Like Truth, beauty is too important a term to be left with a merely Binary interpretation. Binary means either-or, this or that. my way or the highway. Binary is the conflict candy of the world that chooses self-indulgence over critical thinking. The rewards of moving past binary thought are freedom and the possibility of knowing and appreciating love as a universal call to everyone.

Foundational

Nothing is more important than the subject we are discussing. Male and female and everything in between and beyond is the very foundation of reality. We are creations by virtue of the capacity for life which requires the phenomenon of birth.

The debasement of women has always been an acknowledgment of a fundamental power which is mysterious and enviable.

Ultimately we are to be one people with no distinctions, even those of race and gender. That is the reality, realized and seen with accuracy. But the binary world is rife with a culture that ignores this. The very structure of narrative with its reflexive reliance of protagonists and antagonists is a surrender to an almost fatal reductionism.

Hey beautiful

The other day Trump saw a smile he liked on a woman who happened to be blond and therefore within the wheelhouse of Trump's apparent proclivities.

He singled her out and it joined the celebrated causes that with Trump constitute a daily list that ranges from the despicable to the merely head-scratching. The story above notes that today the mere presence of beauty that is understood as such is dangerous.

Everything is beautiful

There was a song that did indeed proclaim that everything is beautiful in its own way.

Most would not go that far, but many understand that beauty is beyond cosmetics or fashion or one's color, or origin or age. When the pope utters a blessing, he is saying in effect that beauty is a universal truth. The truth is beauty and beauty is the truth. This universal perspective is a mark of both freedom and love.

The beat goes on

Yet we all succumb. Beauty comes down to looks. The vocabulary is almost a language in itself. The very first phrase in this Vogue piece is evocative: "Polished updos, crimson lips, and plenty of glitz imbued this week’s best above-neck looks with a feel of evening-ready opulence..." Can you fight that?

Absolutely. Fight we must. We are in a century-long battle to achieve just a hint of moral awareness of the ethics and aesthetics of making the world sustainable and human. And beauty truth. It is a struggle worth the candle.
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