Consider the modernist ego extricated from the legacy of religion and myth. The knowledge of the inner-workings of the human brain allowed for mechanistic explications of the human psyche, such that the hitherto formidable pains and yearnings could be defanged and categorized as mere mental deviations of a state-regulating, unassuming chemical pulley, constructed by the process of natural selection to ensure competitive advantage — one which Man is unable to efficiently zoom out of and feel, rather than only become cognizant of it. The difficulty in attaining awareness of the imperfections in our ability to perceive the relative protractedness of the evolutionary step in which we find ourselves in, leads us to perhaps ascribe more meaning to it than it should merit when assessing the abstract concepts of meaning.
The state of wellbeing broadly described as the lack of suffering and the abundance of comfort or pleasure (posited by the likes of Sam Harris as the philosophical, physiological and societal target for deriving purpose and morality in life) is seemingly comprehensive enough to cover heterogenous landscapes of human and non-human qualia alike. Contrasted against the grandeur of the yet-budding past of our species with tales of stoicism, afterlife and romance, the shortage of an inspiring narrative imbued with the elusive (often hijacked by religion) motif of humanity is often brought up as the major conceptual deficiency of a wellbeing-driven life. These concerns are then handwaved as being motivated by irrationality (unsurprisingly, as the proponents of such counterarguments are seldom without bias towards mysticism, bold or capable enough to propose a cogent and scientific-enough alternative), and the wellbeing model is prophylactically bolstered by a programmatic injection of altruism as the sensible sociological supplement, so as to avoid the inherent danger of selfishness. And yet, why is it that both (what is considered to be noteworthy) one’s lived experience and art appear to imbibe a wholly different sentiment and romanticism; are these the last civilizational vestiges of a bygone era, or something deeper and more truthful?
Some asymmetry will likely exist so long as there is something rather than nothing. This lack of uniformity then appears to be leveraged by conscious (living) beings to construct a space-and-time approximation or controlled hallucination of whatever the universe is, with the (bereft of any creationist connotation) evolutionarily selected “aim” of navigating towards better outcomes for themselves, the morphologically complex assemblies of particles acting in concert through organelles, cells, organs, neurotransmitters. Whatever the most suitable definition of ego, id, superego, attention and such may be, it is all but certain that the motivation for doing anything, as the underlying orchestra of human needs and desires, can be explained through physiological levers and pulleys which our conscious layer (notionally) acts upon. When seeking the absolute truth about the nature of our lives, if we start with the analysis of ourselves and our constituting elements, as opposed to thinking up plausible stories for why we may be important to the universe as a whole, it becomes obvious that at the very least, it is true we have evolved to strive away from suffering (nociceptors), and towards greater contentment (dopamine, serotonin receptors, etc.) and reproductive success (testosterone, oestrogen, etc.). This can be considered the base layer constituting human motivation, our truth. It is evident from its positive (empathy) and less positive offshoots (addictions) that this motivation does not stop at its base animalistic layer in us humans; it evolves into various human-specific (pseudo-)motivations we hold as dear as anything else, they become our defining features. It is easy to become lost when examining these secondary and tertiary motivational layers, which is why it is important to stay cognizant of what mechanistic substrates we are using to stick close to the truth. By relying on dopaminergic and serotoninergic explanations (where applicable), we can fortify our assumptions of what is real and what is imagined, even if this comes with the resultant implication that dangerous behavioural “impurities” are also real and true.
With conscious agents operating on biological substrates governing their motivation in the non-homogenous space-time chunk of reality pertinent to their existence, the various asymmetries get filtered as preferable or undesirable, the beautiful and ugly. Therefore, we develop the concept of beauty as that which necessarily divides and distinguishes.
While wellbeing and the lack thereof may be functionally described as the oscillations on the dopamine axis governing our macro- and micro-motivations, beauty may take place of the “negative space” on that dopamine axis, i.e. the property of it to escalate beyond the levels it becomes tolerant to. Philosophically and poetically, it would represent the asymmetry inherent to the universe being manifested through our filter for desirable traits of objects and agents. Thought experiments like the soma-soaked dystopian nightmare of Huxley’s Brave New World could help us imagine why a perfectly balanced world of pure wellbeing where these motivational impurities are squashed is not the ideal – what is left is an inexplicable yearning that results in a less fair world where the net wellbeing decreases. Beauty divides and re-distributes wellbeing: where a savoury oatmeal with fruit makes for a nice and healthy breakfast and a better long-term health outcome, a croissant with coffee and fried cheese is arguably more beautiful of a meal to most, even despite its long-term hazards. One could easily interpret this to be a bug of our neurophysiology which does not operate on a large enough time scale to envision the net wellbeing cost-benefit analysis (especially because the opportunity cost of making healthy food choices often makes for a very compelling case for a healthy diet) but things get more muddy with more substantive examples that are not limited to gut (even here, one could play the devil’s advocate and provide context-specific reasons for eating junk food). Is the pursuit of beauty through say the appreciation of the divine or martyrdom a silly way of spending one’s life even if it makes it fulfilled with what feels like a greater truth to the individual? How about the forbidden beauty of an attractive but troubled woman with long auburn hair, wearing a fur-lined leather jacket and smoking seductively in a Honda NSX in the 80’s Miami? Would most men not consciously sacrifice their long-term wellbeing for such a fantasy and never regret it?
Naturally, there are are differences in how this yet-to-be-constructed-external-stimulus-based dopamine deficit is manifested in different individuals (or species, if we contemplate the existence of other forms of consciousness) – the mere fact that dopamine is greatly influenced by testosterone allows for a large variance in the proclivity for beauty and the nature of beauty in different individuals.
Beauty does absolutely encompass altruism and empathy through sacrifice and internal emulation of the perceived positive outcome for a beloved (or a stranger), but in order for there to be a sacrifice, there needs to also exist the truth of the “demonic” appeal of what is unjustifiably superior and unequal, but attractive (even in a subconscious glimmer; e.g. a married woman refusing to love other more attractive, caring, capable men gives weight to her fidelity). Human civilization has (at least overtly) tried to eradicate selfishness from beauty and wellbeing, but the world is uneven and messy, and selfishness and altruism are both components of beauty. A soldier willing to earnestly die for a cause often does so due to being inspired by the purity of the ideal of uncompromising beauty, not their own wellbeing or even the greater good (when looking at the individual math of the difference their death may make). What if wellbeing for everyone (however much an admirable and desirable goal) is not the ultimate meaning, but only secondary to beauty, on the level of an individual? Going beyond a single good life and constructing a perfectly fair society around this inherent inequality seems all but an impossible task.
Can beauty save the world? Yes, through its destructively imbalanced spiral it can give flesh to impossible and ugly dreams alike, make heart-wrenching loneliness a quixotic ideal, as ideas or objects of yearning become more important than wellbeing alone, beauty can withstand all the ugliness of this world and emerge triumphant, making space and time themselves of relative, diminutive importance to human spirit.
A Forgotten Nook 