WHERE DOES BEAUTY COME FROM?

From evolution, where else?  How do  beauty/culture/evolution interact?  With botox, puffed up lips, wrinkle-remover.  How many “Sexiest Man Alive” magazine covers have I seen?  Sex, and it is not missing in the wild, with colorful baboon bottoms and robins’ breasts, enticing.  We may find a white peacock lovely, ignorant of the sexual function of animal attraction.

The earliest hint I can find of the experience of beauty  is the appearance of attraction to babies with “cute faces,” which had already appeared on earth at least by the time of the dinosaurs.  Evolution’s goal in that case is so parents wouldn’t eat their offspring. Good thinking!

Some people can appreciate beauty in art, music, poetry, dance and nature.  To me it feels like there’s a little-used nerve inside that turns on and flows warmly in my chest area. It seems to feed me.  But I can’t attend to beauty when I’m cold.

E.O. Wilson speaks of the creative arts being the “true and beautiful.” Is there a connection?

bird on the canvas

the serenade of bird song

Mother’s loving  smile