Beauty

If you haven't read my previous posts "A long post" and "A stab at the dark", please do so before reading this one.



"Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why?

Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting?

Do you believe you're fighting for something, something more than your survival?

Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know?

Is it freedom, or truth, perhaps peace? Could it be love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the matrix itself.

Although, only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love.

You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting.

Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why? Why do you persist?"


"Because I choose to..."


The picture above is a mediocre shot taken out the kitchen window of my inlaws house. They have a very nice garden out there with this japanese maple. But, I took this picture because a few minutes prior I had been accosted by the 'beauty' of it. I bet you know what I'm talking about. You're going about your day when something catches you. Sometimes, it's a scene, or a face, a mountain, or a stream. Often, for me, it's a piece of music.

Usually, it's gone as quickly as it arrives. It arrives and departs out of my control. Of course, there are experiences where I have some say - like the beauty of the Bach music I'm listening to now. I can plop this CD in anytime. But, even then, if I overplay it, the magic goes. At best, it's on loan.

So, while I desperately wish it were otherwise, I know there is something that I hunger for that I do not and cannot possess. I cannot control or hoard it. If and when I receive it, it comes as a gift.

And, there's another interesting thing I've noticed. While that moment of experiencing the beauty of that fall scene left a pang, the pang came as a result of the moment fleeting away. There was nothing sad in the experience itself. I've noticed this to be different than the beauty created by humans (yes, we do have that capability). At least when it comes to music, it seems to me that beautiful music is almost always sorrowful. There is almost a direct correlation - the more beautiful, the more sorrowful. Again, it points to a desire that is beyond me (us). As a human, I can only create it by expressing it's absence.

I hope you see the connection to the Matrix Revolutions quote.

There are those who are materialists. They believe that my moment of being accosted by beauty was nothing more than electrochemical reactions occuring in my body and brain as a result of photons reflected off the tree and through the window and into my retinas. I can't prove them wrong and, often, to think otherwise does seem feeble and insipid.

There are other reasons for not being a materialist, but for me the most powerful reason is this experience of beauty. In the end, I choose to believe that this gift has a reality beyond the material and, that when there is a gift, there is a Giver. I choose to believe that beauty does point to something beyond photons, chemicals, and neurons.

So, while I can very much relate to those who choose athiesm and/or materialism (can one be an atheist without being a materialist?), it's not the path for me. And that despite the fact that I so often wrestle with feelings of estrangement and disillusionment with respect to the Giver.

By the way, I hope that no one will think I'm equating the evil of Agent Smith with atheism or materialism. His evil has to do with wishing to deny the freedom to choose, not the choice that is made. This evil occurs on both sides of this fence.