[lit-ideas] Re: Beauty, anyone?

  • From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:56:39 -0600

AA:
>>I also never said beauty was a social construct, meaningful or otherwise<<

Beauty is not a social construct.  The reasons we tell ourselves why we find 
something to be beautiful, they are social constructs.  And the reasons we tell 
ourselves why our reasons are of superior value to others' reasons, those, too, 
are social constructs.  I don't know what 'beauty' is besides a word that like 
many other BIG WORDS such as the good, truth, justice, freedom and pornography 
mean different things to different people at different times.  There is beauty 
in this world.  We all celebrate it.  It keeps us going.  But what you find 
beautiful depends on who you are.  As far as I know pink wall paper with sea 
shells might well be able to transport people who dig that stuff into 
experiences of the Sublime that can embarrass any of mine.  And that's what the 
whole show is about, isn't it?

Mike Geary
Memphis



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Andy Amago 
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 9:59 PM
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Beauty, anyone?


  I never said that something subjective is meaningless.  I said that beauty is 
so subjective as to be meaningless.  If one person thinks a cup of mud is ugly 
while another thinks it's sublimely beautiful, each subjective experience is 
valid, but it says absolutely nothing about beauty.  In fact, it renders the 
word beauty meaningless.    

  .  Beauty is meaningless not because it is or isn't a social construct but 
because it can't be defined, because it's anything anyone thinks it is.  
Society may tell us that a McMansion is beautiful, but an environmentalist 
might see an ugly waste of earth's resources, and a sensible person might see a 
prison of debt; in either case, no beauty at all.  Or someone might think the 
fountains in Las Vegas are beautiful, while someone else might think they're a 
profligate waste of water in a dessert.  Or one person can be struck by the 
golden red sunset on a beach while another is reminded of being mugged on the 
beach.  And on and on.  The same object, vastly different reactions.  
Therefore, beauty by definition must be in the eye of the beholder and nowhere 
else.  If that's hyperthyroidism, sorry, hyperindividualism, so be it.  

  Gee, that was beautiful.  Don't you think so John?

  .



   
    -----Original Message----- 
    From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx 
    Sent: Feb 20, 2007 7:53 PM 
    To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
    Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Beauty, anyone? 


    How does something being subjective render it meaningless?

    Julie Krueger


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