Will Beauty Save the World? On Mass Tourism and Urban Life
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
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Copyright: Johannes Achill Niederhauser
No more inhabitants, citizens , and locals ... only consumers.
A fabulous effort. My thanks and respect.
Could one not make the case that: the problem is a lack of beauty elsewhere? Most of our modern cities are more or less completely devoid of beauty.
Insightful and accurate comment. The modern American suburb, where I, unfortunately, live, is an Aesthetic Nightmare. In these summer months, people have been traveling, and this must be at least one of the reasons why.
'Theme parks' is exactly the word. I couldn't connect with any historical place in Vienna or istanbul. It seemed a waste.
This video could not have arrived at a more apposite time in my life. As a humble and flawed student of history and philosophy, I have saved some money for a brief trip to four cities of my interest: Athens, Rome, Paris, and Vienna. Before going, I made it a point to study their histories, tempers, citizenry, religions, waves of migration, current states, and so on (this has been a project for years). This is not to say *at all* that I now _know_ these cities. Far from it. The more I read, the more I realize how vulgar it would be to claim definitive knowledge, let alone wisdom, of the European realm. Even more so when I listen to you in this video. But reading Hesiod before heading to Greece, pre- and post- revolutionary France, Durant on Rome and Austria, so on - this gives me a little bit of ground to stand on while I gaze at the cities. I agree with you; I am a guest in these big and small towns. I do not arrive with commercial expectations. Only a temporary guest who has made an effort to understand what Europe means (still under process, perhaps always will be) and what it will mean under so much precarity.
Your video also reminded me of how northern Pakistan, home to the second highest mountains in the world, is increasingly become a central point for mountaineering mass tourism. As someone with family in that sylvan and severely beautiful northern region, I have felt quiet bitterness at how little the tourist makes an effort to understand the nature surrounding man. Evola speaks of mountains and summits, why we gaze at nature and find ourselves filling up with sublime love and terror. "To feel alone," he wrote, "in a free, merciless world with only one’s strength to rely on; engaged in intimate dialogue with the deepest and most mysterious forces of one’s being; awakened to pure, harsh dimensions that almost enable us to partake of that same transcendence over and indifference toward the human domain that in the majestic and shining peaks seem to find their best symbolic representation." I don't get that awareness when I ask why a tourist came to see northern Pakistan. I imagine I am not too different than that tourist when I stand before Acropolis.
I also agree with that you said about the simulacrum that precedes the city and undoubtedly shapes (and distorts) one's sense of the city he is visiting. What you said reminds me of what W. Percy wrote regarding the loss of spiritual sovereignty as a product of mass consumerism. "Seeing the canyon under approved circumstances is seeing the symbolic complex head on. The thing is no longer the thing as it confronted the Spaniard; it is rather that which has already been formulated-by picture postcard, geography book, tourist folders, and the words Grand Canyon."
As for these temples remaining religious temples, that would require a much broader conversation with Europa. With all the faults Muslims have, myself included, we ensure that the sacred domain retains sacrality. This requires making enemies, stipulating what is and isn't better, etc. But even that is changing. Today Medina and Mecca gradually open themselves to the syncretic eye. Modernity seems to spare no one, on the surface at least.
Thank you for your thoughtful channel. You compelled me to think and rethink. Maybe we will cross paths in Athens come fall.
You are like a guy from 19th century put into this crazy world
Brugesm which has become an ossified museum town, feels totally different from Ghent, which has not, or at least not to nearly the same extent.
I am certainly not naive enough to think beauty will save the world, but I do think it often is enough to save ourselves from despair over the horrors of the world.
I'm biased.
I make art that is meant to be beautiful, but i pretty much do it to save myself in the way I've described.
I don't sell my art, and so pretty much my friends and family are the only ones who see it.
I also spend many hours in nature, which is the purest form of beauty we can relate to.
Seeing a beautiful mountain, waterfall, or sunset, or hearing the songs of the birds is a healing experience.
While these things do nothing to save the world, they remind me WHY it needs saving.
They show me that the world is so much bigger than myself and that it should be preserved, not out of my own survival instinct, but because of its own innate essence.
I hope that when people do see or hear my art, they feel the beauty and maybe perceive just a glimpse as to why the world should be respected for what it is.
It was never here for our taking.
Rather, we've been lucky enough to have grown along side it, and should respect it enough to let it be what it is, or to act in ways that respect and enhance it, with humility.
Man, you certainly nailed it! Thanks, congratulations and greetings!
@@manuelugartearce8241 Cheers! Thank you!
An absolutely gorgeous and insightful comment. It is clear you are an artist. You have an aesthetic sensibility, an eye and an ear for beauty.
