What is the Ugly?

[Donnadogsoth]

What is the Ugly?

 

A dangerous topic, but, one that many of the more sensitive among us must resonate with, for it seems as though ugliness is welling up all around us.

 

Friedrich Schiller said that beauty is freedom in the appearance. To this we must add that there are different levels of freedom. The freedom of what merely is, such as a sand dune, is inferior to the freedom of what lives, such as a forest glade, which in turn is inferior to what thinks, such as a troop of boy scouts. Beauty's zenith is the achievement of the rational purpose of man: the good society, the successful society, the transformation of the Universe into that which we need to survive as a species.

 

The ugly, by contrast, is harshness, compulsion, violation of freedom. The ultimate example of the ugly would be the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ: here is a man who was completely free morally, who suffered a harsh, compelling violation of his physical freedom. Thus a well-made crucifix is both a horribly ugly symbol (worn smooth by familiarity), and a symbol of absolute freedom of the (good) will. This shift from ugliness to beauty we call the sublime.

 

The essence of ugliness is decaying meat. Decaying vegetation can be beautiful—who doesn't love the Autumnal display in the temperate, sylvan regions? But a decaying cat? Less beautiful because it is closer to mankind. And a decaying human cadaver? Very ugly—the pinnacle of ugliness if it is the remains of someone you knew and loved. That freedom of the person, the freedom of love, is taken from them through death, and reinforced by the sight of their body rotting.

 

There is a museum that opened a few years ago in Winnipeg, Canada, called the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. It's about what you'd expect, but, the contents are not what are noteworthy, rather, it's the form of the building: it has no freedom to it, just the freedom of a committee of concept artists putting “meaning” into the superstructure: all glass and unfinished concrete, nothing resembling the living world or even the dead. It most resembles a hunk of garbage.

 

Thus humans are the source of most of the ugliness in the world. A snake devouring a mouse violates the freedom of the latter, but expresses the freedom of the former. Overall it is the freedom of the natural cycle. But, humans produce garbage that has no purpose, serves no cycle, that are distorted and perverse images, as in women's magazines, that transcend even the organic ugliness of rotting meat and become a kind of eternal ugliness, creatures in pain longing to be cremated and attain the freedom of smoke.

 

Also, context is very important. A burning house may be a beautiful display of the freedom of fire, but in the context of the human tragedy it represents it is ugly, the blackened remains the blackness of Hell.

 

Or, a healthy big elm tree splintering and falling in a storm, the splinters may be beautiful, the expression of the activity of the wind, the fallen trunk and branches becoming part of the landscape, but as a living being, useful and beautiful in its own right, it is an ugly event, a harsh compulsion and violation of the tree's freedom.

 

Or, take cancer: ugly, even on the microscale. Very little can be said to be beautiful about cancer. It is a horrible violation of the freedom of that which thinks and that which lives, but even cancer has a freedom to it. A freedom worse than the freedom of an avalanche or a hand caught in machinery or a gerbil in the blender.

 

Take war: a hugely destructive violation of human freedom: life, limb, mind, and architecture. Yet the sight of a burning enemy city at night must have been beautiful for the Allies in the Good War. In the grand sense, of the war's necessity, then, there is a freedom to the preservation of a superior form of human civilisation inherent in the waging of an otherwise horrific war.

 

And, from the other side: we have Nazi Germany: beautiful in its freedom of nationalism, as evinced by something like Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, but morally ugly: totalitarianism, imperialism, genocide. Thus, it was in essence the anti-sublime.

 

None of these descriptions of the ugly should come as a surprise: most of us understand them intuitively, but the postmodern condition is to stamp out our recognition of ugliness in favour of the dreadful, cynical, teeth-gritting assertion that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”--this above all is the death of us, because it represents the destruction of all hierarchies of quality, and thus the absolute triumph of equality over liberty.

 

Beauty is freedom of the appearance; ugliness is slavery. Let not the jaws of the postmodern wolf slaver over the beauty needed to create a free and rational society.

[Siegfried von Walheim]

The fact that every example of beauty vs. ugly can be described either way by someone or something explicitly implies beauty is subjective. 

Like warmongers love seeing lots of weaponry being used up in an empty dessert and the country he's selling to losing lots because it means more of their weapons will be bought and used in a potentially endless cycle. 

