Truth and Beauty

Can one even speak of these things on a blog? How many will roll their eyes? How many will be caught in an unreflective moment and pass over this idea as so much blather by someone trying to sound erudite? Should I even say anything? Should I just keep it to myself? Some things one does keep to themselves. I am tempted, because I fear that you will not take it seriously. On the other hand, you may find it delightful as I do.

Nor is this just an introduction designed to draw you in. I don't do that. Yes, I too can smell marketing a mile away. None of us fall for pithy comments, cast forth with some ersatz longing, as if you could be caught like an October salmon on an Oregon stream. Forget that. This is only about nailing down something, an elusive definition. Have you had the same question?

I, like so many people, have wrestled over the relation of truth to beauty. I reached a point some years ago that was declared by John Keats - "truth is beauty, and beauty is truth, and that is the end of it." Are they, truth and beauty, the same? Much about them is similar; there is a beauty about things that are true. We've all noticed this. The same sensors go off when we discover a truth that also go off at the discovery of something beautiful.

Also, when you discover beauty, you feel as if you have discovered a new truth. You feel as if you may be the only one to find it. Or at least you are part of a small community that has opened your eyes to this beauty, and you are therefore possessed of a new truth.

But here is the new part. The path to truth is a painful path, fraught with risk of unemployment, sacrifice, destruction of cherished idols, alienation, disillusion. It is always painful. Perhaps you know this. Remember Barton Fink and the tormented life of the mind.

However, beauty involves the operation of aesthetic mental organs. It is pleasurable. We love good music, art, nature, symmetry, Feng Shui, the golden mean, a sunset, the Grand Canyon, a ballet.

Therefore, can anyone give substantial refutation of this conclusion: that truth and beauty are almost the same, except that all truth is apprehended through pain, and all beauty is apprehended in pleasure?  Corollary: if truth comes without pain, perhaps it is actually falsehood. And if beauty comes with pain, perhaps it is ugliness.

If you can give a contrary thesis please do so. If you want to write me personally for a longer treatment, I promise I will write back.

Green Zone - crap alert

Trailer for the new Matt Damon movie "Green Zone" includes such breath-taking dialogue as:

1. "Get your game face on!"
2. "People are dying! I want to know why!"

Some movie reviewer describes as "Entertaining as hell!" The trailer rolls like a segment from Modern Warfare 2 with live actors.
Let's endow the Motion Picture Association of America with power to issue citations for crappy movies.

Early feedback

Sorry if this and the last blog entry come across as too self promoting (but isn't all blogging?). I am learning about fiction writing. I want to speak about the short story I posted a couple of days ago.

Allow me to comment about it.  One friend described it as "dystopian" which is true, and pointed out several things that didn't work for him. Another reader politely said it was "interesting, but not my style. And you need to clean your head out."  Agreed on both counts.

People will likely find depiction of sexuality, pleasure-obsession, and toilet talk quite unsavory, perhaps even too much. So why am I so offensive (to some)? Consider this: how would people from previous generations find our habits and speech today? They would be shocked.

Wait now. Don't go saying, "Everyone knows they were stuffy and snobbish and uptight about sex, and I like the way we are now much better."  No, no, no.  Not fair.  Go 50 years into the future, and they will be saying the same thing about us.  Is the idea of unisex communal shower shocking?  Unisex bathrooms are already being created by universities.  Entertainment? Today's stuff is far beyond what anyone could conceive in years past. Does anyone question that the line will be pushed further and further?

What about my repeatedly drawing attention to toilet needs?

In part, this was to show the incompatibility between pleasure obsession and basic human functions. No matter how much we clean up, no matter how science or manners raise civilization, we still have stinky stuff to deal with. As Koheleth says, animals have the same breath of life in their nostrils as man does. Being rational doesn't mean we are disembodied. We still poop, sweat, barf, snot, and other things.

OK, but do we need to wallow in it?

No, but sometimes there is value in talking about our humanity, and secretions and bodily functions are is part of it. Just like how people were totally unprepared to see a dead body in the story (even today, we are hidden from death), our crazy attempt at polite society avoids non-humorous or non-charged references to human elimination processes.

In my writing, I am talking about human stuff. As Flannery O'Connor said, when you're talking to deaf people you have to yell (or something to that effect). So my goal is to draw attention to something that is human and therefore both wretched and beautiful.

If you hated my story, found it unreadable, made you cry or feel nauseous, please let me know. Send me an email. I like praise, but I benefit more by seeing your negative responses, and such things don't hurt me, so don't worry.

OTOH, if you want to hurt me, lie to me. Treat me like I can't handle the truth. Tiptoe around what you want to say. Or give a generic "oh, it was cool, man." Then I will know that you have no desire to for deeper friendship.

Short Story - Year 2061

You can read my latest short story by following this link.

It is called Year 2061.

It is the time when the United States has a new constitution framed to allow only one party, and Virtual Reality has taken over the personal computer and internet as the primary interface for all work and leisure. Three generations interact with this world in different ways, in their entertainment, education, and church. Finally one of them snaps.

I hope you enjoy it, and that you will feel free to email your comments to me, as well as suggested editing, criticisms, disagreements, and vituperations. And good stuff too.

Holy Cow

It was a little too coincidental - this baby calf was born on a frosty night in December 2009. Farmers stood in awe as they beheld the marvel, hair bristling on the backs of their necks. The calf's name? Moses.

The farmers promised not to eat the cow, but to give it a good life. Because, if you do it to the least of these...well, you know.  But why name the cow Moses?

It reminds me...oh, how can I get this out of my head? It reminds me of a video I saw, which I will not direct you to - if you want to see it, find it yourself; it would be wrong to propagate it - a video in which the protein cell called laminine is proclaimed by an otherwise solid preacher, whom I knew when I was a student at Baylor...proclaimed to be a sign of Jesus at the molecular level.

I give you...laminine.

There's a cross. In case you didn't see it. Right there. Bearing witness to divine sovereignty to all who have eyes to see.