Beauty is a Cure
By: Senator Roger Chamberlain
Beauty means many different things to people. A hike on a favorite trail in Superior National Forest, holding a baby, time spent in a deer stand, good architecture, good art, or time spent with loved ones and friends.
Modern life is a constant assault on our senses and filled with distractions, but these things and activities connect us with something bigger. Beauty has an important, necessary, and foundational role in our lives that we rarely acknowledge.
The Roman poet Ovid said that “beauty is a fragile gift.” The poet Keats famously wrote, “a thing of beauty is a joy forever.” The transformational nature of beauty necessarily leads to the contemplation of the Divine, the eternal. Emerson wrote, “never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.” He went on to note, that “love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”
Modern life has, in a way, led us to negate beauty, to deny ourselves the right to it. Look at “modern” architecture. Classical buildings have been ignored in favor of extremely utilitarian and tremendously unappealing structures in our major cities. We even have a local television program called “Lost Twin Cities” that documents the lost chapters of our past.
What was lost, exactly? Specific buildings? Yes of course. But what did they have in common? Transformational beauty. A consequence of modernity is the loss of beauty.
The late English philosopher and writer, Sir Roger Scruton, maintained that beauty is not subjective but objective. He saw it as a universal need. I agree. Scruton noted that beauty is a remedy for chaos and sorrow; it makes human life worthwhile. Beauty plays an essential role in our mind, body, and soul.
When it comes to design, Scruton suggests that if beauty is considered first, it becomes useful forever. The beautiful is its own endorsement.
A personal matter for people in the White Bear Lake area is the Metropolitan Council’s plan to run 90 busses every day through the heart of the city. While there are many reasons to oppose the bus plan, I believe the primary one is the destruction of beauty. Downtown White Bear is unique, it is personal, it is home. It is designed for people. It is beautiful. “Change” for its own sake is change that is suspect, if not damaging and deserving of opposition.
Our high-tech, high-speed, instantaneous, commercial, material culture creates massive distractions and noise. It is difficult to extract ourselves from this environment and notice beauty. Indeed, it is often destroyed in the name of “progress.”
Beauty allows us an opportunity to temporarily shut out the noise and connect at a different level with ourselves, each other, and our surroundings. Reading a good book (on actual paper), holding a baby, gazing at the stars, contemplating art, enjoying a peaceful garden, or sitting at the end of a dock on a secluded lake listening to the wind through the pines: all of these are an encounter with beauty.
Beauty is an essential part of our lives. Beauty is objective. Beauty is good, it is humanity, it is truth. Roger Scruton suggests perhaps we have lost belief in beauty because we have lost faith in ideas. He believes if we lose beauty, we lose our humanity.
Maybe we simply need to stop and smell the proverbial roses. To allow ourselves to be happy. To be grateful for the beauty around us, seek it and hold on to it.