Ugliness

I was listening to an interview with Alain De Botton, founder and director of The School of Life in London, and he said something which I thought was both profound and on reflection self-evident. It was the idea that "ugliness" was one way that "evil" found it's way into us. Granted, there is a certain problem with the subjective definition of the two terms since everyone defines the two based in large part on cultural milieu, but I believe there is much truth in the idea, especially if we can agree that evilness is anything the reduces our capacity to experience joy and a sense of harmony and balance within our environment. 

Where is it that we experience ugliness? Certainly our abuse of the natural environment turns vast areas of previously undisturbed landscape into wasteland. One can easily see the effect in the mountains of West Virginia, where mountain top removal has destroyed the environment and the lives and spirit of the people who live there and suffer from the toxic affect. Similarly clear cutting vast tracks of forest in the Amazon has transformed the landscape and lives of the native people who have lived in harmony there for millennia and who now have been reduced to wandering ghosts. And in urban environments we can feel the negative effects of poor planning and architecture that alienates those who must live within this diminished (ugly) environment. This must be a form of evil in that it robs us of joy and connection. Consider also the effects of the tenor of public discourse that is too often hostile and seeks to prevail rather than understand and compromise. Does this not produce internal states that diminish us and is this not in some way "evil"?

This makes the argument for creating beauty wherever and however we can, in large and small ways as an antidote to "evil" Taking time to pay attention to how we do something with the goal of making every effort as beautiful as possible in every possible dimension reduces the overall "evil" in the world.