I do believe you have a need for balance in your life, and that it pays to be mindful of that balance. We are in some areas of our life. Fitness, for instance. When we've overindulged with a burger, for instance, we'll often work out to compensate. I try to make sure I do that in other areas of existence, also. When I'm exposed to unpleasant things, I try to even that out by seeking out that which is beautiful. In the hope that it will even out the balance.
The beautiful thing I've got in mind is, in fact, a course on the primacy of beauty itself over on Peterson Academy, one that I've been enjoying immensely. I wish I could tell you what it's about, but to be honest, I know I'll have to watch it all at least once more before I can explain vaguely competently the contents (as with all of Dr. Vervaeke's courses).
But in broad terms, it's a discussion on the transjective nature of beauty. An argument that rather than being either fully subjective or entirely objective (the subject of some serious debate, over time), beauty is in fact transjective, meaning that beauty exists in the way two agents fit and interact together.
That you don't find something (or perhaps more interestingly, someone) beautiful simply because it is (since it can't be objectively, empirically, indubitably beautiful), nor because you interpret it as such. Rather, beauty is ever-transient. Dictated by where you are and who you are at this point in time, but also by where and what the object/person is, also.
The course is this fantastic exploration of beauty as a doorway to the divine. It's saying that in order for something to be beautiful, it must alter you, must invite reflection, and inspire you (or ideally both participants, in the matter of relationships) to a deep sense of reverence. In describing the essence of beauty in romantic relationships, Dr. Vervaeke had a lovely way of phrasing it. The beauty of loving someone translating as
I want to realize their mystery with them.
Reading that, it sounds like "duh, of course", but when you think about it, so much of love is about possession, about changing and moulding people, about "getting our way". There's so little in our way of interacting with the world that suggests we realize the true relevance of beauty or that we actually experience the sacred, force-of-nature quality of beauty.
It's at the same time, also, an argument against what he perceives as an attempt to impoverish our reality and replace beauty (a plenitude, a sense of sacred moreness) with smoothness (an absence of detail and implicitly of genuine interaction between two agents). A perfect example of that being pornography and all the toxic ways in which that industry has tainted our perception of beautiful things, has tarnished our relationship with the sacredness of our reality.
And I've found great comfort in listening to his lectures, and trying to follow along, though as I say, there's so much that goes over my head. So many books I'm jotting down to try to begin to understand the complex subject matter.
And yet.
I realize there is a sense almost of holiness to listening to his lectures. A sense that even though I'm struggling to follow, I am undeniably in the presence of something quite awe-inspiring, that simply listening to these talks is enriching my life a great deal. I joke that PA is so advanced it's even managed to give me the experience of having a crush on a professor, and once I might've believed it was only just that.
But now I realize, it's not the static way the course or this teacher are, nor is it my perception of them. That in a wonderful falling into place, my course on the primacy of beauty is exemplifying its own core subject. That by some good fortune, I've encountered in Dr. Vervaeke's course precisely that numinosity that can help me understand what is meant by the sacred, unprecedented, clearly discernible essence of beauty.
And that, both the course itself and the larger coincidence (or not) of how it's fallen into place, how it explains its own story and adds to my life right now, has been a heavy dollop of beauty to even out my scale.
