing anything to realize them; a realist keeps trudging along in life doing what is customary, certain, or conveniently profitable, without achieving anything of great splendor. As partners but separate individuals, dreamer and realist can function productively as well as one individual possessing both qualities. If you are not such a person, find a complimentary partner. Some of the most successful teams in the corporate world are those of the imaginative engineer and the person of business. Many marriages do well also, combining the dreamer and the pragmatist. Most of us are not practical dreamers; otherwise, we would be far more successful; but we all possess a measure of imagination and practicality, which we can enlarge if we follow right thoughts, right purposes, and right behaviors.
Most of what we think is day-dreaming, escaping our limitations and humdrum existence into worlds of unrealistic fantasies, with no chance of actualization. Thoughts are birds in flight; but they can be directed towards a goal, a destination, while retaining some of their winged power. Through the exercise of the will, even in sleep after some years of practice, you can focus your thoughts on a specific subject, and with laser strength penetrate the barrier of your problem. You can view the universe of matter and mind as a complex web of problems, a never-ending series of questions, asking like a child why, why, why. Daddy, why do things fall down? It's gravity, my child. What is gravity? Gravity is a force. What is a force, daddy? Oh shut up, can't you see I'm busy paying bills? That is the end of questioning, the beginning of routine.
Practical dreaming to create new things is the opposite of routine. Direct your thoughts to what is novel, unfamiliar, even surprising, in a strange territory. Expect to discover good things, expect you will solve your problem, expect you will be able survive the wilderness of the imagination to reach civilization. That's self-confidence, the armor for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Abraham Lincoln went through some very disappointing periods leading the Union armies in the Civil War. Despite his melancholy nature, his faith in a united America never wavered. Faith is the springboard of creative work: fervently believing in something gets you going, building, achieving; doubt lays you low in lethargy.
Yeah, but how do I acquire an active faith? I consider the accomplishments I admire, choosing one I am well suited by my nature to emulate. I admire the works of Lord Bertrand Russell; I seek to think, write, and act as he did in his life, because I have similar talents to his, although I may not be as gifted as he was. I do the best I can in my chosen direction. Whom do you admire? Do you have any true affinity for the projects you are to undertake to approach your master? If not, look elsewhere for your proper occupation. But anywhere you look, you cannot be without proper direction.
Thoughts need reins; galloping this way and that they go nowhere. To get somewhere, aim towards a specific goal, a purpose, a project to complete, at a specific point in the future. The future is shaped by our thoughts and goals to be bright, dark, or gray; a right goal helps realize a bright future for ourselves and our community. But your goal cannot be placed too far into the future; if your project is very large, requiring much time to complete, divide it into sub-goals, each one with a completion date. I know that until you get accustomed to goal setting, it will stress you, and make you anxious. Bear up, persist, the stress will lift. If you cannot meet a deadline, don't despair; next time set a reasonable time line. When we are working creatively, independently, our goals are tools, not commands from authority. Imaginative ideas incubate, on occasion requiring a longer or shorter period to hatch.
Most people don't direct their imagination. Listen to a group talking socially or even for business purposes. People talk as they think, in a confused, disorganized, random way. They don't stay with a topic of discussion for long, wondering this way and that, unless they are tightly controlled by debating rules, which often some individuals will defy to rant on and on about their pet grievances. In synergistic groups for creative work, the proctor needs to maintain discipline on members to stay on focus; yet allow enough freedom for exploration into the unknown.
The unknown, the unsolved problem, and the mystery are always unpredictable and our conquest of these cannot be programmed. We can follow, however, some general approaches. Do not get boxed in preconceived or customary ideas. Dare to go outside established boundaries. Do not assume more constraints to the problem than are actually there. Allow your imagination free flight, simply recording any and all ideas that occur without criticizing them or analyzing them at the time of brainstorming. You choose and analyze ideas later, during the critical phase that follows as which ideas are practical and which are nonsense. Sometimes, the most apparently nonsensical, far fetched, ridiculous, outlandish ideas will lead to the most important breakthroughs. Because these ideas seemed unlikely to be of value, they were ignored by other thinkers.
We cannot ignore any possibilities when exploring the unknown; the solution can be hiding anywhere in the problem manifold. Walt Disney and company called this “imagineering.” Disney's business was entertainment, to amuse children and their families. From the first primitive images of Mickey Mouse to his final classic “Mary Poppins,” Disney followed the principles of “imagineering:” engineering fantasies to satisfy his ultimate goal of entertainment, with stupendous financial success.
Before Disney, Thomas Edison mastered the art of “imagineering” with a sixth-grade education. Edison tested thousands of processes and materials to come up with a working light bulb. One of the materials for his bulb filament was a mustache hair; how ridiculous can you get? Finally, a tungsten filament did the job, but it burned too quickly to ashes in spite of the vacuum. The inventor had used the best available equipment to produce vacuum in the bulb. Did he give up? No, he designed his own vacuum pump for a far better vacuum than had existed on earth before. Success and fortune followed, with the formation of the Edison Company for the production and distribution of electric lights, starting with Wall Street of New York.
Edison was a model of well-directed persistence for success. Smart persistence on a task works because it is a rare quality; most people quit early, tired or disheartened. People generally seek instant gratification, fast, fast relief, quick weight loss, free gifts, and lucky big wins. Few are those willing to dig, dig, and dig for the gold. The Mother Lode of gold, the richest in the American West was found a few feet below the surface gold miners originally extracted, after which they quit the mine. Persistence is right behavior for the practical dreamer, poking a problem from one side, then another, and another, until the dreamer finds a weakness in the shell surrounding the problem. Try this method to break a macadamia nut with an ordinary cracker; many times you will succeed. Brute force also works if you don't have a macadamia cracker. Place the nut inside a paper bag and whack it with a hammer. Sometimes, brute force is the right action to put our dreams into profitable practice.
Brute force may be useful on occasion, but as a rule the practical dreamer is gentle and deliberate. The great innovative surgeon works with precision and care in cutting out a tumor, bringing tissues together, and suturing. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Rembrandt worked with many detailed sketches, studies, details, before putting paint on canvass or wall to create an artistic masterpiece. The astronomer searches the night sky patiently and systematically to locate an unknown celestial body that will bear the searcher's name. We should all try to be like the people weaving the famed oriental rugs with simple tools, never tiring of detail, as if time stands still for us, and eternity is in our every moment.
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Monday, February 9, 2009
Designer Living
Designer Living
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(1550 words)
Great designers of clothes and accessories, such as Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, or Oscar de la Renta in New York, Versace and Giorgio Armani in Rome, wherever they are, they have cult status; they are demigods to lovers of new fashions. Designer names are on high-priced clothing, perfumes, menus, and even wall paints, handsomely rewarding the manufacturers with great sales. What's in a fashion name, like Gucci or Bulgari? Big money, that's what. Blessed are those who fashion popular designs, for they shall be called moneymakers.
Besides making money, great designers create art you can use; art you wear, eat, play with, sit on, lie on, live in, drive, or just flaunt.
