Beauty
Read this in Zygmunt Bauman's book "Culture in a Liquid World"
Beauty has no obvious use', decrees Freud, 'nor is there any cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it'.
Bauman presents a position that the function of culture today is not to satisfy existing needs but to create new ones while ensuring the existing needs are not fulfilled. This constant appetite to create needs seems to have had a rude awakening this last month. We can quickly forgo the notion of creating beauty but we can't live without it. I think our capacity will turn inward, as the outward global view is too chaotic to fathom. Our homes, neighborhoods and communities will be the viewing points and positions of culture.
