What is beauty anyway (culture)

Greetings,

Free-thinking, free-conscienced, beautiful people.

Continuing to look through the mirror of art…

What appears to us in the mirror of art today is beauty again, but beauty within culture…

Dear reader,

Have you ever thought about it?

Did beauty give birth to culture? Or did culture give birth to beauty?

But have you thought about these once more yesterday?

Could the human search for meaning have first created religious beliefs, cultures, and subsequently the concepts of beauty that differ from one another within those beliefs and cultures, all simultaneously?

How is the question? Beautiful…

The human search for meaning,

If it didn't exist…

Would culture have formed?

If culture hadn't formed…

Would anything called beauty be discussed?

Do you have an answer?

Dear reader, are you searching for the meaning in the universe, the meaning within yourself?

Or are you searching but cannot find it? Or are you saying, "What if I find it? What if I don't?"

Don't you know that if meaning is lost, beauty in culture is also lost?

Or are you thinking to yourself, "What is this 'meaning' anyway, Abidin Hodja, is it something you can eat or drink?"

You can think that, dear reader, I swear by God I won't be angry with you…

Do you think I'll just say "that's the spirit of the times" and move on?

I swear by God I cannot.

Our subject is beauty, how can we give it up…

We are obliged to write what we know…

Assuming you have read my last two articles: as you have noticed, we tried to address beauty in terms of cultural anthropology, evolutionary biology, and evolutionary psychology. We explained quite a lot. Now, with your permission: let us try to address the concept of beauty this time in the context of the search for meaning, and its cultural and religious dimensions.

Starting from the first humans; the first fundamental contradiction that developed between man, nature, and the universe was his realization that he is finite, while nature and the universe are in a state of continuity compared to him. When he looked at nature, which exhibits continuity and operates in perfection; what he saw was that everything repeats in temporal cycles; that is, nature dies as the weather begins to cool in autumn and is reborn as the weather begins to warm in spring. But when he or his loved ones die, they are not reborn. The Sun rises and sets every day, but he, once he sets (that is, dies), does not rise again. Mountains, hills, rivers, stars, lakes, and seas all stand in their places; that is, in defiance of human mortality, they declare their immortality like the Sun. Come on, let's put ourselves in the shoes of these first humans, let's see… Are you saying this is a terrible contradiction? Or are you not?

You start the day with the rising of the Sun and end it with its setting. Even if it disappears at night, the Sun is always there, but when your mother, father, loved ones, children, friends die, they are no longer there. The Sun never ages, it greets us every day with the same beauty. But don't we start aging from the moment we are born and eventually die? We die just as surely as anything.

So, don't we wonder and ask (or didn't our ancestors ask…), "Hey, we die, but why don't these ever die, or even if trees die seasonally, they can bloom and bear fruit when the season comes. Also, where does this Sun disappear to every day and then reappear? The Sun goes away, it becomes dark, and fear grips the mountains. It comes back, everywhere lights up, and the fears disperse. But where does this Sun go? Is there a mover in the place it goes that we cannot see and that performs all its movements? Also, is there a power living in a place we cannot see and do not know that carries out all these changes in nature? Well, why does it do all this? Also, does it do it alone? Or does it do it with powers like itself?"

They asked to understand and to give meaning, how could they not? And they asked all sorts of things, what things they asked. Thank God they asked, and they managed to invent speech, writing, mathematics, geometry, philosophy, science, and all the arts; they added an existential meaning to our lives.

Wondering gave birth to discovery, and every new piece of information discovered acted as a midwife to the birth of meaning.

So; with what did humans first understand nature, the universe, and themselves? Of course, by looking with their eyes and thinking about the experience of seeing that emerged from looking. Well, they thought, and what did they do? "Hey, I'm thinking, and you seem to be thinking too… Then come on, shall we tell each other what we're thinking?" they said. By God, they did, and about 50 thousand years ago, our current speech ability emerged. You might ask, "It emerged, so what happened?" I say, whatever happened to us, it happened because of this language of ours. I'm joking, please don't take it seriously.