Even the devil wears Prada; but not I. Oh, yes, once I bought a pair of genuine Bulgari sunglasses from an African-Greek vendor on the streets of Athens for all of 10 euros.
Spending a lot of money on fancy doodas, well, that's best done by wealthy heirs, or people with access to other people's money, known as OPM. In the end the heirs may end up homeless in the streets, and the OPM operators in other cool places.
My brother George, a man of affluence of his own making, thinks shopping in 99-cent stores is cool; if he wants to shop upscale, he likes Big Lots or Wal-Mart. He loves to celebrate birthdays of friends and relatives, not his own. If you are on his birthday list, you are likely to receive a handsome gift from Wal-Mart, specifically designed for you in China. He doesn't like to celebrate his own birthday, as I said, not to be reminded of his years, and not to be subject to gift reprisals.
My sister and her husband go more upscale in giving gifts, such as bottles of Robert Shaw wine from Trader Joe's at $1.99 each. Others prefer fine wines from the Bordeaux region of France; oenophiles sip rare old wines like the nectar of the gods, each drop as pricey as a pearl. My ex-wife, who married well the second time, likes to drink and give wine in bottles costing eighty or more dollars each. I do even better; I buy no wine, giving a gift, not for imbibing but for inspiring, one of my celebrated (to be) essays or a copy of my self-published book, which some people nail, instead of a Sears catalog, on the wall of their outhouse.
A professional designer did the cover of my book at a cost of $500. Other designs cost more, like a Louis Vuitton handbag at $1,500, or more. My sister Alice once walked into a Vuitton store, because she saw a handbag in the window she liked a lot; it was just the bag she wanted for years. She was determined to buy it whatever the cost, which she figured about two or three hundred dollars. She walked out of the store empty-handed, pale in the face. My sister and her husband George inherited little money, but they made some of their own after a lifetime of scrimping, saving, and investing; she was in no mood to turn over a big chunk of her boodle to Louis for that handbag.
Famous chefs also are designers—of meals with varied colors, shapes, aromas, and tastes. Alice and George once dared to enter a famous restaurant with exquisite food. Several waiters in a row served them fifty-dollar platters with a few bits of colorful food laid out in the middle like modern art; after gingerly cleaning up the chef's creation, they went to Norms for dinner.
Once I had a meal at a gourmet restaurant, Roys, of Roy Yamaguchi from Hawaii. Roys was packed with people enjoying fine thirty-dollar dinners. The famous chef presented us with a fish plate, about two ounces of halibut fillet on top of a small mound of mashed potatoes, three baby string beans, and a mushroom. We ordered salad, extra at ten dollars, a salad of three tiny leaves of romaine lettuce, a sliver of carrot, and a slice of red bell pepper. It was all very delicious, gorgeous to look at and I didn't mind eating the dinner, because I did not pay for it. My brother, who was also in on the dinner, will not forget about Roys; for him it is a favorite subject of conversation.
You see, my family likes big servings of food, abbondanza, in restaurants, even if we can't eat it all, taking most of it home in a doggy bag for next day's dinner, since we regrettably have no dog. This tradition comes from my mother, who served huge meals to each one of us, enough for three people and a pig.
A big eater was the love interest of Sarah Jessica Parker's character in “Sex and the City,” whom her three women friends called Mr. Big. The four ripe women sought love, romance, and fashion in New York City. Fashions from famous designers they found in New York, but the city has a surplus of women over men. Las Vegas too has a surplus of women, seeking business. Our heroines should have gone West, say Silicon Valley, where a plethora of affluent male engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs want relationships or wives, and usually find only call girls; but such men would be dull for the New York women, because they would not know anything about the finer things in life, like Rolex watches.
Smart girls don't swoon at the sight of a rock-n-roll singer rolling his hips; they swoon at the sight of his Rolex watch gift.
I like the finer things in life too: sunsets, spring water from a spring, fruits from my garden, fresh eggs from my chickens, and classical music from KUSC, demanding only that such things are not followed by a bill; KUSC keeps pleading for donations; such pleadings fall on deaf ears—mine, when it comes to donations.
As for fashions, I am a country bumpkin. I have noticed, though, that fashion designers display their clothing creations using skeletal models. The models parade mechanically on platforms without a smile, placing one foot in front of the other, as if walking on a plank two inches wide. Models are living manikins. The designer wants a stylized presentation of clothes, no distractions from a sexy model, only display. The female and male models are beautiful; sometimes, with one of his models, the designer or artist has an affair, straight or merry. Who can resist a demigod? Picasso, the bald satyr, fathered children with some of his models—female ones, I think.
Female models are attracted to artists and designers like moths to dragon mouths. Great is the power of the artist, creator of worlds; women like to tan themselves in the sunshine of power, fame, and fortune, preferably all three combined. As for male models, usually they are attracted to other male models, or like Narcissus, to themselves.
Oh, beautiful female models with your fine bones, you stir me to great passion with your skeletons.
I'd like to go to Paris, the center of culture and luxury, to meet some of you skeletal models. Jackie Kennedy Onassis loved to dress in the haute-couture shops of Paris, France, when she was Onassis, charging millions of dollars for custom dresses. Aristotle paid the bills, not without squawking in pain.
Paris is a center for the design of fine perfumes as well as clothes. I read somewhere, probably a perfidious lie, that the French make their costliest perfumes, designed to turn the head of the coldest man, from the scent glands of skunks.
Luxury goods from Paris, Rome, New York, and London too, are designed for beautiful young women, who get them from their husbands, or boyfriends, usually much older and uglier; today, luxuries are also sold to handsome young men with rich girlfriends, older and uglier. There is also a luxury goods market for career women and men who buy and sell stocks and make fortunes; and a market for wealthy heirs of both sexes—and the gay set.
Include in the luxury designs, the little cars by Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Mercedes, each selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, with power to speed them at 200 miles per hour, whizzing on the roads of our busy cities at twenty five miles per hour.
Car designers, clothing designers, and perfume designers, what makes these famous designers so successful? Talent, hard work, training with a master, contacts, patrons—all are necessary for success. It is also helpful to be, like Versace, a little gay.
Some wealthy admirers of fine design also buy buildings; not for themselves to wear or operate, but for their alma mater or their community to display with pride. Such patrons were the Statas, who bought the Stata Center at MIT from Frank Gehry for nearly $300 million--with leaks, mold, noise, lack of privacy, and all, but a striking artistic experience for the viewer. Gehry also designed the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, sheathed in brilliant titanium sheeting, blinding and baking people on the sidewalks in front of the building. Ah, but in its design the art is superb.
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
(1550 words)
Great designers of clothes and accessories, such as Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, or Oscar de la Renta in New York, Versace and Giorgio Armani in Rome, wherever they are, they have cult status; they are demigods to lovers of new fashions. Designer names are on high-priced clothing, perfumes, menus, and even wall paints, handsomely rewarding the manufacturers with great sales. What's in a fashion name, like Gucci or Bulgari? Big money, that's what. Blessed are those who fashion popular designs, for they shall be called moneymakers.
