Aesthetics is the third term essential to consider in connection with making the world more loving. The first term is Reality – everything – and the second is Ethics. In thinking consciously, it is good to move from Reality through Ethics and conclude with Aesthetics. If it seems strange to see Aesthetics as a universal step to actions and expressions, it's easily understood.
Aesthetics today is narrowed down to mean the Art World or art criticism.
Aesthetics is universal - it is what we say and do
Aesthetics describes all human action. Indeed all living things are part of the same world of acting and doing.
Why then is aesthetics confined to the Art World and discussed in the rarified worlds of philosophy and criticism? It is because we have rarely considered the implications of the beautiful and true as elements that are universal, as what all of us create all the time. We are all players, said the Bard prophetically. We really are.
We are all artists
We’ve unraveled and we’re raveling anew. We’re evolving from then to now. We have moved from a hierarchical world of slaves and masters to a universal world of equal artists.
Truth And Beauty has to do with moving past the violence that has been forever present. It’s not who we are anymore. Aristotle was the observer of the binary world whose thinking set parameters for what was then.
Charles Sanders Peirce was the observer of the triadic underpinning of reality whose thinking sets the parameters for what is now and coming.
Triadic: reality, ethics, aesthetics
The easy way to say this is that we will be a bit more reasonable in the future. We will cut slack somewhat more. We will not see honor as the cause for deadly duels.
We will allow relativity some room, mystery some reality and aim our days more than we do now to truth and beauty, We'll not be doing binary thinking, but going beyond the box much of the time.
When Keats noted that beauty is truth, truth beauty he was not speaking of the academy or the art world, he was speaking of reality, universally, of everyone.
Mao's error
Mao’s cultural revolution died of violence. Our revolution will be nonviolent. We will have learned to aim our actions a trifle more toward truth and beauty.
UGLY AMERICAN' EMBROILS CAPITAL; State Department Pressed to Back Filming of Book It Didn't Like https://t.co/q8mY2uWNwD
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) October 17, 2017
In my best scenario for the future, we live universally by meditating daily on reality, ethics, and aesthetics. We let these words live inside us. We take our concerns from reality. We submit them to universal ethical values – tolerance, helpfulness, democracy.
Getting to goodness
Then we arrive at the point where our thoughts move to acts and expressions. We let the words truth and beauty rise inside us. We think of the foundation of goodness which is composed of freedom, love, and justice. And we let our resulting actions be the measurable result of our considerations.