Reading the beginning of your comment, I was reminded of Nietzsche on the saving power (which is to say the healing power) of art: “Through art, life saves us for herself.” Is not art but the principle of Creation in us?
Goethe & Minerva perched on the shoulder, harbingers of wisdom!
I love to listen to your thoughts and contemplations!
And by the way your Hair is not only „astheticly pleasing“ but beautiful! So in the end it may be your Haarpracht that will save us all! (Kleiner Scherz am Rande aber im Grunde ises so)
Ha! All natural, too
I like the slogan in theory, but you explained how it is misused in practice in a wonderful critique of modern tourism. This is not the Venice of Canaletto. “Where St. Mark’s is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings!” (As Browning wonderfully sang.)
Nevertheless, even as I see its weakness, I believe in it. Although, I would correct it with Shakespeare’s logic-J: “What must be shall be.” (FL: “That’s a certain text.”)-It is not that beauty can save the world, it is that “Beauty MUST save the world.”
That must be our motto, else we will go to ruin. The beautiful is a form of the good-greater, at times, than “the good”-no longer ‘the Good’ of Plato but now narrowly conceived as “social welfare” and nothing else, a term which sounds noble but is taken to have merely an economic signification.) Somehow, I know not how, we have ended up in the timeline where both Marx and Nietzsche are correct!
You offer not a bad definition of Beauty when (at 16:40) you say that it is “the medium through which something genuinely shines forth.” I would say that Beauty herself _shines forth_ through that definition and for a brief moment shows herself-(Oh, Venus, goddess of Love!)
You gave the hint to solving the problem when you said “it should be alive.” Yes, these places are dead in their “life.” They are become cold, dead,ruins even in their current inhabitation!) Also, I believe literally what you said about the Temple of Apollo.
This is something that's been on my mind a lot lately. I have a research project that should necessitate my going to Andalucia, but I can't bear the thought of being a tourist there, being the visibly American person taking up space in their home territory. How can we keep uppermost in our minds, as we travel abroad, that humility that comes from being a GUEST, as you say?
Der kosmopolitische Klumpen der Konsumenten.
great comments on Hegel's science of logic - what really keyed it for me is the comment on the 'concrete', or the growing together, and how if we take reality at face value we become very confused. it is only by trying to unravel things, working back towards the actual, that we gain an appreciation for things. our understanding is always fluid, and logic is a tool in clarifying, but the most unrelenting domain is that of our premises, and how our faculties dictate our ontology; our fundamental way of experience which we can't get behind of.
of course in the stating of "I" as a contradiction, one is reminded of the asian sense of the illusion of the I, and also in the discussion I was reminded of deleuzean theory about the elevation of difference as the preferred method of perceiving/deconstructing reality. we live in a blur of reality where all separation is illusory, but we are forced to stand and appear separate in our mortal bodies, yet our ontology is a long cascade of living concrescence, deeply embedded.
and everything is just different forms of becoming - that which never ceases. thank you, this brings hegel's thinking into a new light for me.
One is almost tempted to wish that the Metaverse would have been more successful in that regard. Mark Zuckerberg uploading all that cities and collecting the tourists over there, beautifully contained under the glasses. The difference in the experience of not really being there in Venice or not really being there in the Metaverse is probably rather minor at this stage. Though I don't know if you were allowed to take pictures in the Metaverse.
Ha
At first, I frowned at this proposal, but by the end you had converted me. Indeed, and this would expand access to “travel.”
I am content to look at Venice through paintings of Canaletto’s on Wikipedia-(often the quality is tremendous, tens of thousands of pixels of high quality definition!)-but a good many people, probably most people, would prefer to see Venice on foot, and I do not begrudge them one bit. At least in this way, I benefit in this way from an overactive imagination.
In this respect, the instinct of the people is correct. The general opinion about the Metaverse is that it is no place where we should spend as much time as we do on the internet now. (And, in general also, people wish they spent less time on the internet.) But people also rave after they have had the experience (I have not) of putting on VR goggles for the first time. So, splitting that difference, I think “Metaverse for Travel” sounds to me like a great idea-the best idea anybody’s had about those newfangled things.
Indeed, a billion dollar idea I think you’ve had, sir or ma’am 💸💸💸
I will not visit Greece or any other country until I have a basic understanding of the language. Visitors should at least attempt to connect with the area they are visiting instead of being "hit-and-run" tourists. Maybe these places should enact a dress code for visitors - they would become ghost towns!
Yes!
Visiting a country without knowing anyone there should be considered gauche and taboo, yet in our colonial mindset it is cool and a sign of distinction, fitting perfectly within our consumptive and disposable geist.
I do not hate these ideas. No, not one bit I do not.
Flogging the dead horse of civilisation. In pity at Sils Maria; In spite at the olympic opening ceremony.
