True Beauty: Our Perception and of Beauty and Its Role in Society

    When you look at a sunset at night, like the one below, what do you feel? You may find it beautiful, as many people do. There are many things in life that people consider to be “beautiful.” But why do we find some things more beautiful than others? Why does something appear beautiful to one person but not another? There are many ways to approach the answers to these questions. John Armstrong writes about Friedrich Schiller’s ideas about why we find things beautiful and the drives of our mind in his essay “La Bella Vita.” In an article titled “The Math Behind Beauty,” Bruno Maddox talks about the “formula” for beauty from a more concrete perspective. These two authors attempt to explain why things are beautiful but from opposite perspectives. Podcasts from Tehya Casey and Liam Darcy offer insight into how beauty can arise from a contrast between good and bad. In today’s world we hold beauty to a high value but never reflect on the role it plays in a community or why we find things beautiful. In our society we have standards of beauty and our experiences shape how we view these standards, and influence what we find beautiful.

    Our experiences influence our perception of beauty. In “La Bella Vita” John Armstrong references Friedrich Schiller, who says “if we want to understand beauty, we can’t just talk about the things we find beautiful. We have to talk about our lives.” This means that beauty does not come from the object that we see but from ourselves. This leads me to believe that we have the ability to change the way we see things and what we find beautiful. Our brain is constantly taking in new information and discarding things that are no longer useful. By having new experiences, we change the way our brains perceive certain things. For example, in Tehya Casey’s podcast, which can found in this link, her aunt is moved by the beauty of the New England coast after returning from a trip to Florida. Her disdain for the Florida beaches strengthened her love for New England. She describes the Maine coast as “rustic, wild, rocky, basically untamed,” (1:03). Her love for the wilderness was influenced by other places that she lived; she mentions that living in Walden, Vermont made her love the harshness of the seasons and hate the pristineness of the Florida Beaches. Not only can our experience of beauty be altered, so can the way beauty is viewed.

    Our society puts standards on beauty and we seek to find balance and order in what we find beautiful. In an article by Bruno Maddox, “The Math Behind Beauty,” a plastic surgeon named Dr. Stephen Marquardt developed a so-called “golden mask” that was essentially the blueprint for the “perfect face,” as is shown in the picture below.

 The basis behind it was the “golden ratio” of 1:1.618 that was discovered by the Ancient Greeks. People whose features fit this ratio were found to be more aesthetically pleasing. For example, “beautiful people’s mouths were 1.618 times wider than their noses, it seemed, their noses 1.618 times wider than the tip of their noses,” (Maddox 2). Freidrich Schiller thought about our minds as having two “drives” that explain the way we think. The first is the “sense” drive. This drive “lives in the moment and seeks immediate gratification,” (Armstrong 1). The second drive is the “form” drive which seeks balance and order in our lives. To see something as beautiful, both drives must be active. This means that we must gain satisfaction from it while having a sense of balance. This “golden mask” appeals to our “form” drive but not necessarily our “sense” drive since we do not immediately gain anything from looking at an “aesthetic” face. One reason we find one person more attractive than another is because of societal norms that we have put in place. Although society may tell us to think one way, I think that our experiences and our own minds should drive how we view beauty.

    Beauty is a fluid idea and can vary from person to person. Because our experiences shape our views of beauty, beauty can show itself in various ways. One way it can appear is through the contrast between happy and sad situations. For example, in Liam Darcy’s podcast, linked here, his mother tells us about a woman she knew and how she completely turned her life around after being in an extremely abusive relationship. To a person who had not known the woman before, there would not be anything extraordinary about her or her situation. To Darcy’s mother, it was like night and day. Having had previous experiences with the woman caused Darcy’s mother to view her and her accomplishments as exceptionally beautiful. “She looked beautiful because she looked so much less stressed and for the first time since I’ve known her she looked like she was truly happy and free, and feeling joy again,” (2:38). This situation appeals to both the sense and the form drive because the woman gained happiness, balance, and order.  These differing views of beauty can influence how we fit into a community.

Since I do not focus my ideas of beauty on the surface, I am able to make deeper connections with others.

    Our experiences and our drives influence the way we find beauty in communities. In the broadest sense, community can refer to society as a whole. If our experiences throughout our lives have told us to think, act, and look a certain way then we will try our hardest to keep the peace and fit in. This appeals to our form drive but is it considered beautiful? If we are all forced to be the same then the things that we find beautiful don’t come from our own thoughts and we might only look at beauty in a superficial sense. However, if we are not held to any standards of beauty then we can find it in deeper places. For example, in my community here at the University of New England, I have made many close friendships with others and I find beauty in the way that we support and interact with each other. There is beauty in the way that we all became such close friends in only a couple of months. Since I do not focus my ideas of beauty on the surface, I am able to make deeper connections with others. The satisfaction from making meaningful friendships and balancing them with school and other activities appeals to both the “sense” and the “form” drive, making my community more beautiful.

    The things we have learned through our experiences and the way our community and society views beauty can influence the things we find beautiful. The ideas of Friedrich Schiller and Bruno Maddox help define our ideas of beauty by touching on the psychological and literal aspects of what makes things “beautiful.” While having concrete definitions like the one offered by Maddox are important for our comprehension, it is also important to dig deeper and think about the “why.” We must remember that everyone has had different experiences and might all see things in different ways. We must also remember that beauty can come from many places other than the physical aesthetic of an object. As in Casey’s and Darcy’s interviews, beauty can come from a contrast. These ideas help us define beauty and the way we fit ourselves into society.

 

Works Cited

Maddox, Bruno. “The Math Behind Beauty: a plastic surgeon computes the perfect face.”

                Discover Magazine, 1 June 2007, pp 1-2

 

Armstrong, John. “La Bella Vita.” Aeon Media, Edited by Brigid Hains. 14 February 2014.

 

Darcy, Denise. Interview. By Liam Darcy, 31, Oct. 2018.

 

Hoeing, Brandi. Interview. By Tehya Casey, 25 Oct. 2018.

 

“Striking a Balance.” Bronzegate, 2018,

                http://www.bronzegate.co.uk/striking-a-balance-the-sme-cfo/

 

“UNE Sunset.” Julia Crocker, September 2018