1 post tagged “aesthetics”

Funny that it's always the TED talks that get me fired up enough to blog. Here, "fired up" means positively inspired, which is a nice contrast. In the past few days I've been very frustrated with the global status quo. I won't deny my frustration with the world is positively linked to trouble with my research... but that doesn't mean these nagging concerns are baseless! (Throw me a bone! It's fun!)

There's a post on MetaFilter asking a darn good question: What can I do to lead a more environmentally conscious lifestyle? There are a lot of answers, which is reassuring. Most of them strike me as off the point, which is depressing. The good responses: do donate money to good causes, focus on your CO2 footprint, and try to develop a sense of priorities. Bad: farmers markets, water bottles.

This small site appears a repository for one kind of complaint from me, so I needn't bother making it in full again--but why am I in Michigan? Will my education here offset my crazy CO2 usage? Will all this fretting about our rate of adaptation result in mitigation that genuinely improves people's lives? I want to believe that material standards of living make a difference. Maybe they don't. Maybe we're all better off reproducing freely, even if some future generation suffers enormously. I just don't know how to measure happiness and suffering. I don't begin to understand my own happiness and suffering.

Aesthetics are tricky. My brief Christian education makes me wary of them. But I love good lines. I love color. I stayed up until 4:30 a.m. on Monday night looking at beautiful furniture online. I love, love, love nice spaces and interesting patterns. I will spend more money on pretty sheets than plain ones. This money could've gone to people who need medicine/vitamins/education/etc. Enormous guilt. I don't know how to balance these competing desires.

The people speak very fairly about aesthetics are Virginia Postrel, and, just now on TED, Stefan Sagmeister. Keats doesn't cut it.

Are there any psychologists who are making progress here? I remember the subjective well-being and per capita GDP plot I saw in The Atlantic--that was reassuring (positive correlation, if you couldn't guess). But at what prevalence of malaria infections can I spend more time on interior design? Zero, I'd say. And yet I really, really like pretty things. Fortunately, global dynamics can be lovely to study too.

Now James Howard Kunstler on suburbia. I love the internet. Woof.