The Dysphoria in Beauty

I see certain beauty in this world. Beauty that makes me ache. It is human expression in architecture, sculputure, painting, music, dance, poetry and cinema that transports me to that all too familiar pain. I seek it knowing how futile it will be to avoid the emotional hangover that follows. Like Icarus I am oblivious to the aftermath of this celestial ascension. I seek it, because I marvel at the fact that us humans, mere biological entities with procreation and survival engrained in our evolutionary psyche, gravitate towards these forms of expression, for what purpose? What do we get from it? I don't have the answers, but there is one relevant question to be made. Why does it bring me such overwhelming malaise?

I believe that one day humanity will end. And with it, so will all of our creation. Just as soundwaves emanating from Chopin's Étude Op. 10, No. 12 dissipate into the air, like the dying gasp of a muse, so will our Monets decay, our Kubriks fade, and our Michaelangelos crumble. And that is where the beauty lies. Like a desert flower, surrounded by extreme hardships, humanity trascends the barren wasteland of war, apathy, injustice and envy, to create something breathtaking, however fleeting it may be. By witnessing this expression for a brief moment, humanity attains ascension to a plane beyond the biological chains that hold it firmly in this material world.

As Schopenhauer would say, art has the potential to offer intellectual deliverance from the hardships that surround us. It can trascend and thus make any worldly agenda, political or otherwise, irrelevant. Transitory as this spectacle is, it will be a miracle witnessed by us, giving us deliverance, after which it will dissipate, decay, fade and crumble, and us along with it.

And I cannot imagine a more tragically sublime thought...