What did other people do in the past to make our world beautiful but which we do not notice now?
I am rural and I want to plant some trees and copses on my land, in particular places, with beauty in mind. It just occurred to me that others, who are long gone, may have done the same thing here in the past; planting a particular tree in its place only for its beauty. It may have outlived both themselves and their vision of what beauty is and I have not noticed it. Perhaps there are things around us which we thought were utilitarian, or even mistakes, but which were a choice made by someone with a subtler purpose than we give them credit for.
Have you ever noticed something in your surroundings and thought that it was done deliberately to be beautiful, and maybe you are the only person around now to have noticed it as such?
I mean, electricity is beautiful.
The sensation of cruising down the road with the windows down is beautiful, and all the bloodshed and struggle of history gave that to us.
Youtube is beautiful.
The photographs coming from the James Webb telescope are beautiful.
All the work people did to fill our market with gluten free food, multiple kinds of nut butters, protein powders of every possible type, kombucha, all the hippy food that now fills our grocery stores, that’s beautiful.
Burning man is beautiful, as is the enormously varied festival culture it has evolved into.
People have worked very hard for decades to get mushrooms to be studied with vets for PTSD. That’s beautiful.
Whoever invented the guitar made a lot of beauty. Not to mention the millions of people who’ve spent billions of hours practicing to make all the music we have today.
All the people throughout prehistory who stood up and fought sabertooth tigers, to allow us to have this world, were displaying what’s most beautiful about the human spirit.