Beauty, ideals, virtue, art, creation — transcend the artist, the creator, the artisan and the engineer, the philosopher, the object

 

Not merely as an idealised ideal, which we can’t touch

Of course the ideal is our vision,

then we merely strive to get closer to it, but can never reach it

The former is the abstraction — untethered to any constrains

The latter is the reality — by definition constrained by, well, reality

 

The interesting part is how little overlap there is between the instrument which temporarily reflects it, projects it — and that ideal, that beauty, that virtue

 

Artist is NOT like his art

Artist is not beautiful

Artist is not very creative

Peak of artists creativity is in the making of his artwork

And the most beautiful thing in the artist’s world is that beautiful artwork

Other than that?

Artist is, typically, just a piece of shit

The god-like beauty that he was an instrument of channeling — rubbed off VERY little on the artist

Many non-artists know far more beauty

 

Engineer is not like his machine, not like his system

The latter is engineered to perfection

It’s profoundly coherent

It’s tempered by friction of the real world

Engineer is nothing like that

He’s just a fucking dude

Maybe a bit more nerdy

Maybe sometimes his systems will inspire him to engineer something in his life too

Usually not

Many non-engineers build far superior systems in their lives

 

Philosopher is not like his philosophy

Usually he’s not really interested in answering the hardest questions

He’s too busy doing fucking philosophy

But no, the spontaneous thinker, the armchair philosopher, is also a piece of fucking shit

His “cool ideas” have none of the rigour that a pro-philosopher engages

But yes, either of them have moment of glory

When this sharp inquiry and utter inspired curiosity is directed at a concrete problem, and it illuminates it

Neither of them is like that fleeting moment of incisiveness

Few things they look at — do they look at in this way

But sometimes they find themselves overlapping with that transcendental clarity

That vanguard of human perception

 

And of course beauty

The beautiful are nothing like the beauty

They merely fleetingly reflect some of THE beauty in their superficial bearing, sometimes

They remind us to pursue beauty

Which we then fail

Or worse still: distort it

 

To pursue beauty is to give more attention to beauty

Recognise the beauty

Then make everything beautiful and beautifully

And while at it continue paying attention to beauty and cherishing it and savouring it

 

So let me repeat

We’re nothing like our fleeting moments of creativity, genius, virtue, excellence

The first lesson is to completely separate the medium and the message

Else you shall be profoundly disappointed

And beguiled and deluded

 

This cuts both ways,

That wonderful artist and that virtuous leader — are nothing like their work, nothing like their cause

They are human, and humans are, comparatively, fucking pathetic

And it’s ok

And likewise,

That most disgusting human you can think of,

He too carries that capacity within

He too has that delicate, pristine, innocent gemstone within him

He is human, after all

He may almost never be able to access it

But it’s there

When you separate THE HUMAN from a human — the confusion is dispelled

 

You really have no choice if you find yourself being the medium of something far far greater than yourself

It’s really your duty

But often you won’t even be able to resist it

It won’t benefit you. Like I said — it will likely barely rub off on you at all

It will benefit others, however

Some of them will be reminded of their humanity

 

The real lesson is to strive for more excellence, more beauty, more inspiration, more artfulness and tastefulness — in everything we do, everything we lay our eyes upon

But usually we only do so in some narrow domain, almost by chance, where we somehow miraculously happen to recognise that profound VALUE and truth IN AND OF ITSELF,

and pursue it then in spite of ourselves,

in spite of it’s failure to benefiting us on the outside, or the inside, usually…

 

…But if we could only look a little deeper,

and then a little more generally,

MAYBE we’d see that it’s not about that one thing, one obsession,

it’s about the BEAUTY, the EXCELLENCE, the LOVE, the CREATIVITY itself,

and it should inspire our entire lives

and those qualities are good in and of themselves and as such worth pursuing for themselves alone

and they are not limited to this one thing which inspired us, this one fleeting moment of recognition, of espying true beauty, excellence, love, perfection

but that it is the ideal to strive for EVERYWHERE,

ruthlessly