Why Beauty is Important for Our Lives and our Cities
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
- John Keats
According to legend, Xerxes, the king of Persia, once stopped his army for several days to admire the beauty of a sycamore tree.
For a warrior king leading an army of hardened men, this was a bewildering act.
The sycamore tree was, I’m sure, incredibly beautiful. But aren’t delicate feelings of beauty far removed the harsh realities of battle and the thirst for domination and conquest? Perhaps not.
Even on the doorstep of war, the sense of beauty seems to be an omnipresent (and necessary) part of our lives.
Even Xerxes could not resist the sublime presence of beauty in this world, stopping to gaze up at that sycamore tree in reverence. In this day and age, though, it seems that our ideas of beauty have become warped and harmful in some degree. At the same time, this human perception of beauty is both an integral part of our lives and a distracting vanity.
So what is beauty? And why is it important?
Also, how does beauty manifest itself in our homes and our cities?
