beauty: an evolution of ideas and tingly feelings?

outside my door sits a neglected concrete pot with soil and the ghosts of plants past. usually, i'd pass by without noticing said pot even though it is always in my peripheral vision. this is to be expected; naturally, the brain is filtering out information irrelevant to whatever biologically programmed and culturally conditioned purposes currently control my actions. recently i'd become aware of the existence of spring weeds shooting up in the dirt even though i don't remember ever taking a moment to focus on the pot. it would seem that this information was processed and deemed worthy enough to be kept only in peripheral memory, so i wouldn't be able to tell you details about new plant growth like shape, size, etc.

in the last couple days however, i noticed the pot in a different way; i was compelled to focus on it. some new visual information was processed and set off a neural alert. it's amazing to me that i literally HALTED my routine of key fidgeting and door opening to turn toward the pot. this was not a conscious decision; it was made deep down in the cognitive processes beyond the reach of awareness.


as i looked at this brilliantly coloured flower i began to think about how its appearance at this place and time had temporarily affected the course of my universe solely by virtue of its visual characteristics. some people, maybe most people, maybe everyone in the world but physics types, attribute that to the existence of something called "beauty". me personally, i tend to see as much "beauty" in this flower as i see "magic" in the transfiguration of the hues of a rapidly spinning colour wheel into a white glow. a small part of me still does think "oh look! a pretty flower" but only if one considers me to include mental processes apart from the conscious self. (i don't.)

more and more that exclamation is becoming "oh look! a flower", my point being that the conscious processes and intellectual faculties can sometimes supersede certain instinctual processes, and though i notice the flower with the same intensity ("oh look!") i seem to lack enough of the sensation that hold other humans in awe. as such, and because i was thinking of what it would be to be high right then, i had to ask myself why such mental perceptions as "beauty" ended up being exalted as ubiquitous and self-evident truths, deified, in the course of human existence. why is it that "beauty" is something, i am told, to be appreciated? "beauty" is defined within the subjective reality of the eye, and perhaps sex, of the beholder. so it irks me that a concept that has little objective basis other than tingly feelings in the brain should be enforced upon me as something to be worshipped, "just because".

by questioning the nature of "beauty" i am NOT implying that the concept is a false or useless one. quite the contrary. i endorse the pursuit of happiness, whatever that entails, as an objective of, if not a sustaining factor behind, continued human existence; albeit that pursuit should be directed by our higher faculties in line with our evolution away from will-less, semi-conscious intelligent information processing animal units toward what i like to describe as thoughtful godly humanity, capable of choosing existence or non-existence through free will rather than existence choosing us through encoded biological instruction. i want to say that the flower IS beautiful but not just because of a primitive neurological cue. it is beautiful because when one looks at the flower one can see the confluence of events that led to its existence, and the interbeing of all existence. the light from the sun traveling across space, the wind and the rains whirling about earth, the very cycle of life that produced sentient beings who can then appreciate their own existence. that is beauty.