August 1, 2008
truth beauty
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Hugh MacLeod
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I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
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are we aiming for the point in the middle or to experience the bits at the extremes in disconnected nuggets? and, in any case, I’m not sure if there isn’t a place/space/thing where all of these coincide at their maximum… but then i could be deluded
Um.. this is a pretty confusing division.. probably a more “postmodern” (or economic) approach to the classical unity.
Personally I’d say that the truth and beauty division is pretty doesn’t really hold. I mean beauty is really just another aspect of truth — as in a general “rightness” of things, or as justice, reality.
But then again one often talks about “the ugly truth”.. but I think here we can get to the bottom of it: truth is beautiful, but it uncovers (shows) the actual state of affairs (the actual form of something) — which is usually pretty gruesome.
I think what’s crucial here is what objects can be placed within this space — goods would fit, art would not. You could make a 3D graph of this with cost as the z axis.. and then map possible product form/function/truth/beauty levels for different price ranges..
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.‘
– John Keats
Reminds me of a Star Trek episode entitled “Is There In Truth No Beauty?”, a title which probably came from some piece of classic literature which I can’t name.