Besides making money, great designers create art you can use; art you wear, eat, play with, sit on, lie on, live in, drive, or just flaunt.
Even the devil wears Prada; but not I. Oh, yes, once I bought a pair of genuine Bulgari sunglasses from an African-Greek vendor on the streets of Athens for all of 10 euros.
Spending a lot of money on fancy doodas, well, that's best done by wealthy heirs, or people with access to other people's money, known as OPM. In the end the heirs may end up homeless in the streets, and the OPM operators in other cool places.
My brother George, a man of affluence of his own making, thinks shopping in 99-cent stores is cool; if he wants to shop upscale, he likes Big Lots or Wal-Mart. He loves to celebrate birthdays of friends and relatives, not his own. If you are on his birthday list, you are likely to receive a handsome gift from Wal-Mart, specifically designed for you in China. He doesn't like to celebrate his own birthday, as I said, not to be reminded of his years, and not to be subject to gift reprisals.
My sister and her husband go more upscale in giving gifts, such as bottles of Robert Shaw wine from Trader Joe's at $1.99 each. Others prefer fine wines from the Bordeaux region of France; oenophiles sip rare old wines like the nectar of the gods, each drop as pricey as a pearl. My ex-wife, who married well the second time, likes to drink and give wine in bottles costing eighty or more dollars each. I do even better; I buy no wine, giving a gift, not for imbibing but for inspiring, one of my celebrated (to be) essays or a copy of my self-published book, which some people nail, instead of a Sears catalog, on the wall of their outhouse.
A professional designer did the cover of my book at a cost of $500. Other designs cost more, like a Louis Vuitton handbag at $1,500, or more. My sister Alice once walked into a Vuitton store, because she saw a handbag in the window she liked a lot; it was just the bag she wanted for years. She was determined to buy it whatever the cost, which she figured about two or three hundred dollars. She walked out of the store empty-handed, pale in the face. My sister and her husband George inherited little money, but they made some of their own after a lifetime of scrimping, saving, and investing; she was in no mood to turn over a big chunk of her boodle to Louis for that handbag.
Famous chefs also are designers—of meals with varied colors, shapes, aromas, and tastes. Alice and George once dared to enter a famous restaurant with exquisite food. Several waiters in a row served them fifty-dollar platters with a few bits of colorful food laid out in the middle like modern art; after gingerly cleaning up the chef's creation, they went to Norms for dinner.
Once I had a meal at a gourmet restaurant, Roys, of Roy Yamaguchi from Hawaii. Roys was packed with people enjoying fine thirty-dollar dinners. The famous chef presented us with a fish plate, about two ounces of halibut fillet on top of a small mound of mashed potatoes, three baby string beans, and a mushroom. We ordered salad, extra at ten dollars, a salad of three tiny leaves of romaine lettuce, a sliver of carrot, and a slice of red bell pepper. It was all very delicious, gorgeous to look at and I didn't mind eating the dinner, because I did not pay for it. My brother, who was also in on the dinner, will not forget about Roys; for him it is a favorite subject of conversation.
You see, my family likes big servings of food, abbondanza, in restaurants, even if we can't eat it all, taking most of it home in a doggy bag for next day's dinner, since we regrettably have no dog. This tradition comes from my mother, who served huge meals to each one of us, enough for three people and a pig.
A big eater was the love interest of Sarah Jessica Parker's character in “Sex and the City,” whom her three women friends called Mr. Big. The four ripe women sought love, romance, and fashion in New York City. Fashions from famous designers they found in New York, but the city has a surplus of women over men. Las Vegas too has a surplus of women, seeking business. Our heroines should have gone West, say Silicon Valley, where a plethora of affluent male engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs want relationships or wives, and usually find only call girls; but such men would be dull for the New York women, because they would not know anything about the finer things in life, like Rolex watches.
Smart girls don't swoon at the sight of a rock-n-roll singer rolling his hips; they swoon at the sight of his Rolex watch gift.
I like the finer things in life too: sunsets, spring water from a spring, fruits from my garden, fresh eggs from my chickens, and classical music from KUSC, demanding only that such things are not followed by a bill; KUSC keeps pleading for donations; such pleadings fall on deaf ears—mine, when it comes to donations.
As for fashions, I am a country bumpkin. I have noticed, though, that fashion designers display their clothing creations using skeletal models. The models parade mechanically on platforms without a smile, placing one foot in front of the other, as if walking on a plank two inches wide. Models are living manikins. The designer wants a stylized presentation of clothes, no distractions from a sexy model, only display. The female and male models are beautiful; sometimes, with one of his models, the designer or artist has an affair, straight or merry. Who can resist a demigod? Picasso, the bald satyr, fathered children with some of his models—female ones, I think.
Female models are attracted to artists and designers like moths to dragon mouths. Great is the power of the artist, creator of worlds; women like to tan themselves in the sunshine of power, fame, and fortune, preferably all three combined. As for male models, usually they are attracted to other male models, or like Narcissus, to themselves.
Oh, beautiful female models with your fine bones, you stir me to great passion with your skeletons.
I'd like to go to Paris, the center of culture and luxury, to meet some of you skeletal models. Jackie Kennedy Onassis loved to dress in the haute-couture shops of Paris, France, when she was Onassis, charging millions of dollars for custom dresses. Aristotle paid the bills, not without squawking in pain.
Paris is a center for the design of fine perfumes as well as clothes. I read somewhere, probably a perfidious lie, that the French make their costliest perfumes, designed to turn the head of the coldest man, from the scent glands of skunks.
Luxury goods from Paris, Rome, New York, and London too, are designed for beautiful young women, who get them from their husbands, or boyfriends, usually much older and uglier; today, luxuries are also sold to handsome young men with rich girlfriends, older and uglier. There is also a luxury goods market for career women and men who buy and sell stocks and make fortunes; and a market for wealthy heirs of both sexes—and the gay set.
Include in the luxury designs, the little cars by Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Mercedes, each selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, with power to speed them at 200 miles per hour, whizzing on the roads of our busy cities at twenty five miles per hour.
Car designers, clothing designers, and perfume designers, what makes these famous designers so successful? Talent, hard work, training with a master, contacts, patrons—all are necessary for success. It is also helpful to be, like Versace, a little gay.
Some wealthy admirers of fine design also buy buildings; not for themselves to wear or operate, but for their alma mater or their community to display with pride. Such patrons were the Statas, who bought the Stata Center at MIT from Frank Gehry for nearly $300 million--with leaks, mold, noise, lack of privacy, and all, but a striking artistic experience for the viewer. Gehry also designed the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, sheathed in brilliant titanium sheeting, blinding and baking people on the sidewalks in front of the building. Ah, but in its design the art is superb.
