Display More10 thoughts on beauty from Jordan Peterson:
1. Make one thing in your life as beautiful as you can. This will be a direct “invitation to the divine.”
2. Beauty is absolutely terrifying to people because it highlights the ugly.
3. Great art will “invade your life and change it.” You should let this happen. JP: “Buy a piece of art. Find one that speaks to you and make the purchase.”
4. Think of art as a “window into the transcendent.” Art lets the light in.
5. Art is not a luxury but a core need. We use art to “unite ourselves psychologically” and establish “productive peace” with others.
6. Jordan Peterson on how we live by beauty: “We live by beauty. We live by literature. We live by art. We cannot live without some connection to the divine—and beauty is divine—because in its absence life is too short, too dismal, and too tragic.”
7. Beautiful ideas are tools: “A good theory lets you use things—things that once appeared useless—for desirable ends. In consequence, such a theory has a general sense of excitement and hope about it.”
8. Modern architecture saves costs but destroys the soul: “Hell is a place of drop ceilings, rusted ventilation grates, and fluorescent lights; the dismal ugliness and dreariness and general depression of spirit that results from these cost-saving features no doubt suppresses productivity far more than the cheapest of architectural tricks and the most deadening of lights saves money. Everyone looks like a corpse under fluorescents.”
9. Why religious buildings are beautiful: “If you’re going to house the ultimate ideal, you build something beautiful to represent its dwelling place.”
10. Art is not decoration. It’s exploration. It is wrong to think that art should be “pretty and easily appreciated.” Great art is always a noble “challenge” because it actually retools our perception. Great artists “train people to see.”