People travelling to a place and not being there is very bizarre and also hilarious really.
Hello Johannes, this is the first time that I see you irritated and express it,by this reality.It is abominable to see, how hordes of tourists in such city's that the encounter with beauty, harmony of constructions, the layout, historicity etc has been leveled dowsed by the many who don't now ,realize,that they actions as tourists is ugly and in fine destructive. The word tourist became synonym of stupidity in all his expressions.
In the facts in the deeds and in the speech a tourist is not something to be or pride of!!!
The notion of traveler(eye)seeing is very different of that of the tourist looking but not able to see ! I can going on about illusion, simulacra ,as you mentioned, the disney aspect, the mercantilism,
the consciousness or les , but this just one result of human dis functioning behavior... and so many others! Don't let it overwhelm you don't let them make you mad.. even if.
By your actions, your stimulation, your intonation, your dialogues,questions certitudes and doubts, communications, by your way of being....part of the whole, you are feeding constantly so many souls with sparks of clarity, not always comfortable but....so rewarding
I'm certainly not the only one to feels that way! Clarity can be beautiful in speech and action !
Thank you for yours!
@@emilthiels6256 thank you for your thoughtful comment, Emil.
There seems to be something rhetorical in, particularly the opening presentation here. It is a kind of tongue and cheek raising current definitions of beauty. But I think is that, and I somehow believe this holds for you too though you did not say it, modern Venice (to take an example used in the video) is no longer 'beautiful' in the sense that it has lost its soul. Nobody who truly understands beauty would think a hollow exterior is an expression of true beauty. It feels like a spiritual loss to not be able to speak of beauty any longer because people think we mean fashion and cosmetics or advertising.
The loss of values or whatever you call this, deep felt convictions, is felt most in how we cannot even communicate anymore. Everything has become bound to economic necessity and necessity is based on a market which has no eyes for values. I don't think that is the only problem because there are regulations and by-laws which shape economic behavior as well. It is not like people can pursue traditional crafts where they develop their skills with precision because they will be out competed by machines. And even something like a farming life which is honest and connects people with the land and their roots is not viable because land prices necessitate one having millions of euros to own a farm, and even then you'd have to just plough large fields and use chemical fertilizers which diminish the nutrients in the food just to stay competitive.
I am wondering if it is not just that humans are somehow undergoing some terrible new stage of evolution and becoming a different species than it seemed to be when one sees through the eyes of our ancestors.
It is evident that one of the greatest threat to human capability is consumer capitalism, where every action and endeavor is ultimately judged by how saleable it is to the greatest portion of people, who themselves have little agency or even grasp of their own history and roots any longer but instead pursue meaningless lives out of necessity and are encouraged to pursue meaningless hobbies and interests because it will result in purchases which support the economy. This is what we have made of human potential.
AI is another threat, not necessarily because it poses a sci-fi-like scenario, but because humans are in danger of outsourcing their powers. They will let machines do the work first of their limbs and finally of their minds. In some ways, that has already happened. The great majority of people will never really get beyond regurgitating soundbites from their preferred media and upbringing.
What, for me, is the most difficult, is how easy it is to find oneself lost and stuck in the global industrial wastelands where not a single person is able to tolerate intelligent discourse any longer let alone find understanding, agreement, true friendship and alliance.
we need more Venices and Parises and Greeces but who can make them
No, Gil. We need just them. And we need to let them be what they are. And who makes them? The Italians, the Venetians, the Greek, the Parisians etc. Real people with roots and history
@@JohannesNiederhauser In the west we have plastic cultures and cookie cutter franchises that just consume things; for authentic experience we hunt out 'real' places that have history and/or culture, and cannibalize them. It is the telos of money and material, purveying cash & concrete that own and possess yet mean nothing.
A non-western example: The case of Bali: A traditional culture totally invaded by tourism over past 30 years: Devastated in many ways: Yet traditional culture goes on: Faith, Community, the private and well guarded bubble of meaning and value: Some percentage of tourist income grasped directed by local councils towards the organised survival of traditional ways: Not everything is for sale, not everything for display: Not to underplay the damage to traditional life, but self-consciously saved from being a complete desert despite the full force of modernity; So far. Perhaps something to learn from these local communities? If rooted life can survive surfing, beach bars and yoga centres, anything is possible. Surely the ‘development’ experts would not agree.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder or the "I" dependent on vanity 😂
The 1st step would be to concern ourselves with the condition of our fellow humanity. If all humanity had a sense of security all else is pretty smooth.
Sadly Truth and beauty can’t save the world
Because the inherent beauty of the world indicates it doesn't need to be saved.
There has never been anything wrong with it, something out of place driven by irrationality, something which is completely detached from its whole methaphysical estructure.