An Inquiry into the Flowering of Cultures
An Inquiry into the Flowering of Cultures
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
All cultures are valuable and worthy of study, Margaret Mead would say. All cultures are equal, interesting, and must be preserved for posterity; each contains unique elements which may prove essential to human survival and growth; that’s the truth indeed. Yet, some cultures flourish at times in human history above the norm. We had the splendor that was Greece, and the might that was Rome. Barbarian tribes nearly destroyed all that and Jewish theology put the finishing touches to the advent of the dark ages. Renaissance finally dawned in Italy, giving us da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Galileo. Then the new flowering of culture spread to the barbarian lands of Holland, Spain, France, England, Germany, Russia, and smaller nations in Europe. The proud nations of Europe later discovered other cultures of great importance that had flourished in the past: in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, Middle America, Peru, Indochina, and other lands. What was the common thread that gave rise to such extraordinary growths in art, science, technology, politics, and religion? How was this thread cut, leading to decay, apathy, ignorance, and the death of the creative mind? The thread was the reach of leading noble citizens for creativity, for excellence, and for the divine; the thread was cut when barbarians, from home or abroad, brought down those citizens.
The word in Sanskrit for noble is aryan, a word debased by Nazi ideologues. In Hinduism arya is a title of honor and respect, meaning noble or spiritual. In Greek the word “arete” was used to describe what was best in anything, indicating superlative ability and nobility, from which derived aristos (best) and aristocracy. Aryan is also related to Iran (Persia) and Zoroastrianism, a germinal religion of ancient times which gave rise to the belief in the immortality of the spirit. Being noble is to seek the best things in life. Excellence is the passion to achieve great works, in fierce competition with equally talented antagonists. The divine, the ultimate nobility, is that state of being which is full of peace, contentment, creativity, power, wisdom, great knowledge, compassion, and joy--the attributes of God.
In the past, people believed attributes of nobility were passed on to offspring through breeding, or blood. Nobles bequeathed their wealth, titles, and powerful positions to their first sons, who were sometimes idiots; the smart second or third sons went to America to build wealth for themselves. Today, genetics provides some explanations for the transfer of hereditary traits. Certainly some physical characteristics are inherited: for example, the color of eyes, hair, and skin, even stature of body and size of brain. Spiritual qualities may be a different matter. King David gave birth to Solomon; but Marcus Aurelius to Commodus. Moreover, many great men and women have come from humble backgrounds, from commoners or even serfs. Yet, with the rise of democracies throughout the world, perhaps we have swung too far in neglecting birth and breeding. We should honor and support nobility no matter what the source of it. The British are wise to confer knighthoods to people, such as Ben Kingsley, actor, son of an East Indian, who tap their source of nobility and contribute to society something of value and importance.
In 1919 Munich, the Thule Society discovered the source of nobility in Atlantis, which sank they claimed in the Northern Atlantic Ocean a million years ago; The Thule attributed much virtue to the blond, blue-eyed Nordic strain of humans. The Society sponsored Deutsche Arbeirpartei, which became the Nazi party under Adolph Hitler. Teutonic people were the master race, and every other type of human was inferior. That would leave out the ancient Greeks, and the modern European Jews, who have contributed greatly to civilization. Jesus, the Jewish carpenter, was not light skinned and blond; neither was Einstein. In every field of civilized life, European Jews excelled, yet Hitler decided they had to be exterminated. I am not a Nordic type, and most likely, you are not either. Even Southern Germans are not very blond. Blond men may be superior, but popular opinion holds that blond women are dumb. Disregarding eugenics, gentlemen prefer blonds, so blonds have more fun; that’s why so many silly women become blonds, and with contact lenses, blue-eyed too.
Blond or dark, certain strains of humanity build civilization better than others. We should encourage them to continue doing this and discourage those people who tend to destroy culture. The best way to discourage barbarians from destroying the fruits of culture is to civilize them. Ancient Romans in the West were successful to some extent doing that with the French, Western Germans, and the Anglo-Saxons; they failed in Eastern Germany (and Scotland, where Hadrian built a wall to stop them); eventually, the barbarian armies sacked Rome and took over the Holy Roman Empire. Many centuries later, in the East, the Byzantines made progress with the Arabs, but were overwhelmed by the Turks. Barbarians usually win the conflict in the end, because barbarians live in tough circumstances, become strong and aggressive, and have higher birthrates. Civilizations degenerate from ease and weakness; then barbarians destroy them. Barbarians are always charging at the gates of the city with high culture.
The French call it “haute culture,” when talking about clothing fashions. I refer to culture that noble people create, which has little to do with clothing, wooden masks for ceremonies, the igloo, or the boomerang—good things as these may be. High culture is when noble people strive to reach God, the ideal of perfection. I realize you may dispute the distinction between high culture and low. What is fine music, great painting, good science, useful technology, powerful religion or politics, all are subject to taste and fashion. But for now let us accept the opinions of teachers or critics. They instruct us to admire the achievements of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and before them the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians who invented writing and other arts. We can see in National Geographic about archaeological discoveries in Middle and South America and admire the remains of the Mayan and Inca civilizations. In the East, we can tour in person or by travelogue Cambodia’s Angkor Vat, India’s magnificent temples, Japan’s Kyoto treasures, and China’s Ming artworks. What brought about such achievements?
Nobility is essential for great achievements, but not sufficient; wealth is also necessary. You can hardly be noble without money. You cannot indulge in the arts and sciences, when you are struggling each day for bare survival. Civilizations don’t emerge in villages and farms. A good river is almost always there for a city to grow big and prosperous. A coastline with a natural harbor helps too. The Egyptian civilization was the gift of the Nile, and Babylon the gift of two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates. It seems that each great city is next to a river flowing by to supply water for irrigation, drinking and sewage disposal. Rome, Tiber. Paris, Seine. London, Thames. Vienna, Danube. Palestine, Jordan. Ancient Athens had Cephissus, small but competent. The plains of Attica were fertile, growing olives, grapes, wheat, and vegetables, which formed the early wealth of the city. The harbor of Piraeus was close and the road to it was walled in. The Athenians ventured out to the Aegean and beyond to trade with their olive oil, wine and other products. Later Athenians acquired slaves, set up factories, and exported manufactured products. Athenian navy allowed people to travel to Egypt and other centers of civilization, which were already ancient in their time. During the Persian wars the Athenians led the Greeks in victorious battles and later formed the Delian League of city states, collecting taxes and tributes for the common defense against Persians. The Persians caused no further trouble, so Pericles, elected city leader for over thirty years, used the money to create splendid cultural monuments on the Acropolis and elsewhere for the enjoyment of the people and to impress visitors. The age of Pericles is known as the Golden Age of Greece.
Pericles was a democratic leader, descended from aristocratic families, especially on his mother’s side. He was accused by enemies of being a populist, because he gave the vote to poor people and provided free theater seats for them with city money. But the plays he sponsored were tragedies by Aeschylos, Sophocles, and Euripides, with some comic relief from Aristophanes.
