Monday, December 19, 2005
After finishing "Brave New World," in a state of disturbed cynicism I did the worst thing anyone could do - I went Christmas shopping.
On a good day I quite dislike shopping. On a bad day...
So, I tried to put on my most positive attitude, and bravely stepped into the loud chaos of Rotterdam's outdoor malls. Serenaded by the sound of boy bands doing Christmas carol remixes with dance beats and committed humanitarians singing the well-intentioned but, I think, ill-informed "Do they know it's Christmas?"
(check out some of the lyrics - my favorite part goes:
"And there won't be snow in Africa
This Christmas time
The greatest gift they'll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows
No rain nor rivers flow
Do they know it's Christmas time at all?"
I'll leave you the fun of finding the number of things wrong in the above.)
So I'm walking down the street and couldn't help but marvel in the superficiality of so much of it. And it's not about 'forgetting the true spirit of Christmas' or 'the cancer of materialism' or any such cliche. It's more the sadness I feel for the obsession with being pretty, handsome, stylish. The surrender to the feeling that one will be judged by the most surface. The equation of what is seen, measured, observed with what is valuable.
I got to thinking about the difference between pretty and beautiful. Make-up can make one pretty, but it can't make one beautiful. Pretty is imperfection covered up; Beauty is imperfection embraced, and in embracing, forgiven and perhaps absolved. Why is Nature so beautiful? I suspect because she embraces every imperfection into a harmony which strikes at the depths of our capacity for witnessing.
I think the same is true for knowledge vs. wisdom. Knowledge is a concept acquired; Wisdom, a concept infected by reality and experience so as to transform a former sterility of theory divorced from reality into a useful guide by the test of what is true, good, beautiful.
But we must remember that, if we take the widest embrace as the ideal, then this embrace must include the pretty, the handsome, and boy bands singing Christmas carol dance remixes.
How's that for a challenge? ¶ 9:22 AM
On a good day I quite dislike shopping. On a bad day...
So, I tried to put on my most positive attitude, and bravely stepped into the loud chaos of Rotterdam's outdoor malls. Serenaded by the sound of boy bands doing Christmas carol remixes with dance beats and committed humanitarians singing the well-intentioned but, I think, ill-informed "Do they know it's Christmas?"
(check out some of the lyrics - my favorite part goes:
"And there won't be snow in Africa
This Christmas time
The greatest gift they'll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows
No rain nor rivers flow
Do they know it's Christmas time at all?"
I'll leave you the fun of finding the number of things wrong in the above.)
So I'm walking down the street and couldn't help but marvel in the superficiality of so much of it. And it's not about 'forgetting the true spirit of Christmas' or 'the cancer of materialism' or any such cliche. It's more the sadness I feel for the obsession with being pretty, handsome, stylish. The surrender to the feeling that one will be judged by the most surface. The equation of what is seen, measured, observed with what is valuable.
I got to thinking about the difference between pretty and beautiful. Make-up can make one pretty, but it can't make one beautiful. Pretty is imperfection covered up; Beauty is imperfection embraced, and in embracing, forgiven and perhaps absolved. Why is Nature so beautiful? I suspect because she embraces every imperfection into a harmony which strikes at the depths of our capacity for witnessing.
I think the same is true for knowledge vs. wisdom. Knowledge is a concept acquired; Wisdom, a concept infected by reality and experience so as to transform a former sterility of theory divorced from reality into a useful guide by the test of what is true, good, beautiful.
But we must remember that, if we take the widest embrace as the ideal, then this embrace must include the pretty, the handsome, and boy bands singing Christmas carol dance remixes.
How's that for a challenge? ¶ 9:22 AM
Comments:
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How can u be sure that acquired knowledge is absolute? is it not wisdom broken down into subjects?
If one chooses to embrace beauty as the widest possible, then you assume that the material, the pretty, the handsome boy bands are in fact subjects of beauty.
This is where I am stuck, on one hand, i find nothing beautiful in superficiality, but superficality when observed from the outside has a beauty in its complexities...
Great question Brodie,
Kurt
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If one chooses to embrace beauty as the widest possible, then you assume that the material, the pretty, the handsome boy bands are in fact subjects of beauty.
This is where I am stuck, on one hand, i find nothing beautiful in superficiality, but superficality when observed from the outside has a beauty in its complexities...
Great question Brodie,
Kurt
<< Home
