Beauty

Visual perceptions of human beauty are obviously learned behaviors. What is beautiful in one culture is not beautiful in another. What one person finds beautiful in a lover may horrify another.

Yet, there are social trends of beauty. These are taught to a receptive public by the drumming of visual commercial media. Long hair, short hair, tall, short, thin and plump. These all come and go with the whim of advertisers and the appetite of consumers for change.

There are also basic, generally accepted elements of human beauty which include youthfulness, muscularity, symmetry, smoothness of skin, large eyes, thick hair, white teeth, etc..

The current materialism in society, combined with relentless saturation of daily life with commercial media which use human beauty to sell things, has led to a reduction of human beauty to its superficial material value. Beauty has been reduced to a manipulative tool to achieve materialistic gains. This is a generalized prostitution ethic, which is revealing itself on all levels of society.

One result of this ethic is the devaluation of hard work and merit as keys to success. The consequences of this are obvious. When those with marketable beauty become catapulted to positions of responsibility and celebrity over those with merit, genius or dedication, the fabric of society deteriorates.

Part of my practice is a conscious attempt to focus on merit, decency and intelligence in the people around me. This practice rapidly has made me aware that those with marketable beauty are seldom the focus of my attention in public settings or in general interactions. If conventional beauty has become power and power corrupts, then conventional beauty corrupts.

Summer

In the 'developed' world, millions and millions of dollars are spent every Spring and Summer in attempt to prey on the insecurity of people, whom corporations view simplistically and cynically as customers. Advertising is focused on bodies and sex. Bathing suits and underwear adorn the buffed and flawless bodies of twenty-somethings everywhere you look.

This corporate self-hate industry, including diets, bogus exercise gadgets and unattainable goals for most people, makes many millions every year by inducing insecurity and offering magical solutions. Perhaps the best evidence to show the failure of capitalism as a model for human evolution is the massive number of obese and depressed people who sit and watch these advertisements over and over. Yet, obesity is rampant. Depression is rampant.

It is essential for individual human evolution to accept one's own being, including one's own body with its flaws and also its benefits. This acceptance is a first step to treating yourself with the respect and nourishment you deserve and need to advance in your life.

By embracing and accepting who you really are, you can then look to who you wish to be. This is just the beginning of a lifetime journey.

Beauty

The nature of beauty is subjective and random. One day, something may attract, and, on another day, the same thing may repulse. Novelty enhances superficial beauty. Experience enhances appreciation of deeper beauty. I spent a part of today working in my garden. There I learned some things about beauty, time and labor. Try it.

Beauty

Tiny rain drops were clustered on the petals of a new iris in my garden this morning. The beauty of the living plant was unintentional and pure, like the rain water itself. Later in the day I stopped my car at an intersection to allow a pedestrian to cross. The pedestrian, a young man in his twenties, was indeed beautiful. His beauty, however, was so different in my eyes from the beauty of the iris. His eyes held a cruelty. His walk was aggressive. He was very conscious of my eyes on him. I then went to my supermarket on my way home. One of the baggers, a plump and cheerful young man with a severe learning disability, was seated at a long table by the door. "Buy a raffle ticket for the Jimmy Fund. Win five hundred dollars. Everyone's a winner." The Jimmy Fund benefits research on pediatric illnesses. Here in my day was another kind of beauty. It was the unconscious beauty of a person who was being happily himself in the moment, despite considerable barriers to that happiness. It is that beauty to which I aspire in my practice.