The sculptor Pericles favored was Phidias. Phidias was also a great painter and architect, seeking perfection in everything he created. Once he was asked why he bothered to make the backs of statues in front of walls as carefully as the fronts, since people could not see the backs. Phidias answered that the Gods could see the backs. Like da Vinci and Michelangelo in the Italian Renaissance, he was probably gay.
Being gay may give some men and women a special sensitivity that allows them to excel in the arts. Not being burdened by a family to support, gay persons may fully dedicate their lives to their art.
With the efforts of gays or straights, culture branches out, growing like a tree to any size, sprouting in all directions to infinity, eventually becoming the Deity. There can never be an end to artistic or scientific innovation. Limits occur only in the minds of spiritless people, who give up too soon. The popular arts always persist in their charming but pointless existence. Folk songs and dances go on. The handicrafts continue and philosophy becomes a collection of old sayings. When the leading people, the born aristocrats, stop striving, when they turn to pleasures and futilities, neglecting self discipline and hard work, abandoning total dedication to their chosen fields, these people decline and their society quickly follows into decay. Then tyrants, dictators, autocrats of the state take over, boxing in minds, depressing and oppressing those who would freely create new ideas. In the tree of culture whole branches dry out, dying. Perhaps most of the tree of culture withers as in the Dark Ages. But the roots seem to persist and the tree sprouts again on some other land, in some other age, when freedom of expression is again allowed.
In America, in 1776, freedom and democracy came to life again after many centuries of autocratic rule in the Old World, and with these blessings came the flowering of culture in the thirteen colonies, such as we have not seen since. Benjamin Franklin was a statesman, businessman, author, inventor, and scientist, one of the founders of electrical science. Thomas Jefferson, besides being a plantation owner and statesman, was an architect, a writer of renown with his Declaration of Independence. John Adams was an attorney and statesman with a major intellect. The bona fide genius was the elitist Alexander Hamilton, one of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, who perished in a duel with his political enemy Aaron Burr before he became 50. Hamilton contributed to the formation of a strong federal government and chief executive in the form of a president. James Madison, a political theorist, was one of the framers of the Constitution and its chief author, designing checks and balances in the distribution of federal power. George Washington was no genius but a man of immense character, an able general, and the first president; he declined to become a king as he was urged by his admirers. The U. S. was fortunate indeed to have such people who founded a republic with a reasonably good balance between freedom and discipline. Culture has flourished in America at least in science and technology.
The fine arts instead have not done as well. Artists require patronage from people of noble vision, who support contemporary work, not the classics only. The classics, traditional works, are fine to admire up to a point. I suggest that half of the support money should go to honor the classics, and the other half to support the work of living artists. Most wealthy collectors in America pay millions for the paintings and sculptures of artists long dead on the advice of their experts, and do very little to patronize living artists of merit. Our orchestras play old symphonies and operas and very little of contemporary works.
Don’t we have contemporary artists of great merit? We probably do, but these people prefer to go into business to make some real money. They are unwilling to work for fifty cents an hour like Michelangelo when he was creating the Sistine chapel’s decorations for Pope Julius II. Perhaps we don’t have patrons willing to pay even that much for art they cannot resell for profit. Anyway, egalitarian societies such as ours are not likely to give rise to fine culture. Populist or socialist societies do even worse. What came out of the Nazi socialists or the communists? They produced nothing worthwhile except for better weapons. Good artists made a run out of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union whenever they could. Creative people and oppressive governments don’t go well together. Yet, too much freedom leads to degradation and triviality, the art of urinals. Creativity depends on a sound tradition to build on, but enough freedom to reach out to new spaces for the tree of culture. Massive, centralized, governments do not advance civilization very much.
In ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, and eighteenth century Germany, people had a great flowering of culture in a political environment of city states, with noble rulers patronizing creative talent in competition to outshine with each other with great monuments for own glory and that of their city. Prime examples of such rulers were Pericles, Lorenzo the Magnificent in Florence, who patronized da Vinci, Hungarian Prince Esterhazy, who supported Joseph Haydn to produce 106 magnificent symphonies, Mozart’s Prince-Archbishop Colloredo in Salzburg and Emperor Joseph II in Vienna. Mozart created great operas in Vienna, such as The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni, until he fell into hard times during the Austro-Turkish War of 1787, when prosperity dropped and aristocrats were giving less money to the arts.
In hard financial times or when aristocracies fall, we see a decline in cultural growth. But a too strong, centralized government is a worse calamity for culture. In America we would do better making counties the centers of our political power and wealth, in the form of city states. Elected officials in the county, well known to the local people, may elect state governors, and governors elect the president; the same process can apply to other branches of government, the judicial and legislative, with only the most basic and necessary functions relinquished to state and federal entities. You can be sure local leaders will not give up too much power to the central governments as popular voting does in our current system. Prominent citizens may thus perform the roles of democratic princes, like Pericles or Lorenzo, each county governed by a city of modest size, certainly less than a million people. Massive urban centers, like New York or Chicago may support the arts, but not their creation as much. Most of the money goes to popular entertainments with little artistic merit for the masses.
Artistic merit prevailed in Paris during the eighteenth century; Paris was the center of the world in culture, and it was a large city; but the artistic center of it where intellects thrived was very small. Learning and creativity were nourished at the Sorbonne. The same could be said for London in the seventeenth century with Oxford and Cambridge, which produced modern science, Shakespearean theater, and other fine arts with money from exploration, the raiding of Spanish galleons by privateers, manufacturing and trade. The Dutch in Amsterdam, rich from trade, followed a similar route with the English, producing Rembrandt (patronized by Prince Frederik Hendrik), Huygens (mathematician and scientist), and Spinoza, one of greatest philosophers of all time. This was the Golden Age for the Dutch and the English.
If we want a Golden Age for planet Earth, not any more isolated flowerings of culture that quickly wither, we who know where the roots of culture are, let us remember the lessons of History and apply them to our private and social lives. An individual grows and bears fruit with a firm purpose in life, working hard to achieve it, never weakening, never giving up. The civilized person needs to be not only smarter and better trained than the barbarian, but also stronger, producing and raising children to be the same. A society, a world society today, constituted by such noble persons of birth or aspiration will prevail over the barbarians that abound everywhere in great numbers, and lead humanity to a shining future, here on Earth and elsewhere in the Universe, where astronauts may travel to build the city of God.
By Basil Gala, Ph.D.
All cultures are valuable and worthy of study, Margaret Mead would say. All cultures are equal, interesting, and must be preserved for posterity; each contains unique elements which may prove essential to human survival and growth; that’s the truth indeed. Yet, some cultures flourish at times in human history above the norm. We had the splendor that was Greece, and the might that was Rome. Barbarian tribes nearly destroyed all that and Jewish theology put the finishing touches to the advent of the dark ages. Renaissance finally dawned in Italy, giving us da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Galileo. Then the new flowering of culture spread to the barbarian lands of Holland, Spain, France, England, Germany, Russia, and smaller nations in Europe. The proud nations of Europe later discovered other cultures of great importance that had flourished in the past: in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, Middle America, Peru, Indochina, and other lands. What was the common thread that gave rise to such extraordinary growths in art, science, technology, politics, and religion? How was this thread cut, leading to decay, apathy, ignorance, and the death of the creative mind? The thread was the reach of leading noble citizens for creativity, for excellence, and for the divine; the thread was cut when barbarians, from home or abroad, brought down those citizens.
