Beauty
I walked confidently down the spine of the campus, mentally setting my path through the very center and following it regardless of any obstacles. To either side were large buildings, each with a structural, practical beauty that is difficult to describe. A few patches of the road were occupied by small groups, but the majority were staggering to their next class. I walked past one student with a particularly contemplative stare – one that I imagine I wear most of the time, but they passed quickly and I could no longer recall their face. Another student passed me with an uncomfortable stride staring intently at their goal, in this case, Capen Hall. To my left were a pair of girls, recounting an interesting event from the previous night. This is only a snapshot of my day, illustrating the paths, goals, viewpoints, and priorities of my peers.
There are so many people with such different ideas, backgrounds, childhaoods, lives, and thoughts, yet we somehow accepted the same general basis for beauty. Empty your minds completely and think of something you find beautiful. What is it?
lr
Oct 15, 04:47
Autumn leaves, a herd of deer gathered in the early morning/late evening (scampering, snorting and playing in the glow of sunrise/sunet, natural and free from fear), a harvest moon tucked between two diaphanous banks of twilit coulds, and people… in all their idiosyncratic, ultimately unknowable and somewhat elysian glory.
Benedict Eastaugh
Oct 15, 15:21
Maybe our minds are simply very similar; after all, there is no universal consensus on beauty, merely a broad one.
If there is any criterion for a universal notion of beauty, it must surely be elegance: doing the most with the least, efficiency of form and function, because this has a practical basis that (in an evolutionary environment) is universal.
Thame
Oct 18, 16:37
“If there is any criterion for a universal notion of beauty, it must surely be elegance: doing the most with the least, efficiency of form and function, because this has a practical basis that (in an evolutionary environment) is universal.”
This is not alway true…
Evolution is surprisingly dirty, and an organism’s form is far from perfect. Vestigial structures such as the appendix in humans, eye’s in blind cave animals, and a non-functional lung in snakes (to name a few examples) limit the organism’s efficiency.
Also, simplicity is not observed in all organisms, where the positioning of a novel element would have better success elsewhere, but is limited by it’s ancestry to a less than perfect location.
beajerry
Oct 18, 19:17
Your post was certainly beautiful!
Strange beauty this morning as I watch the sprinklers get blown out for winter and dozens of misty geizers decorate our street.
Benedict Eastaugh
Oct 20, 16:14
I should probably have been clearer about what I meant. With limited access to resources, elegant solutions to problems are the best because they make the most of those limited resources. With this in mind, they may appear ‘beautiful’ or appealing to us because they are good strategies.