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 Worcestershire Ramble part 1 204 messages | Select a forum: |
| Tombo, Beauty/aesthetics: you say you agree, and simply add that for you beauty is also a spiritual thing, “good for the soul”. But there’s no divergence: I’ve wondered why, as I wander eccentrically around the Worcestershire lanes, just why I/we find natural beauty so overwhelming (other than the possibility of creeping insanity of course). And I’ve tried to analyse it (“typical soulless rationalist dope, analysing beauty instead of experiencing it!”). I’m not so deluded as to think I can tell you what poets and philosophers have failed to do, especially as it’s in the eye of the beholder, but I can tell you what I see and what I feel and why I think I feel that way. Being based on my own observation, rather than with reference to book-larnin’ it may well be old hat, but for me it’s my hat. First, the God thing. Out of my window there are a million greens, and none clash. There’s also oranges and purples, and those don’t either. Poets have said as much. Observations like that are often taken as pretty much conclusive proof of a creator. And who can blame anyone for such a conclusion? Back to painting, and if you try to put four greens and an orange on canvas you soon realize how blindingly clever God’s million greens are. You end up having to mix a bit of each colour with the others to stop them jarring. It’s called “The McDonald’s Corporate Colours are an Offence against God” syndrome, or should be. So “Clever God” is one explanation of natural beauty. But what about a rationalist view? Could it not be that those greens aren’t designed, they just exist, mere random wavelengths of light, but we’re programmed to feel that they’re pleasing in every combination? No, because it doesn’t work on canvas. So there has to be more. What strikes me is this: if you take an orange that is part of a natural scene and paint it on a farm tractor far in the distance it suddenly becomes intrusive and offensive. So what has changed? It’s the intrusion of artificiality. Perhaps it’s not that we are programmed to react to and appreciate God’s colours but we’re programmed to appreciate the hand of God rather than the hand of Man................. >>> Reply | with quote |  28th June 2003ce 10:28 In reply to: Spirit of Place (Shestu) |
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