The word in Sanskrit for noble is aryan, a word debased by Nazi ideologues. In Hinduism arya is a title of honor and respect, meaning noble or spiritual. In Greek the word “arete” was used to describe what was best in anything, indicating superlative ability and nobility, from which derived aristos (best) and aristocracy. Aryan is also related to Iran (Persia) and Zoroastrianism, a germinal religion of ancient times which gave rise to the belief in the immortality of the spirit. Being noble is to seek the best things in life. Excellence is the passion to achieve great works, in fierce competition with equally talented antagonists. The divine, the ultimate nobility, is that state of being which is full of peace, contentment, creativity, power, wisdom, great knowledge, compassion, and joy--the attributes of God.
In the past, people believed attributes of nobility were passed on to offspring through breeding, or blood. Nobles bequeathed their wealth, titles, and powerful positions to their first sons, who were sometimes idiots; the smart second or third sons went to America to build wealth for themselves. Today, genetics provides some explanations for the transfer of hereditary traits. Certainly some physical characteristics are inherited: for example, the color of eyes, hair, and skin, even stature of body and size of brain. Spiritual qualities may be a different matter. King David gave birth to Solomon; but Marcus Aurelius to Commodus. Moreover, many great men and women have come from humble backgrounds, from commoners or even serfs. Yet, with the rise of democracies throughout the world, perhaps we have swung too far in neglecting birth and breeding. We should honor and support nobility no matter what the source of it. The British are wise to confer knighthoods to people, such as Ben Kingsley, actor, son of an East Indian, who tap their source of nobility and contribute to society something of value and importance.
In 1919 Munich, the Thule Society discovered the source of nobility in Atlantis, which sank they claimed in the Northern Atlantic Ocean a million years ago; The Thule attributed much virtue to the blond, blue-eyed Nordic strain of humans. The Society sponsored Deutsche Arbeirpartei, which became the Nazi party under Adolph Hitler. Teutonic people were the master race, and every other type of human was inferior. That would leave out the ancient Greeks, and the modern European Jews, who have contributed greatly to civilization. Jesus, the Jewish carpenter, was not light skinned and blond; neither was Einstein. In every field of civilized life, European Jews excelled, yet Hitler decided they had to be exterminated. I am not a Nordic type, and most likely, you are not either. Even Southern Germans are not very blond. Blond men may be superior, but popular opinion holds that blond women are dumb. Disregarding eugenics, gentlemen prefer blonds, so blonds have more fun; that’s why so many silly women become blonds, and with contact lenses, blue-eyed too.
Blond or dark, certain strains of humanity build civilization better than others. We should encourage them to continue doing this and discourage those people who tend to destroy culture. The best way to discourage barbarians from destroying the fruits of culture is to civilize them. Ancient Romans in the West were successful to some extent doing that with the French, Western Germans, and the Anglo-Saxons; they failed in Eastern Germany (and Scotland, where Hadrian built a wall to stop them); eventually, the barbarian armies sacked Rome and took over the Holy Roman Empire. Many centuries later, in the East, the Byzantines made progress with the Arabs, but were overwhelmed by the Turks. Barbarians usually win the conflict in the end, because barbarians live in tough circumstances, become strong and aggressive, and have higher birthrates. Civilizations degenerate from ease and weakness; then barbarians destroy them. Barbarians are always charging at the gates of the city with high culture.
The French call it “haute culture,” when talking about clothing fashions. I refer to culture that noble people create, which has little to do with clothing, wooden masks for ceremonies, the igloo, or the boomerang—good things as these may be. High culture is when noble people strive to reach God, the ideal of perfection. I realize you may dispute the distinction between high culture and low. What is fine music, great painting, good science, useful technology, powerful religion or politics, all are subject to taste and fashion. But for now let us accept the opinions of teachers or critics. They instruct us to admire the achievements of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and before them the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians who invented writing and other arts. We can see in National Geographic about archaeological discoveries in Middle and South America and admire the remains of the Mayan and Inca civilizations. In the East, we can tour in person or by travelogue Cambodia’s Angkor Vat, India’s magnificent temples, Japan’s Kyoto treasures, and China’s Ming artworks. What brought about such achievements?
Nobility is essential for great achievements, but not sufficient; wealth is also necessary. You can hardly be noble without money. You cannot indulge in the arts and sciences, when you are struggling each day for bare survival. Civilizations don’t emerge in villages and farms. A good river is almost always there for a city to grow big and prosperous. A coastline with a natural harbor helps too. The Egyptian civilization was the gift of the Nile, and Babylon the gift of two rivers, Tigris and Euphrates. It seems that each great city is next to a river flowing by to supply water for irrigation, drinking and sewage disposal. Rome, Tiber. Paris, Seine. London, Thames. Vienna, Danube. Palestine, Jordan. Ancient Athens had Cephissus, small but competent. The plains of Attica were fertile, growing olives, grapes, wheat, and vegetables, which formed the early wealth of the city. The harbor of Piraeus was close and the road to it was walled in. The Athenians ventured out to the Aegean and beyond to trade with their olive oil, wine and other products. Later Athenians acquired slaves, set up factories, and exported manufactured products. Athenian navy allowed people to travel to Egypt and other centers of civilization, which were already ancient in their time. During the Persian wars the Athenians led the Greeks in victorious battles and later formed the Delian League of city states, collecting taxes and tributes for the common defense against Persians. The Persians caused no further trouble, so Pericles, elected city leader for over thirty years, used the money to create splendid cultural monuments on the Acropolis and elsewhere for the enjoyment of the people and to impress visitors. The age of Pericles is known as the Golden Age of Greece.
Pericles was a democratic leader, descended from aristocratic families, especially on his mother’s side. He was accused by enemies of being a populist, because he gave the vote to poor people and provided free theater seats for them with city money. But the plays he sponsored were tragedies by Aeschylos, Sophocles, and Euripides, with some comic relief from Aristophanes.
The sculptor Pericles favored was Phidias. Phidias was also a great painter and architect, seeking perfection in everything he created. Once he was asked why he bothered to make the backs of statues in front of walls as carefully as the fronts, since people could not see the backs. Phidias answered that the Gods could see the backs. Like da Vinci and Michelangelo in the Italian Renaissance, he was probably gay.
Being gay may give some men and women a special sensitivity that allows them to excel in the arts. Not being burdened by a family to support, gay persons may fully dedicate their lives to their art.
