… excerpt from previous blog…
I also realised that the common form of the stag beetle which flew past (with the hard shell, antlers and legs etc) is only the sexual form and so if beetles didn’t have sex we would know them only as rather ugly wood maggots.
Now examine the rest of the metamorphosing arthropods and it is evident that to be “sexual” is a very big deal. One of the dominant features is colour and flying… to find and attract mates obviously… and it seems some very general level of aesthetics that Nature shares from beetles to flowers to humans.
Suddenly it becomes apparent that the very property of being “sexual” imbues any creature with dynamism and beauty because it must find (hunt) and attract a mate. It is no surprise then that insect books spend so long painting the sexual form and only a page or two is dedicated to the larvae and even less to the eggs… we even think of the sexual form as the “adult” and the “true” form. It is adult in that it is the last stage and adult mammals are sexually reproductive but it is only by analogy.
Sex (as Darwin himself realised) is responsible for a very very great great deal of the natural “form” that we observe and enjoy in the natural world (in all species not just our own!!!). Sexual beauty is thus definitely archaeological (can be spoken about through historical narratives) and transcends the specific function of causing mating in humans. It is something that we can appreciate in other species that we have no intention of mating! It is even more obvious when you look at flowers … but it was beetles that did it for me.
I always suspected this - there is beauty in a girl that is far, far beyond what is required for physical sex, possession and marriage; a beauty that satisfies the mind also, the same beauty that the mind finds peace with in nature. This would link to a general conception of human beauty as a part of natural beauty – the Mother Earth maybe (who was a beautiful serene fecund middle aged woman when I met her – next decade or two older than the Virgin Mother).
Now the problem! Experiencing beauty in a female is a profound experience that transcends the common world. However beauty in a female within the common world becomes part of the status games that indirectly are linked to breeding. This was what I wrestled with in the Northern England stage of my Land’s End to John o’Groats walk. There was I trying to live as simply and “close” to nature as possible. Reducing the reliance on man made things as much as possible. I have even developed my knowledge of wild plants so that I can eat to a limited extent from nature also. But it was the joy riders from Manchester that disturbed my thoughts. Simply walking is not a very “Natural” thing to do. It is much more natural to be pumping with testosterone in big displays of viability to secure social status and attract high ranking mates – like buying a big car and burning up the rubber in the Yorkshire dales. I had to realise that being “in” nature like an animal and being outside nature like a “human” were distinct. We are actually man-animals. The animal sees a landscape as a source of resources like water, food, territory and building land, minerals, agricultural land etc. The human sees the landscape as a place to exist and Be within – appreciating primarily its beauty and watching its character and changes. In industry this is classified as a resource but in its nature it is more. It is not for the purpose of sustenance. If we didn’t enjoy the countryside we wouldn’t die (physically) indeed governments and industry don’t actually have to care about the environment at all. There is a weak argument these days that if we don’t care for the environment then we will be physically damaged as the Earth ecosystem breaks down. It is weak because the real reason for “care” for the environment doesn’t actually matter in physical terms at all. If people are so much like animals that they can’t see that they are animals to be honest it doesn’t matter if the human race goes extinct we just join the dinosaurs etc.
The reason why the environment matters is precisely because of what doesn’t matter. The human race doesn’t actually matter in physical terms. Like the Dodo we can go extinct. There is no reason in Heaven or Earth why it should matter… if we only think in purely practical animal material terms that is.
The reason the human race matters is because of things like “beauty” and “existence” and “Being”. The reasons that some people go walking. It really doesn’t matter if they do or they don’t, but when you do it you discover its “value” and that “value” is the value of the human race and the world as a whole. It is the Earth Mother if that metaphor works for you.
Where politics, economics, and technology and science are so lacking, and why they fill me with profound boredom, is because they deal with what seems to matter. Yet you look from a big enough perspective and what seems so important on the low level, like the interest rate for example, turns out to have no real importance. So the economy collapses and the human race descends into a dark age and nuclear war and goes extinct, as already mentioned there is no reason in politics, economics or technology and science why this should matter. One has to reach beyond these things to the True Being to find out why it Really matters. If we can’t see that then we have lost our “soul” and have truly been lost to the base gods of politics, economics and technology and science.
In this lies the SRH again that the system in which things matter can’t matter itself. Now this sounds a lot like the proposal in a book “The Self Writing Universe” which is a private publication and has small circulation but is the only thing that deals with this issue of theories of everything having ultimately to be theories about themselves… or universes writing themselves to use the bootstrap analogy he uses in the book. I skimmed the book in a few hours at 3am for the “key” and got the gist that the only thing that can explain the order and wonder of the universe must itself be absurd and paradoxical. Its time to return to that book maybe – annoying book though since he fleshes it out with a post hoc analysis of existing ideas which he only read up to write the book. They can’t by his own analysis be critical to understanding the book so why include them? I don’t need a history lesson in philosophy. Maybe he is following Pirsig’s example in “Zen and the art…” but I felt his analysis was autobiographical (deliberate or device it doesn’t matter) of the process he had actually been through.
So returning to “my muse” (as if I ever leave!)… there is the real reason for female beauty which is the same reason for the world and for everything. Then there is the proximal reason for female beauty which becomes economic and political. One only needs to watch music videos to see how female beauty is used primarily to define status. The sad thing then is to understand that to appreciate female beauty one must engage with the world of territory, property and “status”. This put another way is the problem I original recognised – that a relationship really means, no matter how spiritual it begins, the practical biology of child birth and that involves switching from our spiritual human side to the resource allocation attitude of an animal.
I can’t become an animal because it destroys the awareness of the very thing that I recognise in female beauty, in flowers and in adult beetles. There is no way down from here, one MUST ascend to the gods and leave worldly concerns of childbirth, family, status and resources behind… like it or not! To be Human is to sacrifice our own Animal. Thus I should appreciate the beauty in that bike and cast my concerns for food aside like I used to. Why is that manoeuvre becoming harder as I get older and closer to death… I should be finding it easier!!!
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