Flow. Halt. Normalcy. Accident. Order. Chaos. Progress. Slippage. Solution. Obstacle. Crisis. Adaptation. Instigation. Bloodshed. Education. Coping. Surviving. Intact. Dissonant. Sense. Confusion.

A morass of hope and upheaval circumscribes the human experience, the fact of living in the world, at odds with the world, in contention for a patch of sunlight amid overturned ambitions and frustrated ideals. Most severe human conflict emerges from the complexity of such contention. One method of surviving, emotionally, as an intellect, as a human being refusing to give up on humanity, is the resort to beauty.

Mountains sage and lavender in opaline mist. A ruby sun nestled in cool streams of fire, inventive fire of eventide. Small blue avian beings canting eerie recollections of abundance. Mindscape without color, crystalline and teeming with life. Sojourn away from contention, braced by natural fact. Beauty.

Beauty, though mysterious, undefinable, even variable according to subjective experience, is woven into every aspect of life and lived experience. Maybe it is the poet's province alone to take on the burden of working this through, seeing it always, being aware of the most menial, severe and terrible beauties. But the poet's work has resonance because it conjures up a latent awareness of improbable charms, hidden among the tortuous threadwork, the causeways of consciousness.

Life itself, as biological fact, is such a magnificent achievement, it lends a certain quality of beauty and wonder to everything that occurs within it. But beauty as such arises with the consciousness of it; it is a conscious condition, a state of the mind, however sensual, in which one deliberately approves of being in the world, and one's whole self resolves implicitly to continue life's exploration of the living world. And though it overtakes the mind, even steals the breath, beauty (being a conscious experience) is far from absolute. Beauty can be experienced in/as/through joy or pain, in/as/through aspiration or irony, in/as/through victory or defeat.

If one engages the self, the living fullness of one's own existence, if one confronts the tiny absurdities of dwelling within circumstance, if one filters out the jagged edges of social pressure and brings forward the unmasked rhythm of meaning that underscores and gives shape to experience, one finds that around the edges, and at the center, of virtually every body across the plane of fact is the real possibility of beauty, of a recognition that knowing that one exists is in itself the beginning of all joy and connectivity.

It is in such resort to beauty, which is focus, engagement, comprehension, not escape, not isolation, that one gains perspective as to the worth inherent in certain choices, certain moments, certain sorts of activity. One can put aside any excessive regard for the empty and meaningless; one can put aside the overtly, even stupidly selfish; one can put aside ambitions that have to do with conquest for the sake of conquest.

In such conditions, freed from the strictures of want, zeal and frustration, the mind is better able to recall itself, better able to see the value of actual human beings, actual life, actual interest. Through beauty, not artificial, but real, present and deeply experienced beauty, one is better able to find a genuine relationship to one's world.

It is a common error of the pseudo-pragmatist to eschew pleasant, expressive, conceptually complex, thoughtful or visionary, fabulous or beautiful considerations as impractical, impracticable, pointless. But pragmatism is founded on a strange blend of calculation and eventual happiness... and happiness, as Nietzsche said, is no argument. The happiness of some, for instance, may be the ill and misery of others. The maximum or optimum number of happy results within one population may cause a ten-fold measure of suffering elsewhere.

Contrary to the forced and zealous pursuit of happiness at the individual level, which is most often mistaken for material comfort, beauty in individual experience yields a much higher return. The sight of mountains, forests, oceans, wild animals or brilliant blooms, even forbidding landscapes and intense weather, is enough to transform a person, at least momentarily. And beauty, unlike happiness, can exist in sadness, with a somber glow, in company with pain. In this way, beauty is a friend and guide to consciousness, and even within its subjectivity (perhaps for its subjectivity) it resonates. It is able to transport meaning over a treacherous and varied terrain.

So we still look at Van Gogh, because his anxieties, manifest in beautiful, unsual, vulnerable expression, bring hope... we still look at da Vinci, because his virtuosity is reassuring... we read Shakespeare, because he spent the time to transfer in words a vast amount of conscious and emotional beauty... in the case of music, most all of modern music is descended from the genius of Bach... and humanity needs such fodder to see and to know itself.

A regular part of living in the human world is debate about what the average person can do to reduce terror, violence and suffering, while helping to strengthen the weave of trust among us. Government has certain roles, and often the grave responsibility of physical combat is seen as highest among them. Thankfully, the average citizen need not carry weapons or plunge into battle to make the world safe. There are many other avenues available to imaginative people to build strength, prosperity and security into a free society.

The highest obligation of an individual citizen is to have an authentic individual existence that gives purpose to all the other defenses of innocence and individuality. (Both Aristotle and Confucius warn that one must first have one's private life in order before one can serve humanity well, and both agree that the highest private pursuit is genuine self-knowledge.) From the vantage point of an authentic existence, one can look out upon the world with openness and appreciation, for what is or what might be.

Juan Ramón Jiménez, great Spanish poet of the early 20th century, was criticized by zealous fellow literati for not integrating specific messages about political trends, partisan factions and war, into his work and for ruminating instead on the glory of a simple flower. He responded, famouly, by pointing out that if more people would stop and appreciate the beauty by the side of the road, his beloved Spain might not have been plunged into civil war and brother might not be so anxious to plot the death of brother.

Beauty touches the core of what is good and valuable about human existence. In locating beauty, the mind itself is beautified, humanized, because it is in consciousness where beauty finds its hold in the world. As such, it must be remembered that beauty is not absolute: it shifts; it allows for difference and individuality, even thrives by way of them. Strictly neutral physical refinement is not necessarily beauty... clean fascistic uniformity, forced order, streets devoid of human clutter, lack of unrest: these are not beauty, but the negation of the circumstances in which beauty arises, reaches out and bursts into being.

In the wake of terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, people around the nation and around the world were inspired to rush into the streets, to crowd into arenas, to light candles and to sing to one another about the things that can be obscured or threatened by violence: that is beauty; that is the way in which beauty works, and it cannot be forced. Such initiative is not a result of violent attack, nor can it be said to be a 'silver lining'; it stems directly from our common humanity, from the hope that comes with intellect and with artistic expression. So it must be genuine, it must be nourished, and it will help to defend the structure of a world that aspires to peace, justice and freedom.

© 2003 Joseph Robertson