Let's explain, sir, let's think now. You have experiences obtained through your senses and thoughts about these experiences, whether simple, holistic, or individual. That's fine, but how will you tell these thoughts to others? With words, right? We say it so simply, don't we? With words…

Please think of the first humans trying to talk to each other; some sounds come out of your mouth, and at first, no one can make sense of these sounds, and they look at you blankly, in a "what are you talking about, buddy?" mode.

Humanity; in everything it experienced through all its senses, especially its eyes, has seen the representation of something else. It thought that the things it saw were temporary, but that this transience was brought about by a power or powers that have no transience. The fact that it knew itself as the agent cause, that is, the subject of its own actions, paved the way for this way of thinking… which is true, it was the reason. Therefore, this situation led it to the idea that everything happening in nature is connected to a constructive subject, just as in its own actions, and thus to the assumption that there must be a creative subject or subjects (god and gods).

Then the following question came to mind: Is this power or these powers trying to show or tell us something through nature and natural phenomena? If they are showing and telling, are all these things we see and experience actually indicators, that is, representations of what is intended to be told to us?

In other words, is everything that is happening actually a symbolic appearance of a truth?

Have they thought about what we should understand from all these things that are happening again and again, and how we should tell each other what we understand in a correct way? You think they thought about it, right?

They thought about it, of course; just as everything they saw was a symbolic representation of something else—that is, to speak in the language of Sufism, the manifestation of the esoteric in the exoteric—man also put all these things into words, both in their exoteric state, that is, the state that appears to us, and their esoteric state, that is, the state that we cannot experience through our senses but can grasp intuitively, and sought wisdom in this state.

And get ready, dear reader; the first act of human meaning-creation took place in this way. Words became the first steps of this act. Then, when letters and alphabets were discovered, the symbolic expression of representation passed into writing, and subsequently into literary arts and visual arts. That is, as in everything, nature was man's first teacher in creating meaning.

Thus, man created a supernatural truth, and this truth brought meaning, culture, and beauty into existence, layering them simultaneously and intertwined with each other.

I think what I have written here is worth thinking about well…

The phenomenon of truth that emerges from the question of what is the essence that makes the visible visible…

Come on, try removing the question of "what is truth" from your lives…

Let's see what happens?

Neither meaning, nor culture, nor beauty will remain.

Are you saying, "They asked, but did they do a good thing?"…

Are you saying our lives have been ruined by being dragged from a neurosis to a depression in this search for truth and meaning?

Don't say it, by God you'll be struck down, consider yourself warned… Lie down, get up, and pray for your ancestors, otherwise you would have been something like a plant.

Now some of you might say: "Oh teacher, as if they are teaching us philosophy, science, or art; they've already turned us into plants, meaning and such are long gone, are you telling us fairy tales?" They can say it, because they are right. Why are they right… Well, since I am a teacher and I know the state of education, that's why they are right. When there is no philosophy, science, or art; rest in peace to the soul of meaning.

I seem to hear you saying, "If it's rest in peace to the soul of meaning, why are you tiring us, teacher?"

Dear reader, we said rest in peace to the soul of meaning. Not to your souls.

A teacher's primary duty is not only to enlighten their students but the entire society and to guide the people they enlighten. Our Great Leader Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk addresses teachers as follows: "The Republic wants generations from you whose intellect is free, whose conscience is free, whose wisdom is free." Since I am a Republic Teacher who wants to follow in the light of our Atatürk, I must spread the bright light of philosophy, science, and art to your souls so that I can fulfill my duty to you. Thus, I can remind you that nothing can become beautiful without truth and meaning.

The motto "You see as you look, you think as you see, you live as you think" tells us to stop and take a look at ourselves. If you remove truth and meaning from your life, neither a culture in whose garden you can flourish nor beauty will remain… Consider yourself warned…

It is precisely at this point that we should ask ourselves: from which window of truth-meaning, which culture, and which beauty do my eyes look, and what do they see?

What is beauty anyway? Or is it the symbolic representation of our cultural norms fed by our own understanding of truth and meaning?

What is beauty, really?

We will continue to talk.

Stay well.

Until our next meeting, goodbye for now, right now and always, breathe with art, stay with art.