However to those who value peace and hate the machinations of the anti-human, it is very ugly.

Of course beauty and ugly do have some objectivity insofar all beautiful people conform to some degree with the Golden Ratio and many beautiful buildings conform to either the Silver Ratio or the Golden Ratio (the former being common in the Orient). 

However I do not think the topic particularly insightful since it can be easily summed up as "anything can be pretty/ugly to someone or something".

 

[Donnadogsoth]

No, Siegfried, love and value and subjectivism are irrelevant.  The objective standard is freedom, and we can determine that the natural hierarchy of freedom in ascending order is the mere existing, the living, and the thinking.  In other words, mankind himself is the absolute standard of beauty because he represents the greatest capacity for freedom in the universe.  When he views the natural world he sees a friend in the sense that the natural world expresses freedom, a lower order of freedom than he is capable of at his best but freedom nonetheless.  So we can understand that ugliness is a fact, derived from the breaking of freedom, as much of a fact, and with as much effects on the human beings and human society, as the breaking of justice.

It is the death of beauty which destroys hierarchies of value and leads people to hate the unnatural order they find themselves in, but with no remedy because all roads return to the same wicked and ugly Rome.  Thus people perish in apathy and misery.  You as someone on a libertarian board should be able to see the connection between beauty and freedom.  They go down together. 

"Freedom!" the libertarians cry.

"So what?  Life under freedom will be as ugly as it ever was!" cries the masses.

[Siegfried von Walheim]

From what I understand you are subjectively determining that which is free is beautiful; and from there beauty can be objectively measured based on how free someone or something is. 

I suppose beauty is objective if based on something measurable. Freedom is arguably measurable, if freedom is defined as the ability to do things. 

Of course being able to do things has a certain responsibility inherent to it; if I am a King, I have certain freedoms allowed to me either by my constituency (be they noblemen whose power is based on their landholdings or wealth, or like the Polish Kingdom wherein every noble was lawfully equal in their say of whether the King may do X or Y or Z) or by my vassals loyalty in carrying out my orders (like theoretically against the noblemen or other restrainers of political power). 

If I abuse it I am likely to be overthrown and lose that freedom I once had; if I am responsible I may be entrusted with more power and therefore either have greater potential to abuse or greater potential to do good. Like say by abolishing the tax system and making the monarchy a publicly funded charity which is responsible for governance similar to Stef's theorized D.R.O.'s and C.D.A.s or at least by greatly reducing the taxes, and thereby in both cases sparking another golden age (perhaps at the protest of those who do not realize low tax= moar money for everyone in the long run). 

I would not hold freedom as my standard for beauty; rather I would hold being morally correct and consistent as my standard for beauty. As a Roman Catholic and an AnCap, I am in most favor of those who use their powers (be they King or free citizen or parent) responsibly and correctly based on principles. I may not be erotically attracted to Stefpai but I do consider him "beautiful" by the standard provided. 

Of course a woman (who doesn't have obvious physical ugliness) who is also moral and responsible is highly attractive to me, so theoretically if Stefpai were a woman he'd be the thing I'd kill for because he's a pretty great guy. Too bad he's a guy...

... However, speaking physically, I think beauty has some objective value simply because the cock is always right (I think) when determining women's fertility and reproductive capabilities. I'm sure 'ginas are always right too since most hot guys (though usually bad) would have great traits for surviving in the jungle (but not a modern society or civilization).

So unless one orients one's sexuality (perception of beauty) to be in accord with morality, beauty isn't a helpful marker since it could be good or bad depending on a litany of things.

Edited October 31, 2017 by Siegfried von Walheim

[Donnadogsoth]

How do we know Schiller's theory of beauty is correct?

 

At first it seems as though Schiller's theory of beauty is apprehended intuitively—the concept of the appearance of things apprehended and labelled by thought as “true”. But, this will not satisfy the sceptic who demands reason and evidence—conceptual thought rather than intuitive. How can we answer such people?

 

(1) humanity is the freest thing in the universe.

(2) human happiness is associated with the development of such freedom and this association is the standard of mental health.

 

(3) freedom is seen throughout the nonhuman universe and is a source of happiness for mentally healthy humans.

 

(4) the word we give for freedom that leads to happiness is “beauty”.