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Sunday, May 02, 2010
Beauty Versus Vanity: A Sunday Rumination
Among dog lovers, the most famous of all epitaphs is this one, penned by George Gordon, better known as Lord Byron:
are deposited the remains of one
who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
and all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.
if inscribed over human Ashes,
is but a just Tribute to the memory of
Boatswain, a DOG
Boatswain was among the earliest Newfoundlands, a breed in which the C.S.O. and I are dabblers. Our first Newf, Bruno, died in 2005, having kept company with us since 1994. Our latest Newf, Rufus, is about 10 months old, and may it please God, has a long life ahead of him.
You can say many things about Newfs: they're very large, very strong, very affectionate, and very moist. (They're also not terribly popular, as few persons are willing to have their homes festooned with Newf drool, nor to have to regularly cleanse their backyards of droppings the size of a salami.)
They're also beautiful, just as Lord Byron said:
God has given us an intrinsic "recognition function" for beauty. There are arguments about this, of course. Some churls maintain to this day that beauty, rather than being an objective quality, is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Another species contends that its beauty is an objective aspect of a beautiful thing, and inseparable from it. Both are wrong.
If the first group were correct, then one could, by dint of conditioning or some effort of will, find a heap of corpses beautiful, an evaluation which must be defended as "right for them." If the second group were correct, it would face the "transformation problem:" At what point in a series of changes to the beautiful thing does the beauty characteristic vanish from it, and why?
Yet both positions contain a crumb of insight, as well. It takes a human being to pronounce a verdict of beauty, which supports both positions to some extent. But there are persons who cannot see beauty in anything, even objects and creatures on whose beauty all others agree, which undermines both positions to some extent.
The key to the conundrum is the variability, not of beauty, but of Man. All of us are flawed: some of us in our perceptions, others in our goals, still others in our motives, and a pitiable few in all three. There are persons who would be unable to see the unity and elegance of Rufus. There are others who would deny what they see, because they wish to be contrary, or perhaps to persuade me of something to which I'm opposed. But neither opinion nor its expression can affect external reality; what is, is.
Beauty, properly understood, is an event: the observer's perception and acknowledgement of the harmony of the laws of Nature as expressed in the observed.
Looking through that lens, we can see that observer and observed are both vital to the beauty event. The properties of the observed must blend harmoniously; the observer must be able to perceive the harmony, and appreciate it viscerally at the least. In design, we respond favorably to symmetry, balance, and a sense of wholeness. In music, we favor harmony, metrical regularity, and a unifying theme. In food, we applaud for combinations of textures and flavors that complement one another, rather than distracting or detracting from one another. And so on!
Man, as far as we know, is the only creature who can experience beauty. The lesser orders can experience pleasure, comfort, satiety, and the absence of signals of danger, but they don't have the necessary capacity for abstraction to recognize harmony or wholeness. And some men, because of their particular flaws, can't experience beauty either.
In musing over this topic in recent days, it occurred to me that an inability to experience and acknowledge beauty is likely to be at the core of some militant atheists' problem with theism, especially Christianity. Take for example the highly obnoxious Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith. Harris can find nothing negative to say about Christianity except:
- He considers it implausible;
- He doesn't think it's necessary;
- There's an allegorical passage in the Gospel According to John:
15:1 “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. 15:2 He takes away every branch that does not bear fruit in me. He prunes every branch that bears fruit so that it will bear more fruit. 15:3 You are clean already because of the word that I have spoken to you. 15:4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.
15:5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me—and I in him—bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing. 15:6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown out like a branch, and dries up; and such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and are burned up. 15:7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you. 15:8 My Father is honored by this, that you bear much fruit and show that you are my disciples.”
...that Harris insists must mean that Christians are commanded to kill unbelievers and apostates, which is like interpreting "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" as a command that you must run over to your neighbor's house and masturbate him.
For these reasons, Harris claims, Christianity is just as objectionable as Islam. His refusal to perceive critical differences and draw necessary distinctions results in an inability to experience beauty in the Christian story and in Christ's New Covenant with Man. It's a pitiable failing; I hope other Christians are praying for him.
