Mississauga City Centre, Mississauga, Ontario
Below is an excerpt for Alan Roebuck's June 28, 2012 article at the Orthosphere on ugliness.
The full article is posted under Why You are Demoralized and What You Must Do About It. It is long, but worth reading, since it expands on the moral, intellectual and aesthetic deficiencies that have brought ugliness into our modern world. Roebuck also attempts to tell us how to rectify this (deep) existential problem of ugliness. This "what to do about it" is an usual approach to the nihilistic doomsday reporting of contemporary writers.
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Ugliness is not just an unpleasant fact of life. Under the current system ugliness is relentlessly promoted, and those who speak out against the promotion and even worship of ugliness are branded troublemakers.
Based on the three transcendent values of truth, goodness and beauty, we can divide ugliness into the intellectual, the moral and the esthetic. Intellectual ugliness is primarily the notion that we cannot know anything for certain, in which case discourse is only an occasion for ego assertion or manipulation. An apparent exception is made for science, at least physical science. But physical science, important thought it be, is the least important form of knowledge. Science at best only tells us non-ultimate truths about what is. Moral, philosophical and religious knowledge are more important, for they tell man what ultimate reality is and how he ought to live. Contemporary man is therefore left hungering for a knowledge he is told does not exist.
Men worship and spread intellectual ugliness mainly because it eases the pain of thinking one might be mistaken. If there is no truth that can be known for certain, then one cannot be held responsible for being mistaken.
Moral ugliness is expressed primarily in the doctrine of moral relativism: the belief that there are no objective moral rules, that is, rules that are valid at all times and for all people. According to this belief, people articulate moral rules mostly to manipulate others or to fortify their egos by telling themselves they are virtuous. As a result, contemporary man is left with no moral guidance except the bare minimum that one should not “harm others.” To the greater questions of how a man ought to live and what constitutes virtue, the authorities permit no answer, for fear of spreading “intolerance.”
Men worship and spread moral ugliness because it eases the pain of thinking that their actions may be immoral. Instead of seeking the true remedy for sin through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, men seek to assure themselves that they have not really sinned.
Esthetic ugliness manifests itself more obviously than the previous forms, in ugly artifacts, ugly works of fine art, and slovenly personal appearance. Widespread esthetic ugliness spreads the subliminal but powerful message that the world, or at least the existing order, is bad. Demoralization is the natural result.
The widespread acceptance and promotion of esthetic ugliness are also important phenomena. Through a personal display of esthetic ugliness a man confesses the disorder in his soul; through the acceptance of this ugliness he gains a measure of comfort by apparently having his confession accepted and absolved; through the promotion of ugliness he gains the feeling of dragging the rest of us down to his level, in which case his disorder is apparently not a disorder at all, but just an innocuous lifestyle choice. For these reasons it is no wonder that many worship ugliness. For the aschemiolator, ugliness is not an unpleasant occasional fact of life. It is a way of life and a god who protects its devotees from the threat of normality.
We must reiterate that many whose spirits have been broken do not know it. Some demoralized persons cover their sickness with ego assertion. These people, in fact, often enjoy the new dispensation wherein anything goes as long as you don’t claim that your beliefs are universally valid or that your actions ought to be emulated by everyone. They can be selfish without incurring a social penalty.
The enthusiasts and activists generally fall into this category: They find meaning in life through fighting for a personally-meaningful cause: environmentalism, sexual liberation, more political power for their tribe, and so on.
But permit us to point out the obvious: Unless the competing egos of society are coordinated by some shared conception of the good, the result is exactly the social disintegration we see all around us. And anarchy always prepares the way for tyranny.
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Posted by Kidist P. Asrat