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What To Do About The Desecration of Beauty
What is the standard for successful art in our culture? And who sets it? What we need to do to revive the beautiful in pop culture.
The late Oxford writer and philosopher Roger Scruton said, “Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter.” He called our culture’s loss of beauty the “postmodern desecration.” Scruton chose “desecration” carefully: it’s a religious word that implies the spoiling of what is sacred.
I couldn’t help but think about Scruton’s words after watching a segment of the Super Bowl halftime show earlier this month. Lewdness replaced loveliness; empowered self-expression supplanted beauty. I was appalled and embarrassed.
And yet to some, the halftime show was a glorious display of two female “artists” expressing themselves in culturally and artistically significant ways.
Is this the bar for art in our culture? How far we’ve fallen from the grip of the truly beautiful.
Explore Dr. Tim’s New Book
A Note for the Curious.
Beauty can change you if you let it. That’s what the path of life has taught me so far. Beauty changed me. It still does. But don’t worry. This isn’t a book about sitting on beaches or mountain roads watching the sunset or meditating in art galleries—although I have done (and still do) these things.
This idea of chasing beauty is about pursuing a lifestyle that goes against the cultural grain of busyness, loudness, and naked ambition—you know, the kind of ambition we’re told we must have in order to find success in this cutthroat world.
My relatively short life has taught me that Beauty Chasers are thinkers and listeners. They see when the world goes blind. They embody quietness when all the world wants to do is scream. They promote the good of others when the world says to promote yourself. They give life to others when the world seems hell-bent on killing.
Beauty Chasers live their lives to a different cadence. They walk the path less traveled. If you’re interested in these things, and you’re willing to risk change, then read on, my friend.
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