Yet there's a place for the Sam Harrises of the world. (I'm struggling to think what it might be, but we've been told that God makes no junk.) His personal inability to perceive the glory and power of the Gospels and the magnificent integrity of the New Covenant afflicts only him; we who can perceive those things will almost certainly experience beauty. That would be so even for those who regard the premise of the Christian thesis -- that the Son of God became Man to teach us; that He suffered and died for our sins, and rose to confirm His authority and the truth of His dispensation -- as "implausible." Fiction can be beautiful, too.
That brings to mind another example: those who denigrate J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord Of The Rings, as "boring" or "racist." Those voices rose to a crescendo in the years of Peter Jackson's screen trilogy made from that novel. Perhaps they found it easier to denigrate the movies than the much-beloved book, which few of them would have troubled to read. Whatever the case, the profoundly allegorical nature of Tolkien's fantasy, which he himself described as perhaps "a profoundly Catholic story," eluded them completely...assuming they were able to detect the novel's parallels to the Christian mythos.
Among those who are able to perceive harmony and integrity, but who refuse to grant them the beauty event they deserve, are some whose affliction is vanity. Theirs is a hyper-Protagoran ("Man is the measure of all things") standard: they elevate themselves to the measure-of-all-things position, and summarily reject anything that might threaten that status. Nothing greater than I, more beautiful or capable or graceful than I, shall be permitted to escape my wrath!
One can be exceedingly intelligent, capable of great and various things, and still fall victim to this affliction, a version of the capital sin of Vanity. Indeed, it would seem the more likely, the more puissant the individual under consideration.
I don't know the cure. No mind or heart can be forced open from the outside. One who consciously rejects a beauty experience is invulnerable to any argument, any example, or any implication. Yet theirs is a uniquely sorrowful lot, for the relief of which we who are better off should regularly pray.
There's always hope, of course. The laws of Nature, and their instantiation in innumerable things and stories, won't go away or become discordant. That's guaranteed by Nature itself. And though one must answer to gain the benefit, Grace's knock on the door of one's soul continues lifelong. Just like Rufus's drooling!
May God bless and keep you all.
Comments
If I were to believe in God, the best evidence I would have of it are our beloved companions, our dogs and cats. From both we get both unconditional love and companionship, a reminder that we are not alone and that there is someone or something out there who loves us no matter what. Not only that, but it brings beauty into our lives daily for their forms are beautiful in a way that needs no words to explain.
Life would be so much poor, so much less beautiful without them.
PS: Someone once said that Dogs were proof of God’s love and that Cats were his reminder that we are not as important as we think we are.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/02/2010 at 12:35 PM“The laws of Nature, and their instantiation in innumerable things and stories, won’t go away or become discordant. That’s guaranteed by Nature itself.”
Now there’s an example of beauty! Very well said, and I thank you. Have a beautiful Sunday!
God bless,
-JasPosted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/02/2010 at 01:33 PMpdwalker said it for me too.
A delight in (of?)animals probably saved my sanity as a kid and still they have this ability to provide unexpected insights into our world.
It’s a barren soul indeed which cannot draw pleasure and sustenance from their company.
Thank you for that.Posted by KG on 05/02/2010 at 03:10 PM“Moist” as a descriptor of the unattractive side of the Newf is a beautiful choice of words. My compliments to the chef. As to the other two comments, I would like to add one thought. I know someone who owns a cat named Tucker who starts purring when he hears the owner’s voice. If only we cared about each other so much that we started to purr at the sound of each other’s voices. In that, I would find beauty, too.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/02/2010 at 03:56 PMThat beauty doesn’t matter, and that all humans are not in some sense aware of its presence, is false, I believe. One has to look at some of the recent sterile modern architecture and it’s inability to produce flourishing human interaction. One of the most overused phrases in architecture is the form follows function idea. When we surround ourselves with function only, we are reduced to a life filling basic needs, much like an animal. It is Theodore Dalymple’s lament that it isn’t surprising the low levels of human behavior comes from the sterile architecture of pubic housing.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/03/2010 at 08:40 AMFrom one Newf owner to another, well put!
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/04/2010 at 05:34 PM
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