We need to reassess our aesthetic sensibilities and mourn not so much our culture’s loss of beauty itself, but our culture’s loss for the appreciation of beauty.

As David Brooks of The New York Times explains in “When Beauty Strikes”, it is beauty — particularly of the unexpected kind — that has the ability to expose the limitations of the normal, banal environments we take for granted every day. “The proper goal of art and maybe civilization itself.” Furthermore, “this humanistic worldview holds that beauty conquers the deadening aspects of routine; it educates the emotions and connects us to the eternal.” Continue reading →