In the past being surrounded by beauty was an essential objective in all matters of life.What has changed?

Love of beauty reflects personal harmony, joy, and truthfulness as to motive and desire. Guess what's changed...the value of championing the inner sense (';innocence';), inner child, has diminished, and the childish and synthetic now more obtains. Susan Jacobs wrote of this in American life: ';The Age of American Unreason.';





Also worthwhile: ';The Beautiful Story of a Master,'; Louise-Marie Frenette, ';The Third Music,'; Ann Ree Colton, ';The Secret Power of Music,'; David Tame, and ';Creation: Artistic and Spiritual,'; O. M. Aivanhov.In the past being surrounded by beauty was an essential objective in all matters of life.What has changed?
Paradigm shifted.





People became obsessed in capturing that beauty and unattainable things of unimaginable natures, from far away places and unknown futures.





Before the Industrial Age, things were hard to come by, and even harder to be transported to other places. Then the many ';great'; wars pushed science, industries further and faster, zipping thru many ';-isms';.





Things are mass-produced and then mass-marketed. With another ';Turn of the Century';, we are at the ';2nd Millennium'; when everything is digitized -- even information could mass produced on ';real time';.





Electricity, DNA, Fission, Fusion were discovered. Photography, planes, trains, automobiles, radio, jets, TV, fast food, IC chips, PCs, Internet cellphones and IM came to be.





Beauty is in the eye of beholder. However, the beholder does not always look for beauty. In general, we only need to follow the history of artistic movements and you will see that beauty is just one of many perspectives of what we desire.





Paradigm shifted.In the past being surrounded by beauty was an essential objective in all matters of life.What has changed?
There are a lot more ugly people and things out there now!!
I don't think a list of essential objectives in life has ever included being surrounded by beauty, unless you limit your sample to the world's aristocracy.


';Most men lead lives of quite desperation...';
Where on earth did you get that notion? In 1895 the average life expectancy of a male child in Birmingham, England, was 17 years, and It was longer than many other parts of Britain. Children died like flies from starvation, disease, cold and neglect. People were worked to death in utterly appalling conditions, and when they could not work they starved to death. I doubt if any wretched, starving, illiterate working man or woman had much time to appreciate beauty after working a 16-18 hour day for just enough money to keep from starving. Have you ever been hungry? Really hungry? When did you last see anyone with rickets or TB? They were rife. The time you live in today is the golden age, humanity has never had it so good and never will again. Believe me. And don't start about the 'Third World.' Britain and the Western world were the third world not so long ago.
I suppose as time passed people have become more casual, therefore not seeing the need to be surrounded by beauty anymore. Sad really :l
Peter Quince at the Clavier





I





Just as my fingers on these keys


Make music, so the self-same sounds


On my spirit make a music, too.


Music is feeling, then, not sound;


And thus it is that what I feel,


Here in this room, desiring you,





Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,


Is music. It is like the strain


Waked in the elders by Susanna;





Of a green evening, clear and warm,


She bathed in her still garden, while


The red-eyed elders, watching, felt





The basses of their beings throb


In witching chords, and their thin blood


Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.





II





In the green water, clear and warm,


Susanna lay.


She searched


The touch of springs,


And found


Concealed imaginings.


She sighed,


For so much melody.





Upon the bank, she stood


In the cool


Of spent emotions.


She felt, among the leaves,


The dew


Of old devotions.





She walked upon the grass,


Still quavering.


The winds were like her maids,


On timid feet,


Fetching her woven scarves,


Yet wavering.





A breath upon her hand


Muted the night.


She turned --


A cymbal crashed,


Amid roaring horns.





III





Soon, with a noise like tambourines,


Came her attendant Byzantines.





They wondered why Susanna cried


Against the elders by her side;





And as they whispered, the refrain


Was like a willow swept by rain.





Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame


Revealed Susanna and her shame.





And then, the simpering Byzantines


Fled, with a noise like tambourines.





IV





Beauty is momentary in the mind --


The fitful tracing of a portal;


But in the flesh it is immortal.





The body dies; the body's beauty lives.


So evenings die, in their green going,


A wave, interminably flowing.


So gardens die, their meek breath scenting


The cowl of winter, done repenting.


So maidens die, to the auroral


Celebration of a maiden's choral.





Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings


Of those white elders; but, escaping,


Left only Death's ironic scraping.


Now, in its immortality, it plays


On the clear viol of her memory,


And makes a constant sacrament of praise.
youve got too many choices?