Utility and Beauty May Work in Opposite Directions

A previous post about a nonfunctional stage of the female body which nevertheless seems to be peak beauty in one sense. This got me thinking. Perhaps the world is not supposed to be beautiful. Suppose most beautiful things are either accidents or with the females in the previous post, nonfunctional.

Which also got me thinking.  Maybe pure, natural, functional beauty loses some of its awesomeness because of the necessity of developing utility.

Usually when an object of any kind  starts to acquire utility, utility goes to the front of the line and beauty and appearance go to the back. Perhaps a bit of beauty is always sacrificed when making anything  functional, useful, or utilitarian. Probably things in this world are not supposed to be shockingly beautiful.

Sure, there are beautiful things in the world, but not that much of nature is pure beauty. The parts of nature that are pure beauty are rightly set aside as natural wonders in national parks and whatnot.

The world has to figure out how to function. Rocks, water, trees, grass, lichen, clouds, insects, birds, reptiles, and mammals are primarily concerned with functionality.

Yes, even clouds, rocks and water have to figure out how to work and do what they need to do.

Living things are mostly just concerned with survival, and what in the Hell does beauty have to do with survival? Nothing.

A plant’s objective is to live long enough to scatter its seed and create offspring.

An animal’s objective is to survive, not get killed by predators, find and acquire food, mate, rest, hide, raise offspring, etc. That’s the evolutionary trajectory. Where does beauty fit in? At the end of the line.

Although sometimes we get natural beauty like male peacocks who have evolved beauty in order to compete with other male  peacocks to attract mates where the most beautiful male wins. But this is one of the more unusual cases in our world where beauty actually serves some sort of a utilitarian and even evolutionary purpose.

Mostly beauty just happens by some coincidence of nature and natural beauty just sits there undergoing its natural processes, not trying to either get pretty or lose its looks. Instead it just sits there waiting for you to marvel at or take a picture of it. But it’s accidental. Nature didn’t evolve that waterfall to be so gorgeous that tourists would take pictures of it all day. Nature evolved the waterfall by accident when a stream or river ran right off a damned cliff. Redwoods are accidental. Wildflowers are beautiful accidents. And on and on.

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