This morning we talked about beauty. While there are some obvious evolutionary benefits to sexual attraction/attractiveness (reproduction), our ability and proclivity to get aesthetic pleasure out of seeing colors and patterns is not as easily explained. Our conversation almost immediately went to the strange treatment of beauty in the Bible. There are some parts of the Song of Solomon that are clearly about beauty - even sexual - that seem to be in direct contradiction to some of the less *ahem* progressive parts of the old Testament. We talked about how our brains, which not only seek patterns, but love to be rewarded for being right, can and will find beauty and patterns everywhere. Much like the scene in "Amadeus" where Mozart hears musical notes in the seemingly dissonant screaming of a woman. Still, we do see beauty in design, in symmetry, and in real or imagined patterns - the Fibonacci sequence, lowercase music, and the near symmetry of faces.
The absence, or perhaps opposite of beauty, is something that we can see for any number of different biological reasons. We're repulsed by the smell of the corpse flower for the exact reason that carrion beetles, etc. are attracted to it. Even still, personal preferences are as diverse as people. Someone out there probably loves that smell. Then, there is the common phenomenon of finding thing so ugly that they are beautiful - the adjective "campy" is a close approximation. Even though our interests are diverse, there tend to be commonalities. Most people find nature to be beautiful. The concept has even been monetized with things like trees in office parks, etc.
Context can be as important as content in terms of aesthetics. Someone who is used to being terrified may find beauty in what a lot of others would simply see as boredom. Conversely, we are excited by things that out of context could be completely terrifying. We talked about cultural influences on views of beauty - the fluctuating aesthetics of weight and how that is often influenced by the standing power structure. Things like heroin chic, foot binding, and breast feeding have been used as ways of manipulating the population. Beauty, like nearly everything else can be manipulated by patriarchy to make a buck and to reinforce the entrenched status quo. As Chris said, "who benefits?"
Randy asked if anyone had looked into brain imaging and beauty - the answer is, yes.
We talked about happiness and the appearance of beauty, erotica vs. pornography, and linguistic concepts of beauty. The Sapir-Wharf hypothesis, while subject to some debate, shows a lot of recursive logic that could explain some elements of cultural concepts of beauty. Is anything considered universally beautiful? Flowers perhaps? Sunsets? Again, our conversation turned to the rare vs. the mundane. Again, even what most people consider mundane could be beautiful to someone who has survived a concentration camp or something similarly horrific.
Laughter, agreed upon by some evolutionary biologists to be a coping mechanism, has some pretty dark aspects to it. The tortured artist is a trope, but is it that people who have had terrible events in their lives feel more acutely?
Next time:
I mentioned this last time, but I forgot to say anything today - Kia and I will be out of town for the next meeting. Additionally, we'll be returning the day before the meeting after that. So, I don't know if I'll be at that one either. Could I call on someone to coordinate the next meeting (April 9th) and possibly the one on April 16th?
I was thinking that next time our topic could be the New Testament. Is it as friendly as its believers seem to think? Why don't they seem to follow it? How or why do you think it transitions from the gospel accounts to the fever dream-esque imagery of Revelation?
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