Status Updates From Beauty: What It Is and Why ...

Postmodern man, with no direction, destiny or purpose, can only follow arbitrary impulses while he passes the time, waiting for death. An aimless, impulsive life isn’t very pretty.

A refined palate […], requires cultivation. Children initially have undeveloped tastes in food & drink, just as they initially have undeveloped tastes in literature, music & art. For them to appreciate good food generally requires education & maturity (some psychiatrists report that adults who suffer from arrested emotional development often display a correspondingly childish palate).

You have to choose between a consumerist lifestyle and a life of beauty. You can’t have both. Beauty will require a lot of sacrifices. But the alternative is banality and boredom, punctuated by guilty pleasures in the disordered. We can do better than that.

It’s no coincidence that faith communities that ignore beauty are also lukewarm and poorly catechised. They don’t know their Faith, and they’ve reduced the entire Gospel message about love for God and neighbour to a crushingly familiar cliche about fellowshipping and social activism—even though, ironically, there isn’t even much community or volunteer work happening.