With the efforts of gays or straights, culture branches out, growing like a tree to any size, sprouting in all directions to infinity, eventually becoming the Deity. There can never be an end to artistic or scientific innovation. Limits occur only in the minds of spiritless people, who give up too soon. The popular arts always persist in their charming but pointless existence. Folk songs and dances go on. The handicrafts continue and philosophy becomes a collection of old sayings. When the leading people, the born aristocrats, stop striving, when they turn to pleasures and futilities, neglecting self discipline and hard work, abandoning total dedication to their chosen fields, these people decline and their society quickly follows into decay. Then tyrants, dictators, autocrats of the state take over, boxing in minds, depressing and oppressing those who would freely create new ideas. In the tree of culture whole branches dry out, dying. Perhaps most of the tree of culture withers as in the Dark Ages. But the roots seem to persist and the tree sprouts again on some other land, in some other age, when freedom of expression is again allowed.
In America, in 1776, freedom and democracy came to life again after many centuries of autocratic rule in the Old World, and with these blessings came the flowering of culture in the thirteen colonies, such as we have not seen since. Benjamin Franklin was a statesman, businessman, author, inventor, and scientist, one of the founders of electrical science. Thomas Jefferson, besides being a plantation owner and statesman, was an architect, a writer of renown with his Declaration of Independence. John Adams was an attorney and statesman with a major intellect. The bona fide genius was the elitist Alexander Hamilton, one of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, who perished in a duel with his political enemy Aaron Burr before he became 50. Hamilton contributed to the formation of a strong federal government and chief executive in the form of a president. James Madison, a political theorist, was one of the framers of the Constitution and its chief author, designing checks and balances in the distribution of federal power. George Washington was no genius but a man of immense character, an able general, and the first president; he declined to become a king as he was urged by his admirers. The U. S. was fortunate indeed to have such people who founded a republic with a reasonably good balance between freedom and discipline. Culture has flourished in America at least in science and technology.
The fine arts instead have not done as well. Artists require patronage from people of noble vision, who support contemporary work, not the classics only. The classics, traditional works, are fine to admire up to a point. I suggest that half of the support money should go to honor the classics, and the other half to support the work of living artists. Most wealthy collectors in America pay millions for the paintings and sculptures of artists long dead on the advice of their experts, and do very little to patronize living artists of merit. Our orchestras play old symphonies and operas and very little of contemporary works.
Don’t we have contemporary artists of great merit? We probably do, but these people prefer to go into business to make some real money. They are unwilling to work for fifty cents an hour like Michelangelo when he was creating the Sistine chapel’s decorations for Pope Julius II. Perhaps we don’t have patrons willing to pay even that much for art they cannot resell for profit. Anyway, egalitarian societies such as ours are not likely to give rise to fine culture. Populist or socialist societies do even worse. What came out of the Nazi socialists or the communists? They produced nothing worthwhile except for better weapons. Good artists made a run out of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union whenever they could. Creative people and oppressive governments don’t go well together. Yet, too much freedom leads to degradation and triviality, the art of urinals. Creativity depends on a sound tradition to build on, but enough freedom to reach out to new spaces for the tree of culture. Massive, centralized, governments do not advance civilization very much.
In ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, and eighteenth century Germany, people had a great flowering of culture in a political environment of city states, with noble rulers patronizing creative talent in competition to outshine with each other with great monuments for own glory and that of their city. Prime examples of such rulers were Pericles, Lorenzo the Magnificent in Florence, who patronized da Vinci, Hungarian Prince Esterhazy, who supported Joseph Haydn to produce 106 magnificent symphonies, Mozart’s Prince-Archbishop Colloredo in Salzburg and Emperor Joseph II in Vienna. Mozart created great operas in Vienna, such as The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni, until he fell into hard times during the Austro-Turkish War of 1787, when prosperity dropped and aristocrats were giving less money to the arts.
In hard financial times or when aristocracies fall, we see a decline in cultural growth. But a too strong, centralized government is a worse calamity for culture. In America we would do better making counties the centers of our political power and wealth, in the form of city states. Elected officials in the county, well known to the local people, may elect state governors, and governors elect the president; the same process can apply to other branches of government, the judicial and legislative, with only the most basic and necessary functions relinquished to state and federal entities. You can be sure local leaders will not give up too much power to the central governments as popular voting does in our current system. Prominent citizens may thus perform the roles of democratic princes, like Pericles or Lorenzo, each county governed by a city of modest size, certainly less than a million people. Massive urban centers, like New York or Chicago may support the arts, but not their creation as much. Most of the money goes to popular entertainments with little artistic merit for the masses.
Artistic merit prevailed in Paris during the eighteenth century; Paris was the center of the world in culture, and it was a large city; but the artistic center of it where intellects thrived was very small. Learning and creativity were nourished at the Sorbonne. The same could be said for London in the seventeenth century with Oxford and Cambridge, which produced modern science, Shakespearean theater, and other fine arts with money from exploration, the raiding of Spanish galleons by privateers, manufacturing and trade. The Dutch in Amsterdam, rich from trade, followed a similar route with the English, producing Rembrandt (patronized by Prince Frederik Hendrik), Huygens (mathematician and scientist), and Spinoza, one of greatest philosophers of all time. This was the Golden Age for the Dutch and the English.
If we want a Golden Age for planet Earth, not any more isolated flowerings of culture that quickly wither, we who know where the roots of culture are, let us remember the lessons of History and apply them to our private and social lives. An individual grows and bears fruit with a firm purpose in life, working hard to achieve it, never weakening, never giving up. The civilized person needs to be not only smarter and better trained than the barbarian, but also stronger, producing and raising children to be the same. A society, a world society today, constituted by such noble persons of birth or aspiration will prevail over the barbarians that abound everywhere in great numbers, and lead humanity to a shining future, here on Earth and elsewhere in the Universe, where astronauts may travel to build the city of God.
What is the Sense of Beauty?
What is the Sense of Beauty?
By Basil E. Gala, Ph.D.
(857 words)
We live on a planet of blue-white skies, azure seas, lands of gentle greens and browns: beautiful Earth. This is our Earth of infinite beauties in rocks and rills, butterflies and flowers, furry creatures and young girls. Listen to the songbirds. What is the meaning of their music? Hear the wind gently swishing in the sycamore trees? What is the wind’s secret message? You may say the wind just blows. The flowers bloom to attract insects. The young girls seek mates. The furry creatures want warmth and protection. True, but the real appreciation of beauty is the sense in life.
We are conceived, we are born, and we grow struggling for survival most of our days, seeking food, shelter, money, security, and a mate to propagate our species. We study in schools for many years to acquire a skill or profession; we train and work at jobs for many years for that security we must have and so did our ancestors and so will our descendants as long as the sun shines on Earth. All this is done for survival, but what is the purpose of surviving for me as a person and for my kind?
We survive for the sense of beauty and without beauty life becomes senseless and soon ceases for some of us who are sensitive to ugliness as well as beauty.
Surely the peacock dresses up in gorgeous plumage to seduce the peahen; but why is the hen attracted to this beauty? Scientists have an explanation for this too. A better and bigger display is associated with a stronger, healthier, more vital male, capable of siring healthier offspring. Beauty then is life itself. A beautiful face is young, smooth, clear, indicating health. But then we have beautiful Mother Theresa with all her wrinkles and parched skin.
