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Claud's avatar

Agitprop, exactly. Politics. And dead.

Otherwise, in comment to the whole article, I wonder if the subjectivity of beauty, as in beauty is in the eye of the beholder, doesn't miss the true point about Beauty, which is that it inheres in the structure of reality, as harmony does, and certain vibrational facts do, and there is a more universal quality to it than a particularizing one. I agree that Beauty can't be legislated by institutions or from the top down, but I wonder if it isn't legislated by reality which is why there can be a census across time & space & radically different cultures as to the Beauty of certain forms & compositions & combinations of sounds. To love something or someone & to have passion, intimacy, or tenderness for it doesn't necessarily make it beautiful, but cherished and appreciated & loved for something intrinsic to it but we all have surely experienced passion or compelling interest in things & people that we know aren't beautiful but our love is true anyway precisely because our feeling involves qualities other than beauty. And we shouldn't forget how well internalized cultural norms are & tendencies to conformity, so much so that the "anarchists on Tumblr" aren't freely choosing & expressing the Beautiful but might well be extolling merely what their cohort or the corporate society have told them is desirable and subversive. I'm not too sure that Beauty--expressed & appreciated-is the free for all described. What if the subversive thing is precisely that beauty inheres in the structure of reality meaning that there is indeed an objective world out there for us to attend to and come to know & everything isn't in fact a product of our own consciousness. Anyway, it's a fascinating topic & a very uneasy one to take up today.

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CynthiaS's avatar

Yes, I agree with what you’re saying because to see the beauty is simply in the eye of the beholder just sort of takes away the idea of inherent beauty like you talked about.

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Emily's avatar

yes! you have said it well.

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