KyLee Morrissette
Elisha Emerson
English 110
26 April 2018
What is Beauty?
Beauty, a marvelous, mysterious thing to all of us. What is beauty? How can beauty affect who we are and how we act? To me beauty is defined as breath taken, eye opening, full of joy and happiness. For example, just remember a time you sat and watched the sunset. That sunset showed multiple different colors blending together to create an eye opening view. Something so marvelous and yet very mysterious. The same goes for music, which is a basic necessities to our life. We live for our music. Creating a new experience in this world making us respect and love the beautiful aspects in our lives. Just imagine how wonderful it would be to watch a sunset with some nice classical, relaxing music playing in the background. Here this creates a whole new experience with beauty. Beauty isn’t just one aspect, It is multiple aspects put together creating peace and tranquility.
Beauty has many different definitions, One of the most popular view was introduced by John Armstrong, a philosopher at the University of Melbourne. In his book La Bella Vita, Armstrong states “…beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.” (armstrong) What Armstrong is saying here is that everyone has their own idea of what beauty is. Thus, once we die so does our view of beauty. But why do we all have different views on beauty? Hense, Schiller’s two psychological drives can answer that.
Schiller believed that there are two powerful psychological drives in the brain called the ‘sense’ drive or ‘form’ drive. These two drives often create conflict, but in the meaning of beauty we create harmony betweenthese two drives. Schiller believes that “…the ‘sense’ drive which lives in the moment and seeks immediate gratification. It craves contact and possession.” (Armstrong). By extension, the ‘sense’ drive is the part of psychological event that creates people to become brutal and superficial. Hence the reason why we need ‘form’ drive, “…’form’ drive: the inner demand for coherence over time, for abstract understanding and rational order.” (Schiller) In this sense, Schiller states that the ‘form’ drive is more for abstract and rational thinking. Causing there to be conflict between the ‘form’ and ‘sense’ drives. What if we don’t want anymore conflict? We could easily fix that by letting the two drives to work together in harmony. Then we would have the possibility of seeing the true role beauty can play in our lives. (Armstrong).
Nowadays people don’t just think everything is beautiful, they only see beauty in being of their looks. People everywhere are covering their faces with this makeup, or what I like to call a mask. This mask hides majority of their face, which to them makes them look beautiful. Yet all they really are doing is painting their faces, which can make them unrecognizable. To them this is their standard of beauty. Yet honestly people need to start focusing on their true beauty.
Not just of the fact that this mask makes you beautiful, because it doesn’t. When I look at someone with this mask on all I can think of how long they’ve spent putting their faces on. And for what precisely? To make sure that you are the prettiest of them all? When in actuality all this mask does is take away some of your beautiful features, and hides the true you. True beauty is those people who don’t have to put a mask on the daily. It is the people that take good care of their body including not putting chemicals on your face to transform their truly beautiful faces.
Society Standards of Beauty (how to do contour)
To me beauty is in everything, it just takes the right person to find it. Today people believe beauty is all about looks, when in actuality looks have a part in it, but true beauty comes from within. Look at this picture.(My dog) This picture here is my standards of beauty. Here you can see my dog, Clutch, enjoying his swim. The water all around him is flowing in two different currents. One current is the lakes natural current, and the other is the one my dog is creating by moving around in the water. Together the different flows make a rippled effect. Every aspect of this picture makes me feel at peace. The picture hits it home in both my drives, making this what I call true beauty.
Dog or Otter? (my own picture)
Now let’s start talking about a different form of beauty, music. Music; a vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in a way to produce beauty in form, harmony, and expression of emotion. (google). Music is one of the basic things we thrive on today. People listen to music in the car going to work, or even at the gym when they are trying to focus. Then there are the people like me, who just can’t focus on my work without listening to music. Not to mention there are a bunch of different forms of music people like today. Music helps enhance us to notice beauty. Just take a second to look at this picture. (Sunset) It’s breathe taken, the way the colors merge in the sky to highlight the sun setting on the coast. It gives you a strong, and powerful feeling. But yet you’ll soon grow old of look at it. When this happens you don’t really appreciate all of its beauty.
(sunset)
Click to add music —> (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpjO44jJ4Mc)
Once you add some music it somehow enhances the beauty making you notice every little part of the picture.
One, Let’s Talk About Art project that really stuck out to me was Nicole’s and Carla’s presentation about piano music. Piano music has always been a big thing for me. I’ve always listened to instrumental music to help me work on projects and to just to relax. In their presentation they brought up all the factors of how music can change your emotion towards something. For instance like my picture of the sunset. Once you add music to the picture you seem to appreciate the beauty more than at first glance.
Thus, implying that beauty is taken for granted everyday. We should stop and just appreciate the beauty around us. Once we leave we might never see this form of beauty again. Making me come to the conclusion that beauty can change someone for the greater good. Beauty helps us stay sane in this complex world, by getting our two psychological drives to work together creating an aspect we call beauty. Once our two drives are together than we will find our peace and tranquility in the beauty of our world.
Work Cited
Armstrong, John. “Can Beauty Help Us to Become Better People? – John Armstrong | Aeon
Essays.” Aeon, Aeon, 25 Apr. 2018, aeon.co/essays/can-beauty-help-us-to-become-better-people.
Google,Google,https://www.google.com/search?q=music+difinition&oq=music+difinition&aqs=
chrome..69i57j0l5.6351j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
“How to Do Basic Contouring Effectively.” WonderfulDIY, 26 Feb. 2016,
wonderfuldiy.com/basic-contouring-guide/
sundaysunset.images. “Brighton Beach Sunset.” Sundaysunset.images,
sundaysunset.com/products/brighton-beach-sunset-0454?variant=29312076353%2B%5C
The Book of Life. “What Is Art For?” The Book of Life, 21 Apr. 2018,
www.thebookoflife.org/what-is-art-for/.
