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Beautiful as Abstraction

When a lion walks along a river and sees the tracks of a wounded antelope. In the mind of the lion the antelope does not exist. A lion will not be able to make the abstract connection between the tracts and the animal which made them.

The human walks along the banks of a river and sees tracts in the mud and is able to recognize that pattern as part of the abstract metaphorical representation of an antelope.

We find beauty in abstract patterns because it has helped our survival but we have survived because we find abstract patterns beautiful. But if we cannot look critically at our belief systems we risk becoming slaves to our fear.

Descartes said “I think and therefore I am” or more accurately translated “I question and therefore I am”. If we take this one step further this statement might be interoperated as “I have the ability to question and therefore I am” or “I have the ability to question my own existence and therefore I am” It is this ability for humans to think of ourselves in the abstract context of existence that makes us unique.

Religion used by those who seek to legitimate their authority by telling us that they can explain and control the randomness of life through logic games. They tell us that our destiny is controlled my spiritual forces that can alleviate our suffering. We are told that our relationships with these forces are based on mutual reciprocity and we must obey religious leaders in order to know and understand the random forces that control our lives.

This can partially explain our propensity to organized rituals. The kind of person who would say there is no such thing as a witch would be the first to be considered a witch. Authority is the source of belief.

Our language is filled with metaphysical ideas that have no physical form such as love, hate, kindness… These concepts are as real as the air we breath yet they only exist in our minds. However, it is Buddhist philosophy that that tells us that all physical things in this world “Sum Sara” are based on impermanence and it is only reality are those things which are not based on the physical world. Again we find our minds seeking to find explanation and rational patterns to these mysteries.

 

 

The human brain is a pattern recognition tool. And it is that very ability to recognize abstract patters that has led to our success in evolutionary survival. It is also why we are drawn to certain abstract patterns. We find beauty in mathematical patterns that are metaphorical for the human form. The same patterns that can describe the geometry of the human body are pleasing to the human eye and we are drawn to those patters and describe them as beautiful.

The human mind is a chatterbox that is always looking for reason and order. We want to bring order to chaos because we have survived and evolved precisely because of our ability to look for and find abstract metaphysical patterns in the natural world. We can see it in our language, culture, music, religion…

Mystery novels and movies are popular because they show us how something seemingly random can in fact be described by a very logical pattern that is revealed by a clever detective. In the example on this page we can see how the Fibonacci sequence can be used to describe many natural occurrences. We can even see that same pattern in the human form.

We can see how with the use of the Bezier curve we can find a correlation with the Fibonacci sequence and the symmetry of the human form as described by Leonardo da Vinci.

This need for humans to find patters in chaos can be exploited sometimes inadvertently by politicians and leaders. President Kennedy is assassinated by a seemingly random and pointless act of violence and yet we look for conspiracy theories to explain a complex rationality behind this random act.

A terrorist act occurs and our immediate reaction is to ask why? We want to find a pattern or reason for this act again some of us would like to turn to conspiracy theories but still others hear our politicians tell us a simple but compelling narrative about how we must return this violence in kind.