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Beauty [2014]
Descriptions of beauty falter in the face of beauty.
If one could take the emotions and feelings and thoughts; the totality of the inner-world, extract it and share it with another, then we wouldn’t need words to describe the experience. If experiences could be scooped up like cake mix, and poured into another’s mind, we wouldn’t write; we would scoop.
Given our limitations, we make up words, and give meaning to those words:
When those words don’t add up to what we are trying to express, some of us take this deep inner-world and package it into another form. Said another way: the beauty we experience propels us to create our own beauty [1].
We create:
Others struggle to express what is truly in them.
Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it time runs out. - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
I think Holmes was right that many die “with their music still in them”; but he misses the more common reason: fear. We are afraid of sticking our head out, of being different, of sharing something that we have poured our heart into.
Lies we tell
You’ll often hear people say things like, “I’m not the creative type.” What they’re really saying is,“ I have created things, but I’m so terrified of sharing for fear of rejection that I’ve chosen to set expectations super-super-low, and if I do create, I’ll do it in private.”
Humans at their deepest core are creators.
While being literally true biologically, there is also a deep intellectual framework that surrounds this idea.
Base metals can be transmuted into gold by stars, and by intelligent beings who understand the processes that power stars, but by nothing else in the universe. - David Deutsch, Beginning of Infinity
Humans are the creators of the most-far-reaching thing that can be created: knowledge.
“Knowledge does away with darkness, suspense and doubt; for these cannot exist where knowledge is. … In knowledge there is power. God has more power than all other beings, because He has greater knowledge; and hence He knows how to subject all other beings to Him. He has power over all.”14 Joseph Smith, Jr.
Knowledge also allows us to subject the world to us, to shape it and mold it and use it to solve problems.
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How did humans get to the point where we could transmute base metals into gold?
We created the knowledge necessary for the task through an iterative process of trial & error; conjecture & criticism; “I wonder if that's why it is” & “let us put our ideas to the test.”
Humans are unique.
We can create explanations.
These explanations, when they are good (in the Deutschian sense), move the world forward by allowing us to literally take the world around us and shape it with our minds; I don’t mean in some meta-physical sense. I mean that we can take knowledge, apply it to the world around us, and create miracles.
If I have the requisite knowledge, I can sit in front of a screen, touch a few buttons, huddle a group of others who each have the right knowledge, say some words, and then within some number of months after we do the work that our knowledge directs us to do, a new vehicle is on the road. A new car!!! It came from our mind!!!
If I have the requisite knowledge, I can cause skyscrapers, or computers, or airplanes, or trains, or software, or food, etc. to be created through a process that is very similar, in principle.
From inventing the printing press to creating the Internet, we have applied knowledge to our environment and made progress.
The most profound creation
Creating knowledge is an amazing ability; but we have an even more amazing ability; humans (almost universally) can procreate. Said another way: we have the ability to create the beings that are capable of creating the knowledge.
Some find this mundane & strictly biological and point to other animals: “This isn’t that interesting because it’s common of all biological life,” they say; I find it extraordinary. We swaddle, caress, kiss, and teach beings of infinite potential, both in the Deutschian sense, and, in my view, in the Eternal sense.
The experience of bringing life into the world is beautiful beyond words. Many who are inspired by the experience try to express it. Poets will write, musicians will compose, artists will paint; all of these expressions, though beautiful, ultimately fall far short of the experience itself; creating life is a transcendently beautiful thing.
My wife delivered twins Sunday, and I had one of these indescribable moments of beauty. I’ve felt this way before; it’s an experience that is (literally) not possible to describe with words.
The day after the birth, I spent hours in the newborn nursery, holding their tiny hands, looking at them, sitting in awe. I pondered the inexpressable beauty of human consciousness, of life, and of our power to create.
I wondered about whether I am good enough to adequately father them, and then I reassured myself that “as long as you do your best all will be well.”
I watched my wife fall in love with them. Looking at me: “It was all worth it, it was all worth it, it was all worth it.“ Looking at them: "I love you, I love you, I love you.”
There were tears of joy, and expressions of love from everybody.
This is beauty. Living through it is a High-Definition powerhouse of an experience; every sense drinks in the symphonic orchestra of stimuli. The words above illustrate only a sliver - a fraction - of the totality of the experience.
[1] Beauty isn’t the only thing that can inspire us. Often, the adversity and the pain can be even more inspiring than the beauty. Further, some aren’t touched to create beauty, but instead feel compelled to cause pain and suffering toward others. It is probably more accurate to say, “Deeply emotional experiences, from the disturbing to the profound, are the drivers behind creative activity. When we are deeply touched, either for good or for evil, we tend to react with our own emotional expressions.”