Replying to LO24815 --
On Fri, 09 Jun 2000 18:02:31 -0400 "Ray E. Harrell" <mcore@IDT.NET>
writes:
Dear Ray and Co-learners,
I have a twenty-some odd multi-disciplinary arts background (fine, media,
performance and healing arts), and I am compelled to reply to your recent
posting about Beauty; something I have written about rather
extensively...(particularly in relation to organizations). I wanted to
comment on your meaning-making regarding Beauty:
(snip)
> the issue of Beauty is
> a simple one. It simply means the "best possible example of a
> product." If the work holds together, i.e. has integrity within itself
> after living with it for
> a while, then we assume a level of Beauty i.e. excellence.
My meaning-making around Beauty is different; that is to say, for me,
Beauty is not about product or excellence. For me, Beauty is
interchangeable with Aesthetics and or the Soul, and is very much about an
experiential process of Aphroditic archetypical energy. >From an article
I published in 1999 in AU/NTL Journal:
An experience which somehow "moves" us always evokes a range of what I
have termed as "Aesthetic Responses". The definition for this as I have
developed it is that experiences of Beauty arrest motion, take our breath
away and seize us up in spell-binding moments of anguish or rapture.
Author and deconstructionist James Hillman (1989) suggests that a wide
spread response to Beauty could have a positive effect on issues that
concern us most today. He speaks of Beauty (aesthetics) as "manifest anima
mundi" or life force --- the very sensibility of the cosmos; the sensate
presence fundamental to all life. Hillman notes that the lack of attention
to Beauty and the loss of an aesthetic response has spun our society into
prolonged cycles of social decline. The Soul of the culture is suffering
because we have abandoned it. Likewise, the Soul or Beauty of an
organization suffers if we abandon it, or do not acknowledge its
existence.
Later in your posting you say:
> There is a problem with Beauty. Great work is often highly complex.
> Great old work is not only complex but removed semiotically
> (contextually)
> from the minds of the audience. That keeps them from really
> perceiving it
> and makes subjective projection their modality for judgment. They are
> often comfortable with their projections and thus "entertained" but it is
> a masturbatory experience rather than a dialogue.
For me personally, this is more to the point Ray, except that I would
re-language certain nuances of what you are conveying in this passage.
For example, I do not think the problem is with Beauty at all. Beauty is
Beauty --- a highly subjective experience. Either you are moved by
something or not. You know when you are---because you get chills or tears
or an "aha' or laughter or other deep-seated reactions that somehow shift
your state of awareness without even realizing until after the fact that
this has happened.
It is the capitalization or objectification or product-ification of Beauty
that fetishizes our experience of Soul and actually conditions us to
respond in masturbatorial ways---very close to a type of pornography,
where we distance ourselves from perceiving another as a human and see
them only as an object, thus removing ourselves from the experience of
them as a whole person. it is the difference between an object of art and
an artful experience. And you are quite right in view Ray, that there can
be no meaningful two-way dialogue if there exists a domination or
fetishization or objectification over someone or some event or some thing.
Unfortunately, we are heavily conditioned by cultures that over-emphasize
a positivist world view to think in terms of objectification---thus the
ensuing decline of our culture as it denies the full experience of Beauty.
That's it for now. Thanks for your thought provoking post Ray.
Morning thoughts on a hot summer's day,
Sajeela
_______________________________________________
Sajeela Moskowitz Ramsey, President - CORE Consulting
Center for Organizational Renewal and Effectiveness
2432 Villanova Drive/Vienna, VA. 22180
703 573 7050/ SajeelaCore @Juno.com
--Sajeela M ramsey <sajeelacore@juno.com>
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