Wrinkles too can be signs of something elegant, the expression of a beautiful spirit.
Perhaps the source of beauty is spiritual worth. Beauty is then a ray of light from heaven, a dimension of perfect peace and joy. It is no wonder great art often springs from religious themes. Art is beauty made by humans. Artists carry large reserves of beauty within themselves and they are compelled to express it, share it with others. Pigs may not be interested in beautiful things, but some of us humans are. We live for beauty or not at all. Because we know death, our own end and our children’s end, we need beauty today.
Yet we go through most of our lives enmeshed in the machinery of survival. We work at humdrum jobs eight hours a day for years and decades. We down our bacon and eggs, brush our teeth, shower quickly, throw our clothes on, then jump into our cars and join commuter traffic to factories, shops and offices. Tired and disgusted at the end of a long day, we sit down in front of the TV, munching junk food, and escape life.
Is life something from which to escape or something to relish every moment of the day?
Relishing beauty we use our five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste—and a sixth sense, the gate of the soul. It is not in colors and tones where beauty resides, pure and clear though they may be. It is in the patterns, the structures, formed from these elements. And it matters not what the sense gate may be; it is only a gate to the mystical world of beauty. All the senses are equivalent; it is the pattern that matters. The pattern impresses itself in the brain and reaches down to our organ of sentiments, feeling, emotions, and strikes chords of beauty. We cannot know why that is so, any more than we know why some of us sense the presence of God, angels, and Heaven in our innermost self.
True, beauty is the eye of the beholder; it is subjective. A mother sees her ugly duckling as beautiful, but we don’t. Then art and the enjoyment of things in Nature do indeed follow fashions and tastes, which come and go. Yet there are some universal values in aesthetics, otherwise we would have no museums collecting works of art from all cultures and ages.
Outside of fashions, regardless of personal taste, in spite of cultural bias, some principles of true beauty reign supreme in the minds of humans and some animals. A rectangle is more appealing in certain proportions as the ancient Greeks discovered. Symmetry plays a role; and so do certain asymmetries, which broke monotony, stimulating excitement. Certain repetitions, echoes, cycles, or harmonies in the sense patterns please us better. They strike some mystical chords in our minds and transport us to a magical dimension.
Surely sexual motives employ some of these pleasing patterns. Sex uses beauty for the survival of the family, society, and species. Health is often associated with beauty too. But we know our own lives our family, nation, world, and the whole universe will be extinguished in the end. Beauty existing in a moment (when the rose blooms, when the poem whispers) lives forever. After all, survival is fine, but to what end? There has to be an end reward somewhere in life for our struggles to survive. The final purpose for our lives, which we find in many different occupations, is the enjoyment of beauty, romance, and magic—the mystical dance of existence.
By Basil E. Gala, Ph.D.
(857 words)
We live on a planet of blue-white skies, azure seas, lands of gentle greens and browns: beautiful Earth. This is our Earth of infinite beauties in rocks and rills, butterflies and flowers, furry creatures and young girls. Listen to the songbirds. What is the meaning of their music? Hear the wind gently swishing in the sycamore trees? What is the wind’s secret message? You may say the wind just blows. The flowers bloom to attract insects. The young girls seek mates. The furry creatures want warmth and protection. True, but the real appreciation of beauty is the sense in life.
We are conceived, we are born, and we grow struggling for survival most of our days, seeking food, shelter, money, security, and a mate to propagate our species. We study in schools for many years to acquire a skill or profession; we train and work at jobs for many years for that security we must have and so did our ancestors and so will our descendants as long as the sun shines on Earth. All this is done for survival, but what is the purpose of surviving for me as a person and for my kind?
We survive for the sense of beauty and without beauty life becomes senseless and soon ceases for some of us who are sensitive to ugliness as well as beauty.
Surely the peacock dresses up in gorgeous plumage to seduce the peahen; but why is the hen attracted to this beauty? Scientists have an explanation for this too. A better and bigger display is associated with a stronger, healthier, more vital male, capable of siring healthier offspring. Beauty then is life itself. A beautiful face is young, smooth, clear, indicating health. But then we have beautiful Mother Theresa with all her wrinkles and parched skin.
Wrinkles too can be signs of something elegant, the expression of a beautiful spirit.
Perhaps the source of beauty is spiritual worth. Beauty is then a ray of light from heaven, a dimension of perfect peace and joy. It is no wonder great art often springs from religious themes. Art is beauty made by humans. Artists carry large reserves of beauty within themselves and they are compelled to express it, share it with others. Pigs may not be interested in beautiful things, but some of us humans are. We live for beauty or not at all. Because we know death, our own end and our children’s end, we need beauty today.
Yet we go through most of our lives enmeshed in the machinery of survival. We work at humdrum jobs eight hours a day for years and decades. We down our bacon and eggs, brush our teeth, shower quickly, throw our clothes on, then jump into our cars and join commuter traffic to factories, shops and offices. Tired and disgusted at the end of a long day, we sit down in front of the TV, munching junk food, and escape life.
Is life something from which to escape or something to relish every moment of the day?
Relishing beauty we use our five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste—and a sixth sense, the gate of the soul. It is not in colors and tones where beauty resides, pure and clear though they may be. It is in the patterns, the structures, formed from these elements. And it matters not what the sense gate may be; it is only a gate to the mystical world of beauty. All the senses are equivalent; it is the pattern that matters. The pattern impresses itself in the brain and reaches down to our organ of sentiments, feeling, emotions, and strikes chords of beauty. We cannot know why that is so, any more than we know why some of us sense the presence of God, angels, and Heaven in our innermost self.
True, beauty is the eye of the beholder; it is subjective. A mother sees her ugly duckling as beautiful, but we don’t. Then art and the enjoyment of things in Nature do indeed follow fashions and tastes, which come and go. Yet there are some universal values in aesthetics, otherwise we would have no museums collecting works of art from all cultures and ages.
Outside of fashions, regardless of personal taste, in spite of cultural bias, some principles of true beauty reign supreme in the minds of humans and some animals. A rectangle is more appealing in certain proportions as the ancient Greeks discovered. Symmetry plays a role; and so do certain asymmetries, which broke monotony, stimulating excitement. Certain repetitions, echoes, cycles, or harmonies in the sense patterns please us better. They strike some mystical chords in our minds and transport us to a magical dimension.
Surely sexual motives employ some of these pleasing patterns. Sex uses beauty for the survival of the family, society, and species. Health is often associated with beauty too. But we know our own lives our family, nation, world, and the whole universe will be extinguished in the end. Beauty existing in a moment (when the rose blooms, when the poem whispers) lives forever. After all, survival is fine, but to what end? There has to be an end reward somewhere in life for our struggles to survive. The final purpose for our lives, which we find in many different occupations, is the enjoyment of beauty, romance, and magic—the mystical dance of existence.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
