Beauty Will Save the World (Long)
Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted. . .
If during the next million generations there is but one human being born in every generation who will not cease to inquire into the nature of his fate, even while it strips and bludgeons him, some day we shall read the riddle of our universe.
— Rebecca West, from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Beauty
If I were asked to write in one word the predominating passion of evolving man, I should unhesitatingly write the word “Beauty.” To me the one supreme guiding principle of life and growth is this: Beauty will I see in all things. From all that is unlovely will my vision be immune.
I believe that the ability to sense beauty precedes even the ability to love. I see Beauty as the goal of civilization, and all that man calls sin or evil simply as wavering deviations from the path to this glowing objective.
As the first principle of beauty is balance, so right or balanced thinking is an equilibrium, inducing an ecstasy from which the Universal Poet is born. I believe that this same right thinking, from which the aesthetic sense is born, and which is the foundation of all the arts, is the thing that lifts us to life’s lofty pinnacle.
I believe that every man has this sense of beauty in some degree and that he should cultivate it as the most priceless of his treasures and encourage it in others as life’s most precious gift. This manner of thinking long ago led me to seek for my own guidance one all-inclusive law of life. I found it in these few words: Beauty attracts, ugliness repels.
Beauty is a positive force, as dynamic in its power to attract as a magnet. Ugliness is negative, repellent, carrying in itself the seeds of its own destruction. Man’s progress in every walk of life is dependent upon his ability to attract. The weight of man’s millstone is dependent upon the measure of his tendency to repel.
Nature abhors ugliness; all her works are beautiful. She covers scars with green mantles or paints them with the colors of the sunset. She bathes them in universal light. So all scars made by evolving man must disappear before the beauty inspired by the aesthetic sense of cultured man.
Consciously or unconsciously, science and the arts are working together toward beauty.
—Walter Russell
Since the primary object of the scientific theory is to express the harmonics which is found to exist in nature, we see at once that these theories must have an aesthetic value. The measure of the success of a scientific theory is, in fact, a measure of its aesthetic value, since it is a measure of the extent to which it has introduced harmony in what was before chaos.
It is in its aesthetic value that the justification of the scientific theory is to be found, and with it the justification of the scientific method. Since facts without laws would be of no interest, and laws without theories would have, at most, only a practical utility, we see that the motives which guide the scientific man are, from the beginning, manifestations of the aesthetic impulse... The measure in which science falls short of art is the measure in which it is incomplete as science.
—J.W.N. Sullivan
The evolution of consciousness is an open-ended process of learning that brings ever- greater Beauty to the process itself and its environing world. Beauty is the splendour of truth. Truth is the symmetry of reality and knowledge. Thus, the English poet Keats says:
Beauty is truth,
Truth beauty—that is all
Ye know on earth,
And all ye need to know.
The great mathematical physicist Hermann Weyl’s following statement expresses the paramount importance of beauty as a guiding principle in scientific research:
My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.
Hermann Weyl formulated what is known as the gauge theory of gravitation but became aware that his theory was not true as a theory of gravitation. Yet, the theory was so beautiful that he did not wish to abandon it and kept it alive solely for the sake of its beauty. Then, later, when the formalism of gauge invariance was incorporated into quantum electrodynamics, it turned out that his aesthetic sensibility was right after all.
Another example: Hermann Weyl developed two-component relativistic wave equation of the neutrino. The physicists ignored it for about thirty years, because it violated accepted parity invariance, while he kept it for the sake of its aesthetic value. And again, it turned out that his aesthetic sensibility was right.
Project Beauty
Beauty is the supreme guiding principle in the development of knowledge and thus in the evolution of thought and awareness. Beauty is therefore the supreme guiding principle in the development of ethics and in the attainment of an ethical life and community—for ethics, as the science of right human action, has its sanction in the knowledge of reality, and to live an ethical life and to create an ethical community means to think beautiful thoughts for oneself and to enact beautiful actions toward one another within the community. An ethical life is a beautiful piece of art, and an ethical community is a beautiful human organization wherein art and science, and therefore culture, flourish.
This conception of ethics as aesthetics of thought and action is not new. Aristotle called the beauty contained in and expressed through ethical human comportment kalon, often translated as “noble” or “honorable” (while sometimes mistranslated as the beautiful in the sheer physical sense). The kalon signifies the ethically beautiful, expressing a philosophical aesthetics. (References to kalon are found in both Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics and Nicomachean Ethics.)
Beauty is the effulgence of Being-that-is-Light within revealed in the Language of Light. The more you experience the effulgence of Being-that-is-Light within, the more Beauty you experience within or imperience. The more Beauty you imperience, the more Beauty you experience without, perceiving around you. The more Beauty you experience without, the more love and happiness you experience-imperience. Supreme Beauty brings supreme happiness—Beatitude. As ethics is the science of identifying, defining, and developing a set of universal principles that makes happiness possible, it is evident that the experience of supreme Beauty, which leads to the experience of Beatitude, is the supreme principle of ethics.
The Language of Light is the Language of “Nature and Nature’s God” expressed in and through the process of Creation. In the experience of Beauty, you become aware of the Language of Light revealed in and through creation—be it Nature, your beloved, or a piece of art or music. Therefore, the extent to which you know the Language of Light is the extent to which you can experience Beauty. Thus the measure of your aesthetic sensibility is precisely the measure of your knowledge of the Language of Light.
