KEEP THE OLD WARM

Over the last few decades, new aspects of beauty are taking on new power and status.

Looking over all of human history we see beauty as a good and bad thing.

Consider beautiful works of art, music, scientific discoveries, philosophical ideas, literature, inventions. Or how about moments of redemption, epiphany, love, friendship, and making peace? The mere presence of nature; animals, plants, all forces of the earth, the celestial heavens above, are ancient examples of beauty.

We cannot forget that sexual attraction has been the driving force that ensures our survival as a species and thus influences beauty. Beyond procreation, we see lovely art, sculptures, dances, plays, songs, stories, etc., all influenced by sexual attraction in a way that produces works of culture. We see people in love experience passionate and fueling sex that strengthens their love, or young adolescents feel their first sexual urges that one can only describe as thrilling, or beautiful.

But what about bad beauty.

Sexual attraction can be healthy when in the moment with a lover, or seeing a person who is truly beautiful to you in a way that is beyond the eyes and penetrates the heart. Even lust for a beautiful person in small doses can be healthy to experience a more passionate side of beauty.

The New Beauty is a bad one: the constant, relentless, subtle, pervasive, perfected, for-money beauty that is broadcasted across the globe 24-7, at the fingertips of all smart phone users, in control of the hearts of many men and women of all ages, and has no aim for culture or love, but only to entice for its own attention, fame, and money.

The New Beauty is not a healthy development. It is sexual beauty that sells and drives profit to itself. We have sexual beauty bringing people petty fame, making individuals money on the internet to reveal more and more of themselves, driving envy in to the hearts of all as they see others more beautiful than themselves – either feeling less worthy or then striving only to be more sexy. New Beauty is a competition, a quiet game of power, envy.

Put simply, the New Beauty is being sexy, and we are placing too much value on it. Sexiness is not good. It isn’t necessarily bad. But it is certainly not good. Too much of it distracts people from true beauty, drives envy, and contributes nothing in the way of culture or love.

I do not like the New Beauty. I will not call it evil, but I will call it annoying, for it keeps me from experiencing what I truly find beautiful: artistic creation, love of friends, family, and true love, time in nature, and the Wisdom of the Old.

Disengage from the New Beauty. Do not be ruled by it. It has its place in our world, but it cannot have a ruling place among us. Let is stay down on the floor like the beast it is. Do not let it rise to the heart and the mind where love and wisdom shall rule instead.

Keep the Old Beauty Warm. Cool the New Beauty. It has grown too hot.