Beauty Is in the Ear of the Beseemer

Ever look dispassionately at ears? They're weird convoluted tissue flaps, hanging off the side of your head. We don't regard them as ugly. But if someone had eyelids that dropped in folds and looked like ears, we'd probably be startled or even grossed out. And, btw, our genitals are not that spiffy looking, when you think about them. But, for most of us, they are pleasant to apprehend.

Nature offers us many emotional occasions--sunsets, newborn babies, gathering storm clouds, raging rapids and tranquil pools, animals big and small with tooth and claw, lightning, offal and worms that eat offal, sulphur springs, slugs, etc. etc.--none of which is beautiful or ugly, good or bad, right or wrong.

There is no tragedy in nature, as there is no vindication or triumph. The earth shifts and kills living things, stones are crushed, waves speed ashore and strip the ground of all its coverage, fires burn uncontrolled until the ground itself is black. And then life continues, everywhere. Nature is not wrong for producing these things.

We may experience overwhelming feelings when we confront nature, when we look upon the Aurora Borealis or an avalanche, fields of flowers to the horizon and carnivores feeding on the slow members of the herd, etc. These feelings come down, basically, to awe or repulsion, not beauty or ugliness. Tics I hate, they make me cringe and recoil, but they are not ugly. They're repellent, disgusting, horrifying even. A blazing sunset, radiating beams through broken, burning salmon-colored clouds, fills us with awe at the grandness of nature, which at that moment is perceived as benign. But what happens a mere 30 minutes or hour later, when the last rays of the sun have departed and the world is wrapped in inky darkness? Fear and trepidation begin to rise in our consciousness. The awe of delight at the sunset changes to the awe of fear of nocturnal predators adapted to find their prey.

Beauty and ugliness are words we use to describe properties we have extracted from "out there" and placed "in here," in a work of art, to permit us to contemplate things that otherwise are terrifying or comforting.

There are only two emotions, or perhaps more precisely, only two proto-emotions: fear and security. These are our raw, visceral response to life, and they produce reactions like disgust at parasites or dung. In tandem with them, we have appetites that move us and give us impetus and motivation to behave in certain ways. Lastly, on top of the two basic emotions and our appetites, we have developed a wide array of social behaviors that are tied to them in amazingly subtle and nuanced ways, which we refer to as "our feelings." They are our gut reactions of security or insecurity in light of social behavior and social customs or cultural artifacts.