All knowledge is the transcription of the Language of Light into human languages. All human creation is the translation of the Language of Light into the human media. The Language of Light is what Einstein used to call the “Thought of God,” the knowing of which was his enduring passion. Consciousness is co-evolutionary with knowledge. Creativity is the signature of developing consciousness. To grow in the knowledge of the Language of Light, of the Thought (Mind) of God, is the primary destiny of human consciousness. To translate the Language of Light, and to transcribe the Thought of God, is the ultimate evolutionary thrust of creativity for its self-optimization.
An ethical life, whose guiding principle is Beauty, is marked by balance and harmony in one’s thought and action, for the Language of Light is marked by balance and harmony. To live an ethical life thus means to live your life as Project Beauty, marked by the ever- growing and ever-glowing presence of balance and harmony in your thought and action. An ethical community, whose guiding principle is Beauty, is also marked by the presence of balance and harmony in people’s thought and action. To develop an ethical community therefore means to perceive the development of your community as Project Beauty, marked by the ever-growing and ever-glowing presence of balance and harmony in people’s thought and action.
As Walter Russell states in the epigram: Beauty attracts and ugliness repels. The more Beauty, the more balance and harmony, you create in your life and environment, the more you will attract other people, especially like-minded people who live their lives as you do—as a unique expression of Project Beauty. As evolution is an open-ended process of learning that brings ever-greater Beauty to the process itself and its environing world, to live your life as Project Beauty is to live in accordance with the evolutionary thrust of life. To live an ethical life, to take on Project Beauty as a lifetime project, therefore means to live in harmony with the Universe—with Nature and Nature’s God within and without.
Project Beauty is a new approach for the ethical transformation of the world. It is not the problem-solution-problem-solution approach of cyclic repetition. It is not even an attempt at creating a “better” world, which inevitably involves a comparison with the past and is therefore a subtle form of reaction, the terms of which are dictated by the past.
What we want is not a better world. What we want is a New World—a world which is the synergetic expression of your and my visions—the synergetic expression of the uniquely significant cosmic destinies that we all are. Then, your action will be the expression of the singular passion that you are. It will be the Being-that-is-Light expressing itself through you in the attainment of ever-greater cosmic Beauty. Since it is your deepest passion and highest vision that inspire you to act, you will be able to sustain your action regardless of the obstacles that may come your way. Beauty will ceaselessly inspire you, and you will continually aspire for greater effulgence of the Beauty that is the Light of your Being.
Beauty Will Save the World
In his Nobel lecture, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s made the following remark:
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: "Beauty will save the world".
What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes, but whom has it saved?
There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender.
It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what is distorted, will not immediately become obvious.
Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition, and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted. In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.
But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, and convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force—they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through; then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar to that very same place, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?
In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world", was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all he was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination. And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?
“Beauty will save the world.” Because Beauty is the Order of Nature and the Nature of Order. The qualitative measure of Beauty is the degree of our attunement with “Nature and Nature’s God (Spinoza’s Natura naturata and Natura naturans)”—with the Dao (道).
The greater the Beauty that pervades in the work of art and in the work of a person’s life, the greater is the presence of the Dao or the Order of Nature at the heart of our being and consciousness. Beauty awakens our soul from its psychcoma and ensouls our creation.
“Beauty will save the world.” Because Beauty restores sanity by making whole the divided and fragmented human consciousness. The insanity of the world to which we bear witness has a direct connection with the disappearance of Beauty and of the appreciation therefor from the arts and our culture. Therefore, the recovery of Beauty in the arts and our culture will be concomitant with the recovery of sanity in the world.
“Beauty will save the world.” Creating, sharing, and propagating Beauty in our lives and through our creative work, individually and together, constitute an essence of the work of mastering inner and outer freedom. You need not be an “artist” in terms of a socially defined profession. You need, however, be the artist in and of your life by creating, sharing, and propagating Beauty.
Ecstasy, bliss, and beatitude are all sublime happiness felt when the movement of liberation and the state of freedom are experienced. This experience is the experience of opening-up to a greater wholeness simultaneously unfolding toward and enfolding from that ultimate Wholeness which is Eternal and Infinite that is felt as ecstasy, bliss, and beatitude.
Beauty, Wholeness, and Freedom are equivalent, as Beauty, Truth, and Goodness are equivalent. Project Beauty is therefore Project Wholeness and Project Freedom as well as Project Truth and Project Goodness; and yet being corporeally perceptible and intelligible, Beauty is the more intimate.
Japanese culture is known for the refined aesthetic sensibility and sensitivity that permeates every aspect of life. The great Japanese mathematician, Kiyoshi Oka, whose beautiful essays I used to read in my junior high school years, considered something as abstract as mathematics as a class of aesthetics and as an expression of his “Japanese aesthetic sensibility (日本的情緒)” on the “plate of language (文字盤)” called “mathematics”.
Therefore, Project Beauty may have its germinal origin in my Japanese aesthetic sensibility but its value and validity as a vital and viable future vision of humanity are confirmed by Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and many other great visionary thinkers and artists before them such as Goethe and Blake.
Project Beauty can become the prime mover of the evolution of consciousness toward the Age of Imagination from the Age of Reason.
In the Beauty
In the Beauty before me, I walk.
In the Beauty behind me, I walk.
In the Beauty below me, I walk.
In the Beauty above me, I walk.
In the Beauty around me, I walk.
In the Beauty within me, I walk.
All is complete in Beauty.
—A Navajo Benediction