Blog #14 : +Outline

Part 1: Media that I hope to use in my final essay would be pictures of my experiences of beauty along with visuals that help me to talk about Armstrong, and the Book of Life video on “What is Art For?”. I think that inserting pictures from the video will help my description so that someone does not have to have read the video to know exactly what I am talking about. I also think that it will be important to insert a visual of the Let’s talk about art project that is required to be in the essay because the only way someone would have a good understanding of what that project was about was either if I describe it in my paper, which is difficult, or give them a way to experience it like they were in class that day. I will cite the Let’s Talk About Art project especially because it is important that the writer gets credit for the work that he/she has done.

PART 2: I made a mistake and thought that the rough draft was due today so I will attach a copy of my work to this blog. It really is just a thorough outline.

 

Can beauty help us become better people? As individuals and as a society?

 

Can we use beauty as a tool to become better people? The problem with using beauty as a tool to improve us as better versions of ourselves would mean that we need a definition of beauty. This is an issue because no two people are able to define beauty the same way. . The definition of beauty according to the Dictionary is “a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight.” But we all have a different idea of what it should be. On one hand we need to begin with solving what is a definition of beauty. On the other hand we need to understand how this can help us become better people.

What is Beauty and how can we define it so that it matches up with everyone’s own terms. According to “La bella vita” written by John Armstrong there are two drives to beauty. Armstrong discusses these by quoting a poet named Friedrich Schiller. Schiller says that the first drive of beauty is through your senses. Or in his words, “there is the ‘sense’ drive which lives in the moment and seeks immediate gratification.” This immediate reaction is what most people associate with how they experience beauty. Most things that people define as beautiful like people, sounds, and sunsets are all experienced through one or more of your senses. However schiller also talks about a second drive to define beauty. The second drive he calls the “form drive”. This is the drive of not just getting what you want for yourself but the drive to provide justice to the world. His example is a fair trial. “When we think that a person is entitled to a fair trial, we are motivated, Schiller says, by the rational ‘form’ drive. We are loyal to the abstract, general ideal of due process.” Clearly there can not only be one true meaning of beauty. There is a polysemy of different ways to interpret the meaning.

How can someone become a better person if they cannot even define beauty? The definition of better people is subjective as well as beauty. But does there have to be one form of beauty? I don’t think that people will not define “better people” the same way if they disagree on what beauty means to them. This is because I have experienced beauty in others where they did not need to be able to define beauty because they choose to do something extraordinary. What I am talking about was an event I went to called Relay for Life. What happened was that a few of my friends and I were sponsored to run, jog, and walk around a track, recording laps as we went. For every lap we did money was donated to foundations that are both fighting and looking for a cure for cancer patients. There was a ceremony in the middle of the relay where all around the track families had placed paper bags with candles and small mementos of loved ones that had passed away from this disease. Everyone walked around the track in silence as names were read of the deceased. The stadium turned out the lights so the only way to find your way around the track was the path lit by the hundreds of candles. What I found beautiful about this experience was how this mass of people all came together to fight something that they all had struggled with in their life. I think that this beautiful action helped to make everyone there a better person by helping others and spreading awareness of that struggle that some families have to face. However not everyone on earth makes the choice to participate in events such as Relay for Life. If more people did the world would be a lot different. I think that the beauty that people most commonly experience comes to them through art.

Art is a powerful tool for expressing emotions through different media. I think that the reason that art and beauty are so well associated is because they are so hard to put a finger on what they actually mean. Most people have no idea what they are supposed to experience when they witness art because they don’t understand what it is or what it is even for. I recently watched a video on the purpose of art made by The Book of Life called “What Is Art For?” this video was very informative because it covered several ways that we should use art as a tool to expand understand ourselves more. A brief summary would be that there are different styles of art for different reasons. Bright and happy works are supposed to inspire hope in individuals. Where as sad pieces are supposed to reassure us that it is not necessarily a bad thing to be sad. It is human after all to experience emotions. Other pieces of art are meant for us to connect with to see things that we perhaps lack in ourselves. Such as looking at a calm peice of we are anxious and overly excited. The same way that we use different moods of music for different occasions. Lastly art reminds us of the small but still important things in life. The example in the video was a picture created by Vincent Van Gogh of a few oranges. Art can be used in many ways to express things to us.

There are so many different formats of Art that sometimes non traditional forms show up with a purpose that is absolutely genius. In our last project for my english class titled “Let’s Talk About Art” Max Russell found a creative way to show a new form of art that helps deaf people to hear music. In his presentation to my class he showed us a YouTube video of a form of a music video. At first I had no idea what to expect because he had said that he had done research on a specific song and he was now connecting that to deaf people. It all made sense as soon as he played the video. Different color patterns went across the screen along with the music. It was a strange experience to watch the colors line up perfectly with each note in the song. How well they resembled the feel of the music through shape and color was startling. It was like hearing with my eyes. I think that that is yet another form of beauty the way that someone was able to take an issue of being deaf and create a way for them to experience something that usually requires ears.

Coming back to our problem of how can beauty help us become better people? No two people can define beauty the same way. I think that because no two people can experience beauty the same way that brings diversity to the meaning of beauty instead of society having only one image of beauty. I would say that there are many different forms of beauty because people are all unique and experience things differently. People don’t need to rely on beauty to help them make good decisions. If you do beautiful things then you will be a better person. A tool to decide how you can make a difference or to learn what some of your flaws are is art. Everyone has a purpose for it even though like beauty it is hard to define.  But this is not a bad thing. If people were all the same then it would be much more difficult to come up with unique ideas like making music visual for people who are deaf. All in all it is a good thing that there is no one set way to define beauty. Without a universal definition it is free to be taken in any way you please. If everyone acts upon the aspects of what they find beautiful in life then society will continue to grow into a better place for everyone.

 

Sources:

“What is Art for?” -The Book of Life

“La bella vita” – John Armstrong

“Let’s Talk About Art.” – Max Russell