Expounding
A follow-up to my last one as I reread it. I said that beauty and ugliness are statements of comparison, similar to light and darkness. That is, beauty is the absense of ugliness, and ugliness is the absence of beauty. Some people might argue with me on that. They might say that beauty is a description that contains its own meaning, not relying on a relation to something else. Allow me to refine my statement on that point.
If you read the Tao te Ching, or 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' you'll find some discussion on what makes beauty and ugliness. Both maintain that there is a state of perfection in the natural world. You can refer to it as the Nameless, God, Quality as Pirsig does... naming it honestly doesn't help you to understand what it IS. But it's there and everyone has some knowledge of it. Beauty is attained by achieving closer resemblance to this perfection, and ugliness appears by moving away from it.
I'm talking real beauty here, not surface appearances. Not little discriminations of style. So when I say that Tim Burton showed the beauty hidden in those 'ugly' characters, what I was really saying is that he was able to move us past surface appearances. He was able to show the true beautiful characteristics of those characters. The kinds of things that other people had overlooked.
So in short I still think beauty and ugliness are comparisons relative to each other, but this should give you the context of my thinking. And I hope it also explains why I believe we should consider ourselves very lucky the more people we get to truly know. When we know people we see the ways in which they have struggled to grow closer to that perfection, and the ways in which they still strive. There are few things more beautiful than being able to help another in this, or even simply watch as they begin to get things right.
If you read the Tao te Ching, or 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' you'll find some discussion on what makes beauty and ugliness. Both maintain that there is a state of perfection in the natural world. You can refer to it as the Nameless, God, Quality as Pirsig does... naming it honestly doesn't help you to understand what it IS. But it's there and everyone has some knowledge of it. Beauty is attained by achieving closer resemblance to this perfection, and ugliness appears by moving away from it.
I'm talking real beauty here, not surface appearances. Not little discriminations of style. So when I say that Tim Burton showed the beauty hidden in those 'ugly' characters, what I was really saying is that he was able to move us past surface appearances. He was able to show the true beautiful characteristics of those characters. The kinds of things that other people had overlooked.
So in short I still think beauty and ugliness are comparisons relative to each other, but this should give you the context of my thinking. And I hope it also explains why I believe we should consider ourselves very lucky the more people we get to truly know. When we know people we see the ways in which they have struggled to grow closer to that perfection, and the ways in which they still strive. There are few things more beautiful than being able to help another in this, or even simply watch as they begin to get things right.