beautifullest amy not the things elevated by your mind, but the things that really matter. 001030 ... amy i misspoke. not the things elevated by our minds, but the things that really matter. 001030 ... miniver Like, air, water, food? Sex and sleep? The reason that anything matters at all to us is because our minds perform that elevation. Want and desire aren't used by the brain as a portrait of aesthetic realism; they're used to make use get out of bed, and continue to go about our lives. Besides perhaps the basic necessities for survival, I'm not sure anyone can say what is more 'purely' beautiful, in this regard. Whatever makes us happy. Or, perhaps, whatever makes us whatever emotional state we so desire at the moment. 001031 ... amy no, that's not what i meant. when i eat something good after i've been hungry for awhile, that's not a 'beautiful' feeling. it's satisfaction, because i was uncomfortable beforehand. that would be the pain and pleasure twosome, keeping us up and at 'em. our brains do an awful lot of ranking of things- which i guess is the aesthetic sense. naturally, we have to make judgments, and if we care about beauty, some things will be more beautiful (to one person-- i'm not suggesting any external standard) than others. the aesthetic sense is healthy thing, i'm not criticizing it at all. but i am suggesting that there are some things that transcend the aesthetic sense and it's tanglings with the ego (which can't stay away from anything that is ranked). the beautifullest things are just beautiful, they cannot be ranked. and, a beautiful feeling is not followed by the elevated excited feeling until after the ranking has been done. (i've been down on excitement lately. that sorta happens in the wintertime.) 001031 ... miniver If some things will be more beautiful than others, as you propose – but, also, if this ranking of beautifulness is without external standard, subjective to the individual – then how is the satisfaction that a person gains from eating "something good" arguably less ‘beautifullest’ than any other satisfaction? Why should the fact that a person has been "uncomfortable" before experiencing any proposedly beautiful thing put the satisfaction felt, once experienced, on a different scale – the “pain and pleasure twosome”? Or, should I say, how or why or by what measure does any one experience or thing, instead of any other before it, ‘transcend the aesthetic sense and it’s tanglings with the ego”? (Again, I can only passably allow the basic biological fundamentals for survival to bypass the aesthetic branch of that pain/pleasure scale, and skip right to the bare-bones pain/pleasure factor, and that doesn’t seem to be at all what the beautifullest_idea proclaims. Or is it like one of those “we each have a soul” or “there is an almighty Lord” arguments, where, by nature, it cannot be reasonably opposed? Yeah, if it’s one of those mystical, magical, unexplainable freespirit forces, I guess I really can have too much to say.) Why should desire for food – hunger – be necessarily more base than any other desire, or more ‘rankable’? Because the stomach is involved, as well as the brain? Do we exclude certain organs and/or biological drives from being a part of some higher more pure and unrankable beauty? And, if so, how do we decide which organs are excluded? And, how do we know whether or not they were involved in whatever experience we were experiencing? Can’t a preemptive desire for anything – material or conceptual – be greater or lesser in measure, in force; and, therefore, can’t each of them yet be ranked on the same scale (whether that scale is arguably aesthetic, or utilitarian, or otherwise)? Or is it a rule that these ‘beautifullest’ things are only those that are absolutely not preceded by even the slightest inkling of desire? When I eat something good, whether I’ve been hungry for a while or not, it’s not always some animalistic drive between “empty” and “full”, between ultimate satisfaction and ultimate dissatisfaction. And, indeed, I would argue that eating good food can be more or less strikingly beautiful as any other such beautiful experience one might have – a different beauty than many others, of course, but I don’t think that warrants an entirely new category or distinct thought process for anything else in the world. Mostly, I just assume that the brain continues in it’s same old human, thinking, ranking, and unbiased (in that standard-neurons-firing-standardly) manner – and I don’t see how anyone, no matter how particularly beautiful an experience may seem, can come to the conclusion that his/her mind has, in fact, stopped ‘ranking’ the experience altogether. There is no certain scale of beauty by which every experience or object can be definitely or unanimously ranked, but I think that leaves the ranking of ALL objects and experiences somewhat inconclusive. I don’t think it makes any of them exempt to the same categorizing, order-seeking processes of the mind as the others, nor does it make them more or less subject to the same rules by which our minds judge the rest of the world and our lives. Out of curiosity, what sort of things do you see as being the 'beautifullest'? 001031 ... amy i can't respond to all your questions, but i could try to make my "point" clearer. 1)"beautifullest" rings a little false, and that's on purpose. calling things beautiful and ranking their beauty is what the mind does to order them, and it has nothing to do with their beautifulness. and once you do the ranking - or maybe just ordering- you have changed your sense of its beauty into something that you have found and ranked. you have pulled it into your possession. 2) But do we have a sense of beauty, aside from our ordering minds, and does that sense of beauty transcend our own selves? I dunno. But in that case, we can call it beautifullest just as easily as we can call it beautiful. 3) I am surely contradicting myself. 4) All things can be beautifullest. 5) I would list beauty up there with food, sex, sleep, etc. I think we might need it. 6) My original aim was to separate emotional ups-and-downs from the sense of beauty (although if i started with a sense of beauty, i could just pick those ups-and-downs up with it, maybe). Sometimes it seems like i spend most of my hours searching out beauty. My ego is very tied up with the search, and I'm a little uncomfortable with the whole process... 7) I should quit giving my ego such a hard time? Eat Beauty. (eat a moment!) I've surely read or heard that somewhere. 001102 ... miniver I think I get it. I just disagree. "calling things beautiful and ranking their beauty is what the mind does to order them, and it has nothing to do with their beautifulness." -- A very Platonic idealism, Amy; an argument for the underlying, independant reality of the idea of "beauty". I totally don't get that. I DO get the argument for an underlying independant reality -- and, should I ever be put in the position to have to argue on the subject directly, if only for the sake of science I think I would even have to bear the existential brunt and take its side. But, 'beauty'? How can beauty be anything but the workings of the mind? And, if it is just those workings of the mind (and not some extrinsic 'force' ingrained into reality itself), how can it logically, biologically avoid subordination to the same old mindful workings of every other event and object and sensation? In fact, of all the possible, plausible seperations of different mechanisms of the mind, I find an argument seperating our sense of beauty from EMOTION incredible. That's what I was trying to argue. Emotion isn't just some basic, animalistic drive between pleasure and pain. Or, rather, it IS just that -- but it's so clever and purposeful a mechanism of our evolved minds, that it prescribes itself to so many other, small, seemingly unrelated aspects of our lives. Something like the beauty of a sunrise is emotionally-endowed to 'get you out of bed' with the same basic emotional software as, say, a persons response to good-tasting food -- and for the same fundamental reason, as a matter of fact, although much more disguised. And I say much "more" disguised because, while we recognize that food is necessary for our continued survival, we take it for granted that that recognition doesn't necessarily make us want to eat. Food has to be disguised, too. So much of that desire for food is, in fact, emotional. Emotions are a part of our biology, and a brilliant part at that. I don't think 'beauty' escapes it, nor do I think that makes 'beauty' any less beautiful. 001106 ... fahfooh You want all of me? Take what you can I'm gone the world has taken the best The best is what I don't have The worst is what I have left Worst of all I don't have anything Left The need for something Something true Something new Something You want I want to Be 001231 ... . . 050208 what's it to you? who go blather from